Sean Smith - Harry Styles: The Making of a Modern Man

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

FIRST EDITION

Text Sean Smith 2021

Cover layout design HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover image Daniyel Lowden

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Sean Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 978008359522

Ebook Edition November 2021 ISBN: 9780008359546

Version: 2021-10-11

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Meghan Misunderstood

Spice Girls

Ed Sheeran

George

Adele

Kim

Tom Jones: The Life

Kylie

Gary

Alesha

Tulisa

Kate

Robbie

Cheryl

Victoria

Justin: The Biography

Britney: The Biography

J.K. Rowling: A Biography

Jennifer: The Unauthorized Biography

Royal Racing

The Union Game

Sophies Kiss (with Garth Gibbs)

Stone Me! (with Dale Lawrence)

To Joma

wishing you a wonderful future

If you are black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender whoever you are, whoever you want to be I support you. I love every single one of you.

Harry Styles, Ericsson Globe, Stockholm,

18 March 2018

It wasnt the eye-catching cover of Vogue that did it for me. It wasnt the envy-making cavorting with beautiful people on an idyllic, sun-kissed Malibu beach for the video of Watermelon Sugar; it wasnt two number one albums or his role in Dunkirk.

No, what triggered a fascination with Harry Styles and made me want to write a book about him were just a few words from the actor and director Olivia Wilde, who described him as very modern, and observed, I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world.

Wow, thats quite an endorsement of a man who just ten years earlier had done his best to impress Simon Cowell with a version of Stevie Wonders sentimental chestnut Isnt She Lovely. Did he deserve such praise from Olivia, I wonder?

Like fifteen million others I had watched the entire seventh series of The X Factor in the days when it was compulsory Saturday night viewing. You literally werent part of the Sunday conversation if you hadnt seen Matt, Rebecca, Cher and the boys from One Direction battle it out every week to stay in the competition.

The five members of One Direction had sparkle and youthful exuberance, but I had no idea they were going to rule the pop world in such a short space of time. The stars aligned for them: the world was ready for a new boy band; they had a brilliant team looking after them day to day and they had the unswerving support of the corporate board room where careers were made or broken.

The boys were only together for five intense, mad years becoming multi-millionaires before going on indefinite hiatus in December 2015. With a few exceptions, five years seems to be the average life span of a boy or girl band especially one put together by a third party. That was true of Take That and the Spice Girls, for example.

Zayn Malik had left One Direction before the official hiatus, which was a nice way of describing a full stop. Harry, though, was already looking different from the others. He had longer rock-star hair and an eye for the fashionable and flamboyant.

But nice hair and the ability to look good in a Gucci suit did not make him modern. My task in this book is to see if the description of Harry Styles as a modern man is justified. Is Olivia right or is referencing toxic masculinity just a neat soundbite? You dont just arrive ready-made as a beacon of the present and future, so who are the friends, the role models and the influencers that have helped Harry on his journey? And what does it actually mean to be modern anyway?

These are the questions I hope to answer in a serious look at a superstar: Harry Styles: The Making of a Modern Man. See you on the other side

PART ONE

Harry Styles was nearly born in the back of a car. His dad, Des, confessed that he and his heavily pregnant wife, Anne, only just made it to the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch before their son was on his way. It was a twenty-mile dash up the A46 in Worcestershire from their home in Evesham. There wasnt even time to call the midwife. Instead, Harry Edward Styles said hello to the world at 2am on 1 February 1994.

Theres a memorial statue in Redditch that honours a very famous name in world music. But its not Harry. Instead, pride of place in the town centre belongs to John Bonham, the legendary drummer with Led Zeppelin.

The local papers and media always refer to Harry as Redditch-born whenever the more-recent superstar does anything noteworthy, but in reality he has no connection with the town half an hour south of Birmingham other than noting it as his place of birth on the official paperwork.

A month after his second birthday, the Styles family moved. Des and Anne sold the three-bedroom semi-detached house in St Philips Drive, Evesham, an estate close to the main road, and relocated a hundred miles north to rural Cheshire. They were a family of four: Harry had an elder sister, Gemma, who was three when he was born.

They settled into a spacious four-bedroom house in Chestnut Drive, Holmes Chapel, a large village that enjoyed a rural atmosphere despite being close to the motorway, and an easy twenty-mile commute into Manchester. The town of Crewe was even closer just eight miles south.

If there is going to be a statue of Harry Styles in the future then it should be in Holmes Chapel, probably in the main square near St Lukes Church, or theres plenty of room outside his local secondary school in Selkirk Drive. Harry once said that nothing much happened in Holmes Chapel. That may be true, but its not a sleepy village and these days it is a bustling place, more like a small town than the gentle setting for an Agatha Christie whodunit or an episode of