Harry Styles: A Letter From a Fan
Dear Harry,
I bought your album, Fine Line, this summer and listened to it almost religiously over autumn when I was spending a lot of time on my own. Up in Aberdeen (a fair way away from my native South East England) studying online for a masters degree, I didn’t have any friends to socialise with, even if I could, as they had all moved away the previous year. It is not an understatement to say that you and your second solo album kept me alive and happy for those couple of months. Your honesty and joyous creativity in the album fuelled my own, helping me to fill the days and shine some light on the potential of the years to come. A friend once told me the quote “art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time” and with seemingly endless amounts of time, your music became invaluable.
It also provided me with comfort and an escape from the turbulence and unpredictability of the world and the pandemic. There is one very specific event I remember. While waiting for an official update on travel restrictions over the Christmas period, my anxiety was spiralling. I was either going to have to make last minute travel plans and leave the next morning, with only as much prep I could manage in an evening or be stuck hundreds of miles away from anyone I knew, on my own and isolated for an unknown length of time. With twenty minutes to go, I couldn’t sit still, my heart was racing and I felt like I was going to explode and collapse at the same time. The thing that saved me was your 2019 Jingle Bell ball set. Just over twenty-two minutes of sparkly suited pre-pandemic elation, with just a sprinkling of home, to make me feel like I could handle the world again.
It has also been incredibly comforting to revisit things from my early teens, many years before Covid 19 existed. I was fourteen when you were on the X Factor and although I must admit I wanted Aidan Turner to win initially, I became a Directioner soon after. As a fellow February baby and the one closest to my age, you were almost immediately my favourite.
To be reminded of my youthful obsession and joyful fangirling has been a powerful and cathartic experience. It has been years since I’ve felt quite so swept away with being a fan. I struggle with the incessant need to be seen as ‘cool’ and ‘unique’. It has driven me away from expressing my love for popular things in the public sphere like social media where others can see it. As if somehow the fact that thousands (millions?) of people agree with me in loving you lessens or invalidates my feelings, rather than encouraging me to own them.
Even now, I can feel myself needing to intellectualise being your fan, to come up with something other than ‘I think you’re wonderful and your music is great and sometimes I just want to imagine we’re besties’. But you know what, that’s enough. I do think you’re wonderful, and your music makes me smile, and sometimes I do imagine we’re besties. The world is difficult and dark sometimes, and those imaginings help me cope with that. Just like the extended edition of Up All Night I got for Christmas 10 years ago helped me cope with being fifteen.
I still know most of the words to that album, and can’t help but laugh at what I can see now as just the beginning of a journey. The lyrics can seem clumsy and the tunes aren’t necessarily sophisticated, to my ears at least, but there is enormous value (and equal amounts of fun and cringing) in that. Seeing the beginning and being able to see where you are now, the songs you write and the life you seem to be living, helps me to understand the importance of the journey; of starting so you can move forward.
I feel like I’ve grown up with you and not just in age, but also as a creative. From my secret notebooks and the million secret characters I created for the million different books I read and re-read, to becoming infinitely more intentional with my artistic creations and trying to be less afraid to put them out in the world, I’m starting to see parts of my own journey unfold. I don’t know where it will lead me, but I suppose that’s part of the point. And in you I feel I have a companion, to guide from a far with sincerity, kindness, and an unashamed intention to keep learning and enjoying life with all its myriad of experiences.
I am making an effort to make sure that you’re not my everything but to keep you as a something. A part of patchwork that makes up my person. To use the crazy energy of the fangirl to keep moving forward and putting love and art out into the world. We will probably never meet, and I’ll simply go on playing your records and enjoying your existence in this world as a part of the extraordinary group that are your fans. Perhaps one day we will meet, and perhaps we will become besties and travel the world creating exciting things and skilfully avoid questions about each other in interviews.
Perhaps.
With love and gratitude, as always,
Stay safe,
Mabel x
