Adrie’s Beat’s of the Week: Harry Styles “As It Was”
A review of Harry Style’s newest release, and his hair through the years
As it, in fact, was. (Fiona McKinlay, CC BY-SA 2.0
Welcome to Adrie’s beats of the week, a weekly column dedicated to remarking upon the intricacies of modern music. To submit any songs for entry, please contact [email protected], with the subject line, ‘beats of the week.’
This song gets four stars this week because I like it. I don’t know yet what will be deserving of five stars, but Harry definitely get’s five for character development.
Harry Styles is a rather fascinating person to me, mostly because I don’t understand the intense infatuation with him that many people seem plagued by. I mean I do, he’s an ex-boyband reformer, he has nice hair, and he makes lovely sweatshirts with frogs on them. At the same time though, as much spotlight as he has had in the past several years, I think he is really coming into his light right now. That’s my Harry Styles Prediction for 2022. And also now he’s an Avenger… adjacent character?
I believe that the real root of this was, and is, the world’s intense infatuation with people who sing in groups. I think the camaraderie is cute, and people like big dance numbers, which only tend to happen in groups. I think that when sixteen-year old Harry took the stage that day on The X Factor (the scarf!) and flopped that hair around, people fell in love. People who are still in love today. And then when they formed them into 1D, the world fell 5x in love, and all wondered why they hadn’t thought of such a genius combination.
I, personally, as an elementary schooler thought that 1D was some sort of sappy scam, exclusively for people that I did not like. And when “Watermelon Sugar” won a Grammy, I thought it undeserved (please don’t come for me). However, I think Harry himself is great, and he does make great nail polish.
So I (once again!) was skeptical when it was announced that he was dropping a new album, and really couldn’t have cared less when he released “As It Was.” As I felt it was my personal duty though I listened to it. And behold the ways of the world, I quite enjoyed it. I like the 80’s synth sounds and, despite him singing about sad things, the rather upbeat movement. I like the way that it sounds, and I like the way that it feels, like a sad party. Like it was a party, but now you are the only one left there. I have a really hard time not dancing to it.
I have now listened to it a whole lot of times, but for a good 75% percent of that, I was convinced that he was singing about the existence of his secret child. I am still not totally moved otherwise, but Genius says it’s about “bittersweet feelings of loneliness and the past.” Which makes a good bit of sense, the main lyric being “You know it’s not the same as it was.” But you know what it would also make things different than they were? A secret child. This is probably a rather far fetched theory, but honestly who even knows anymore.
Styles describes it as about “metamorphosis,” and said, “It just felt like the thing I wanted to say, the thing I wanted to be doing and the kind of music I wanted to make coming back.” I think that whatever story he is trying to tell, it was a good move.
If Harry is reading this, I think that maybe a good way to curb some of his loneliness would be to get 1D back together. They could perform this song, remember the way that it was, and give Harry some fatherly advice about how to deal with his secret child.
I like new age Harry Styles though; I do think that he has always been very himself, but now it seems like he’s kind of got it figured out. Or maybe he’s really embracing that, in fact, he doesn’t have it together at all. This isn’t a review of Harry Styles though, this is a review of his song, and I quite like it. I now have high hopes for Harry’s House, and we can look forward to that in May, an exciting new album edition.
