Straight in at #1!
At the age of 16, Harry Styles auditioned for Simon Cowell’s talent show, The X Factor.
After singing Hey, Soul Sister, Simon asked him to pick something else. Harry sang Isn’t She Lovely and got accepted.
During boot camp, Harry got dropped, but Simon again came to the rescue as he suggested Harry should form a boy band with some of the other rejects. Harry came up with the name One Direction, and the rest is TV/Boyband history.
As scripted as this may have all felt, it did work. After signing to Simon’s record label, One Direction set out to break boy band record sales all over the world.
The vocal group would go on to release five albums with many hit singles. Up All Night (2011) had What Makes You Beautiful as the lead single and biggest hit, with close to 10 million copies sold worldwide. As an album, Up All Night sold 4.5 million, making One Direction not just in the U.K., but a worldwide success.
The follow-up, Take Me Home, had another big tune in Live While We’re Young, but the singles after it didn’t do as well.
On the third album, we find two big tunes, Story Of My Life and Best Song Ever. Just like previous One Direction tunes, we are looking at proper bubblegum teenage chart-toppers here.
In 2013, the fourth album arrived, suitably named Four. It topped the charts and sold millions of copies, but cracks had started to appear in the armour of the boy band as one of the members left.
The singles Steal My Girl and Night Changes weren’t as big as the band had gotten used to.
For their fifth and final album, Made in the A.M., the band saw a slight increase in sales, something which is unusual for boy bands; usually, sales just keep going down as they and their audience grow up.
Made in the A.M. was released in late 2015. The lead single, Drag Me Down, charts and sells well. The next single, Perfect, not as much.
By 2016, all band members had launched solo careers, and it would soon become evident that Harry would be the most successful.
Signed to Columbia, his debut arrived in 2017 with the lead single Sign Of The Times. Here we find a much more mature version of Harry than One Direction had provided up until now.
The debut single was an enormous success worldwide, charting in the top 10 in over 20 countries and selling 10 million copies. The album itself did perhaps even better, reaching #1 in 16 countries.
Harry’s follow-up solo album, Fine Line (2019), came with the single Watermelon Sugar, which peaked in the top 20 all over the world and has even been picked up by working bands on the circuit.
The lead single from the album, Lights Up, also did well, and so did Adore You, with 5 million sold in the U.S. alone.
Harry’s latest release came in 2022 with Harry’s House. The lead single, As It Was, did, true to tradition, really well.
Throughout his career, Harry Styles has had a remarkable talent for going straight in at #1, be it a One Direction album, solo album, or lead single.
Harry Styles Tunes | Related Pages
Isn’t She Lovely
You can learn how to play Isn’t She Lovely by Stevie Wonder using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| C#m7 | F#9 | B11 | E6 |
Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful…
Watermelon Sugar
You can learn how to play Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, TAB, and the original recording.
| Dm | Am |
Tastes like strawberries, on a summer evenin’…
Harry Styles on the web
Artists & Bands
Behind every single tune you learn, there’s an artist or band with an entire catalogue of music, waiting to be discovered.
Find out more about these great Artists & Bands, and let their tunes guide you to success.
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was an article about Harry Styles tunes, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
