Against Sign Of The Times
where nostalgia wants you
Harry Styles is an honest enigma. What’s going on behind those eyes? Very few people know. What is that accent? Not a clue. Where did he grow up? To be fair that information is probably freely available — but you have to ask yourself: do you want to know? Stare into the eyes, strain your ear for the accent, and still: only what’s on the surface. It’s all part of the charm.
To be fair to Harry, it’s also how he likes it. “With an artist like Prince,” he told Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone, “all you wanted to do was know more. And that mystery — it’s why those people are so magical! Like, fuck, I don’t know what Prince eats for breakfast. That mystery … it’s just what I like.”
It’s a mystery that comes with a certain honesty. You don’t become one of the most famous 23-year-olds in the world unless your PR team wants you to: leaking out the odd rumour here, tipping off the papp over there. Harry Styles has the candid mystery of a book that’s had the middle pages stapled open.
So, in tribute to the open mystery that is Harry Styles, let’s scrutinise each of the official videos for his debut single ‘Sign Of The Times’ in frankly more detail than we should.
The first video to be released was, perversely, the audio. The piano strikes a familiar tone — as does everything else. The gradual build. The trembling guitar and half-time groove. Have you heard this song before? Falsetto. Pink. Do you feel nostalgic yet? This is a song under influence — addicted to the past. You probably recognise it from a Richard Curtis film that hasn’t come out yet.
The tone here seems more important than the words. You know there are words somewhere under there, which you’re glad about, but they’re very much serving a purpose. They’re there so your dad can sing them wrong. If this song is a meal, the words are the plate. When you’re looking at the words, the meal is over. Go and get some seconds.
Wistful. Nostalgic. Evocative. Say them out-loud and the magic’s gone, but don’t tell me you don’t feel it. Even his facial expression (hidden) is longing for something over the horizon. He’s looking away (mysterious), but you can tell that’s his expression because his head is at a ~19˚ angle. Any more is confused, any less is bored. 19˚ means nostalgic.
Let’s talk more about the picture on this audio/video. Specifically: how it looks like he’s giving birth to the sun. What’s going on with that, then?
“The song is written from a point of view as if a mother was giving birth to a child and there’s a complication,” Styles told Crowe. “The mother is told, ‘The child is fine, but you’re not going to make it.’ The mother has five minutes to tell the child, ‘Go forth and conquer.’”
Now, Harry didn’t mention anything about giving birth to the sun, but really look at that video and tell me it isn’t what he’s doing. He’s looking away (at the past?), new-born ‘sun’ between the legs, nostalgia all over his hidden face, saying to his child (the sun): ‘go forth and conquer’. I’ll be real with you, I don’t understand the imagery here. Possibly: an attempt to blend nostalgia with courage. We may never know.
There are two live versions of Sign Of The Times on the official Harry Styles YouTube channel. The first, Saturday Night Live on 15th April, is nervous. The voice is huskier. The high notes are quiet. The eyes are searching. You’d be forgiven for passing it off as moody, but trust me: nervous. It’s the debut’s debut, a bundle of butterflies wrapped up in Blue Steel. Don’t trip now Harry. Everyone’s mum is watching.
This is good. If you’re going to sing lines like “we’ve gotta get away from here, we’ve got to get away” then we, the audience, need to know that you are genuinely a bit scared; that your nostalgia is tinged through with actual fear. There needs to be at least a small chance that you could be about to throw up on live TV. Don’t actually throw-up — that’d be disgusting— but make us feel like if you did then that’d be cool. This is the 21st century. We have expectations.
The second live recording, The Graham Norton Show on 21st April, is altogether more comfortable; the whole environment more controlled. He’s on home ground. The mood has lifted. Was that a smile? In contrast to the SNL performance, the tone here is looser, slightly brighter. Yep, that’s definitely a grin — on the drop, as he sings “just stop your crying” like he’s offering you a Pringle. The tone of this nostalgia has changed. Anxiety has given way to contentment. Maybe even confidence.
Curiously, the mood still seems to work.
What can we learn from the moody nerves of SNL and the sly smiles of Graham Norton? Nostalgia kicks in when you don’t know what lies ahead. When the future’s unknown, nostalgia will punch you in the soul: but when it hits, it clings. Nostalgia’s residence outlasts its preconditions. It’s birthed through butterflies but thrives on smiles. They make it bold.
The music video for Sign Of The Times is filmed on the set of Gary Barlow’s dreams. Styles, jacketed like an Edwardian admiral, is caught between land and sea. Glancing and blowing between the two, what begins as a trip ends in full-blown, Peter-Pan-esque levitation. Harry Styles is flying in the sky. He has taken to the air and he doesn’t even look that concerned.
Why is he roaming the coast? Which way is home? And how exactly is it that he’s flying? At times it looks like he’s being pushed by the ground; but later on it looks like he’s being sort of pulled up by the clouds. Was he expecting this? Is it safe? There aren’t many answers in this music video, and the more questions you ask the more puzzling it gets.
The thing is, nostalgia doesn’t want answers — it lives off questions and longings. Much like Harry Styles himself, its power comes from its mystery. As Harry’s silhouette passes through the clouds, to ask where he’s going would be to miss the point.
“People romanticize places they can’t get to themselves”, Styles told Crowe, describing our obsession with celebrities; and it’s that dynamic at work in the closing lines of Sign Of The Times. We don’t know what’s above the clouds, we don’t know what Prince ate for breakfast, and we don’t really want to know where Harry grew up. If we got answers then we might be disappointed.
“We gotta get away from here” screams Styles, with the commitment of a man whose career depends on it. “We’ve got to, we’ve got to get away” — where to though, Harry? Where do we need to go?
Nostalgia’s implied answer is shot through with confidence and shrouded in mystery.
Nostalgia wants you anywhere — anywhere but here.
