He’s found a vague balance through compartmentalisation. “I’ve never talked about my life away from work publicly and found that it’s benefited me positively,” he explains, perhaps preemptively. “There’s always going to be a version of a narrative, and I think I just decided I wasn’t going to spend the time trying to correct it or redirect it in some way.” As It Was’ is definitely the highest volume of men that I would get stopping me to say something about it,” he notes casually. The more vulnerable the song, he learned, the better. “The one subject that hits the hardest is love,” he says, “whether it’s platonic, romantic, loving it, gaining it, losing it…it always hits you hardest. I don’t think people want to hear me talk about going to bars, and how great everything is. The champagne popping…who wants to hear about it? I don’t want to hear my favorite artists talk about all the amazing shit they get to do. I want to hear, ‘How did you feel when you were alone in that hotel room, because you chose to be alone?'” My great uncle lives here,” Styles says of Hamburg. “He married a German lady, so I have a German cousin. They always used to come and visit when I was a kid, and the only word in English [the cousin] knew was ‘lemonade.’ I didn’t know if she actually wanted lemonade or was trying to say ‘Give me some water please!’”

In that instant,” he says, “you’re in the whirlwind. You don’t really know what’s happening; you’re just a kid on the show. You don’t even know you’re good at anything. I’d gone because my mum told me I was good from singing in the car …but your mum tells you things to make you feel good, so you take it with a pinch of salt. I didn’t really know what I was expecting when I went on there.” Studying the finer points of buildings fits the regimented, disciplined, and distinctly grown-up tour life he’s created. Styles has found himself enamored with routine on the road: 10 hours of sleep a night, IV injections pumping him with nutrients and vitamins, a strict acid-reflux-conscious diet that cuts out coffee, alcohol, and certain foods that affect the throat 50,000 fans are depending on. Last night, he slept with two humidifiers that apparently made it look like he was stepping out of a steam room when he opened his hotel-room door. We walk out before the crowd fully disperses. Styles lingers a second to take some photos of the room before he heads out to get ready for his concert, where he’ll bounce around the stage, lifted by the wails of young fans who have been waiting years for this moment. Even in this sunny SoCal pop tune, there’s a tinge of bittersweet loss: As the sun goes down, he pleads, “I don’t wanna be alone.” As he says, “I don’t know much about Van Morrison’s life, but I know how he felt about this girl, because he put it in a song. So I like working the same way.” Studying the finer points of buildings fits the regimented, disciplined and distinctly grown-up tour life he’s created. Styles has found himself enamoured with routine on the road: 10 hours of sleep a night, IV injections pumping him with nutrients and vitamins, a strict acid-reflux-conscious diet that cuts out coffee, alcohol and certain foods that affect the throat 50,000 fans are depending on. Last night, he slept with two humidifiers that apparently made it look like he was stepping out of a steam room when he opened his hotel room door.Now, besides the unavoidable singles and the victory-lap world tour, there are other indicators of next-level stardom: his skin-care, nail-polish, and clothing line called Pleasing and a fashion collection with Gucci, not to mention his flourishing movie career. He’s starring in the psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling and in the intimate drama My Policeman, and he’s nabbed a deal with Marvel Studios to play Eros in at least one of the Eternals films. “Everything in my life has felt like a bonus since X-Factor,” he says, referring to the singing competition that led directly to One Direction. “Get on TV and sing. I never expected and never thought that would happen.”

Styles confirms he’s not bald yet. “What is it with baldness? … It skips a generation or something, right? If your grandad’s bald then you’ll be bald? Well, my granddad wasn’t bald, so fingers crossed.” Styles’ voice, charm, charisma, and even his good looks have propped him up on a pedestal, setting him apart from his former One Direction bandmates. More than ever, he is thinking about the future. He wants to take meaningful time off at some point — from touring at least, he’s always writing — and ensure he’s a more present figure for his family and friends. In turn, he’s learned to define what real love looks like to him. “The fantasy, or the vision, or the version of you that people can build you up to be feels like a person that isn’t flawed,” he explains. “What I value the most from my friends is I feel like I’m constantly reminded that it’s OK to be flawed. I think I’m pretty messy and make mistakes sometimes. I think that’s the most loving thing: You can see someone’s imperfections, and it’s not [that you] love them in spite of that, but it’s [that you] love them with that.” Styles became a leading man when he was four years old, starring in a play called Barney the Church Man. Later, he transformed into Buzz Lightyear in a production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang “because Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop for some reason”. His other early theatre credits include: Razamatazz in Bugsy Malone (“the band leader”) and the Elvis-inspired Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (He would later audition for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, but was deemed too iconic by the director.) But today, in a Hamburg hotel, Styles is still trying to make sense of it all. He thinks hard about love, shame, honesty, and the importance of kindness and therapy. And he worries. He worries about how he can be one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the kind who can be everything for his fans while also being a great son, brother, friend, and partner to the people standing beside him. As everything gets bigger, Styles imagines a life that is smaller. How does the world’s most wanted man save the best parts for himself?Styles didn’t get to play live again until last fall, but something funny happened in the interim. While we were bound to our homes, Styles experienced his first Number One hit in Fine Line’s “Watermelon Sugar,” a tune so sweet it may take a moment to realize he’s singing about cunnilingus. Less than a year later, he won his first Grammy for it. Everything in my life has felt like a bonus since X-Factor. Get on TV and sing. I never expected and never thought that would happen” — Harry Styles Harry Styles twirls in the center of the floor of the L.A. Forum, dancing wildly to his new song “Golden.” The venue is deserted. It’s Thursday afternoon, just a few hours before the release of his hotly awaited second album, Fine Line. He’s rehearsing for Friday night’s big album-release celebration show. (Outside the arena, the parking lot is full of tents — fans from around the world have been camping out all week, awaiting a spot on this floor.) After a few hours of rehearsing with his band, Styles cuts loose as the new album begins to blast over the speakers, breaking into a dance of joy. It’s probably the last time he’ll ever hear this song in a room where nobody else is dancing.

On fame and being known, he said: “If you make your life about the fact that you can’t go anywhere and everything has to be a big deal, then that’s what your life becomes,” he says. “Now, in London, I walk everywhere. It’s hard to stumble across things and restaurants and places and stuff if you’re just driving everywhere, and it’s just not that fun.” Photographed by Amanda Fordyce for Rolling Stone. Tank by Loewe. Suspenders, Stylists Own. Trousers by Gucci. Shoes by ERL. A friend gave him Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. “It was the first book, maybe ever, where all I wanted to do all day was read this,” he says. “I had a very Murakami birthday because I ended up staying in Tokyo on my own. I had grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast, then I went to this cafe. I sat and drank tea and read for five hours.” In his interview with the publication, Styles talked about his recent shows, his relationship with Olivia Wilde, his pivot to acting, as well as how therapy has helped him process his fame.

While Styles has worked and performed with plenty of intriguing artists, he’s never had a real feature or collaboration on his albums. “I would do it if it happened organically — if I wrote a song with someone and that’s why we wanted to do it,” he says. “I want to put out stuff exactly the way that I want it to be.”

The videos kept coming. “‘Watermelon Sugar’ was probably the most amount of videos I’d had from friends sending me pictures of their kids singing it, like videos of them just dancing around,” Styles says. “It wasn’t a single when we put [it] out. It was just like, ‘OK, interesting … this is a high volume of videos of small children singing the song.’”And while he may be everywhere in 2022, Styles is, at the moment, literally right in front of me, sitting in an armchair of a hotel business suite in Hamburg, Germany, on a sweaty June afternoon. After a dip in the Irish Sea this morning, he flew into town and is now enjoying a day off in the middle of his first European tour since 2018.