Harry Styles

Harry Edward Styles (born 1 February 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His showmanship, artistry, and flamboyant fashion have had a significant impact on popular culture.

Styles's musical career began in 2010 as part of One Direction, a boy band formed on the British music competition series The X Factor after each member of the band had been eliminated from the solo contest. They became one of the best-selling boy bands of all time before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2016. Styles released his eponymous debut solo album through Erskine and Columbia Records in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US and was one of the world's top-ten best-selling albums of the year, while its lead single, "Sign of the Times", topped the UK Singles Chart.

His second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 with the biggest ever first-week sales by an English male artist. Its fourth single, "Watermelon Sugar", topped the US Billboard Hot 100. Styles's widely acclaimed third album, Harry's House (2022), broke several records and received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its lead single, "As It Was", became Billboard's and IFPI's number-one song of 2022 globally. He is set to release his fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (2026), led by the single "Aperture", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Styles has received various accolades, including six Brit Awards, three Grammy Awards, two Ivor Novello Awards, three American Music Awards, and four MTV Video Music Awards. Fine Line and Harry's House were both included on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Styles's film roles include Dunkirk (2017), Eternals (2021), Don't Worry Darling (2022), and My Policeman (2022). Wearing a blue Gucci dress, he became the first man to appear solo on the cover of Vogue. Styles contributes to various charities and advocates for gender, racial, and LGBTQ equality.

Early life

Styles was born on 1 February 1994 in Redditch, Worcestershire, England, the son of pub owner Anne Twist (née Selley) and finance worker Desmond "Des" Styles. When he was a child, he moved with his parents and older sister, Gemma, to the village of Holmes Chapel in Cheshire. His parents divorced when he was seven years old. His mother later married her business partner John Cox; they divorced years later. Through her subsequent marriage in 2013 to Robin Twist, who died of cancer in 2017, Styles gained an older stepbrother Mike, and a stepsister, Amy.

Styles described his upbringing as a "great childhood" and recalled always feeling supported by his parents. As a child, he sang covers on a karaoke machine he was given by his grandfather, and the first song he recorded was Elvis Presley's "The Girl of My Best Friend". Styles attended the Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School, where he was the lead singer for the band White Eskimo, which won a local Battle of the Bands competition. At the age of 16, he took on part-time work at the W. Mandeville Bakery in Holmes Chapel. During his adolescence, he also delivered newspapers and worked at a stable, mucking out horse stalls.

Career

2010–2015: The X Factor and One Direction

Following a suggestion from his mother, on 11 April 2010, Styles auditioned as a solo contestant for the seventh series of the British televised singing competition The X Factor, singing a rendition of Train's "Hey, Soul Sister". After Simon Cowell suggested that the track was not right for him, he instead sang a rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely". He advanced to bootcamp but failed to progress further. Four others in his age group who were also eliminated were put together to form a boy band in July 2010 to compete in the "Groups" category, mentored by Cowell.

The group consisting of Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik practised for two weeks; Styles suggested the name One Direction to his colleagues which they agreed to. They began to gain considerable popularity in the UK, and within the first four weeks of the live shows, were Cowell's last contestant in the competition. The group eventually reached the final of The X Factor and became the last contestant eliminated on the show.

In January 2011, One Direction signed a recording contract with Cowell's label Syco Records. Their UK number one debut single, "What Makes You Beautiful", and their debut studio album, Up All Night, were released later that year. The album, which contained three songs co-written by Styles, debuted at number one in the United States. Their four succeeding studio albums—Take Me Home (2012), Midnight Memories (2013), Four (2014) and Made in the A.M. (2015)—all debuted at number one in the UK.

Midnight Memories was the world's best-selling album of 2013, and its accompanying Where We Are Tour was the highest-grossing tour of 2014. After the release of Four, One Direction became the only group in the 58-year history of the Billboard 200 albums chart to have their first four albums debut at number one. The albums spawned a string of successful singles, including "Live While We're Young", "Little Things", "Best Song Ever", "Story of My Life", "Drag Me Down" and "History". Styles also co-wrote the song "Just a Little Bit of Your Heart" for Ariana Grande's 2014 album My Everything.

Not wanting to "exhaust" the fan base, upon Styles's suggestion, One Direction went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016, after completing promotional activities related to Made in the A.M. As of March 2015, One Direction have sold 70 million records worldwide since their debut, including 7.6 million albums and 26 million singles in the US, becoming one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. The group amassed numerous accolades, including seven Brit Awards, seven American Music Awards, six Billboard Music Awards, and four MTV Video Music Awards.

While Styles has been generally positive about his time in One Direction, he has revealed that the hyper-visibility he experienced while being in the band was not always easy to deal with. Styles attributed his avoidance of social media to past pressure that he should be constantly accessible online. He has spoken about being scared of saying the wrong things in interviews and of fear that not answering questions such as the number of people he slept with would cause journalists to leave the interview annoyed with him. His contracts with One Direction contained "cleanliness clauses" which stated that the group would be "null and void" if he did not obey them. He expressed that he "burst into tears" when he signed a solo contract without these clauses because he felt "free."

2016–2018: Harry Styles and Dunkirk

As a solo artist, Styles joined Jeffrey Azoff's Full Stop Management and talent agency CAA, signing a recording contract with Columbia Records in the first half of 2016. Around this time, he also launched his own record label, Erskine Records. Recording for Styles's debut album occurred throughout 2016 in Los Angeles, London and Port Antonio, Jamaica, where Styles and his collaborators spent a two-month writing retreat in the autumn. In March 2017, he announced that his first solo single, "Sign of the Times", would be released on 7 April. The song peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart and number four on the US Billboard Hot 100. A glam rock-influenced soft rock power ballad, it drew comparisons to the work of David Bowie. Rolling Stone ranked "Sign of the Times" as the best song of 2017. Its music video featured Styles flying and walking on water and won the Brit Award for British Video of the Year. In April, Styles was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in the US and made his debut televised solo performance in the UK on The Graham Norton Show.

Styles's debut studio album, Harry Styles, was released in May 2017, whereupon it debuted at number one in several countries, including Australia, the UK and the US. The record was influenced by 1970s soft rock and was described by Variety as a "classic cocktail of psychedelia, Britpop, and balladry." It received generally favourable reviews from critics and was included in several publications' lists of the best albums of 2017. Harry Styles yielded two more singles, "Two Ghosts" and "Kiwi". The film Harry Styles: Behind the Album, which documented the writing and recording process for the album, was released in May exclusively on Apple Music. Styles embarked on his first headlining concert tour, Harry Styles: Live on Tour, from September 2017 through to July 2018, performing in North and South Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. During the tour, Styles debuted two unreleased songs, "Anna" and "Medicine".