(Columbia)
Harry Styles’ fanbase haven’t, like most, named themselves in his image, and it’s telling: his admirers sometimes seem like the least important part of the package. He’s a blurry focal point, avoiding specific personal or political pronouncements. By vaguely standing for fluidity and tolerance, he creates a space for fantasy that perhaps he has realised is best left undisturbed. But to some, Styles’s aesthetic – whether the 70s
California stylings of his self-titled debut or his conspicuously flamboyant attire – looked like window dressing on a blank shopfront.
Fine Line rectifies that by putting Styles’s identity, at least in one domain, front and centre as he grapples with a breakup. Is he the heartbreaker or heartbroken? Is he, on To Be So Lonely, the victim or “arrogant son of a bitch who can’t admit when he’s sorry”? The line, “no one to blame but the drink and my wandering hands”, from Falling, has prompted tabloid headlines.