Harry Styles may be a huge pop star but he still pinches himself around rock-n-roll royalty.
The singer, 26, chatted with NPR about his latest album, working with Stevie Nicks and why the ’70s is his favourite decade.
Styles dropped his sophomore album, Fine Line, last year and according to the One Direction alum, he pulled inspiration from the 1970s.
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“I’m not listening to stuff so much anymore being like ‘I just want my stuff to sound like this.’ You grow up listening to what your parents listen to. For me it was the [Rolling] Stones, Beatles, Fleetwood [Mac], a lot of Queen, Elvis Presley, Shania Twain, Savage Garden, Norah Jones,” he explained. “That was kind of like the base of what my first experience with music was, and I feel like you can’t help but have a lot of references from what you grew up listening to [in your own music].”
And now, Styles can call one of his inspirations a friend, “It borders on an out-of-body experience. ‘Dreams’ was the first song I knew all the words to; I used to sing it in the car with my mom. Every time I’m with her, you want to be, obviously, present, right? I’m trying to enjoy being with her and soaking in. But I think at the same time, while you’re in the room with her, I’m sitting there thinking about being 10-years-old and singing the song.”
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“When we came to do my first solo album, I had this thing where I wanted to do everything to tape,” he continued of Fine Line. “And then I kind of realized that The Beatles didn’t use tape because it was really cool to use, they used it because it was the best technology they had [at the time] and it sounded the best. And now we just have different ways of recording stuff and you can make stuff sound really nice — so we kind of abandoned the tape thing. Overall what draws me to that time with music is just the freedom.”
Fine Line is available on all streaming platforms.
