How The Internet Fell Out of Love With Harry Styles

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I'm gonna say something crazy. It may sound crazy, but as a Harry fan right now, being a Harry fan, it is reminiscent of December 2020 and the vote like it is not the trenches, but we're almost there.

[00:00:15]>> Harry Styles is losing cultural capital.

[00:00:17]I said this when his album was first released at the top of the year that like the worst thing that Harry Styles did with that album was that he made it good but boring instead of bad but interesting. People do not like when I say this, but Harry Styles is not in is is in his flop era. His album came and went so quickly. Like made no impact on the music industry.

[00:00:36]>> I'm just going to say it. I don't think Harry Styles heart is in this album like it was in the last one.

[00:00:42]>> Dude, this is this is the male Megan Trainer. Okay, as far as I'm concerned, it I I watched that music video and I was like, this is this is what all this hype was about this whole time. Can someone explain to me what's going on on Twitter and them hating on Harry Styles?

[00:01:00]Like, they have been so mean to him.

[00:01:06]Hello everyone. I moved apartments last week and I do not have my set set up yet. So, allow me to do some business from inside my closet.

[00:01:17]If you guys have been here before, you know that I am a Harry Styles fan, and so are many other women here in America.

[00:01:24]I was actually not that big of a One Direction fan in my youth. I was in my Too Cool for This Hot Topic Girl phase back in 2012, but I really enjoyed his self-titled first album, his second album, Fine Line, and his third album, Harry's House, as did many other women.

[00:01:41]Harry's House was the first solo album of his to receive critical acclaim. He had a wildly successful tour and won album of the year at the 65th annual Grammy Awards. So, if you want a genuine estimate of when the quote fall from grace began, it actually happened in 2023 after Harry won a Grammy for Harry's House. What you might be wondering, well, how is that possible?

[00:02:01]That was his most successful album to date. May I remind you of the McLemore and Ryan Lewis curse. McLemore and Ryan Lewis beat Kendrick Lamar for album of the year back in I think it was 2013 2014 and that caused like a chain reaction of embarrassment that kind of put a hex on Mc Lammore's career and I fully believe that that same thing also kind of happened when Harry went up on stage to accept the award for Harry's house and he said this I think on nights like tonight it's important for us to remember there is no such thing as best in music. I don't think any of us sit in the studio making decisions on what is going on to get us one of these. This doesn't happen to people like me very often. And this is so so nice. Thank you very much. Now, is it Harry's fault that he won this award? No. And if you want to charitably interpret his statement here, he's probably referring to the fact that he was just a kid from a small town in England working at a bakery or whatever. But if you consider the optics of a white man beating a black woman whose album that year was a love letter to queer culture, it was probably not the best statement for him to make. He's pretty and he sings well. We never expected him to be smart because male artists aren't expected to be smart.

[00:03:14]After Harry's House and an unfortunate acting stint that we don't have to talk about right now, Harry left the spotlight for a bit, allowing other acts such as Benson Boon to grab the spotlight. But of course, people were clamoring for the return of the main pop boy and return he did with an album called Kiss All the Time Disco occasionally. The album came out earlier this year, and along with that album, Harry also announced a tour. Well, sort of a tour.

[00:03:41]>> After 4 years, US fans of Harry Styles will have to wait no more. The pop star is heading back to Madison Square Garden.

[00:03:49]>> This tour announcement pissed a lot of fans off, and rightfully so. Harry announced that instead of a traditional tour where he would visit cities all over the world, he would instead be doing a residency in London and at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

[00:04:03]And so if you're a fan of Harry and want to see him perform his new album live, you have to account for travel expenses.

[00:04:09]And speaking of expenses, all right, let me talk about the Harry Styles ticket purchasing experience. As someone who went through it not too long ago, uh I am a Harry Styles fan. I have seen him in the past uh at Madison Square Garden.

[00:04:23]Of course, the shows being at Madison Square Garden benefit me because I live relatively close to that area. I actually had to purchase seven tickets because I am taking my bridesmaids to a Harry Styles concert in October for my Bachelorette weekend. The biggest issue, and this is not exclusive to Harry, is that all of these mega tour announcements, they don't give you a lot of turnaround in terms of like figuring out which date you want to attend because you have to pre-register in order to be able to buy tickets for certain dates. So, you have to make decisions relatively quickly, which is already stressful. And then the process of getting in line is also stressful.

[00:05:06]Like, god forbid you don't have an MX, you don't even have a chance. I had an MX and there were multiple people in my party using their own MXs to try to get these tickets. And even we just, you know, by virtue of not getting in the queue exactly at 11:00 a.m. or whatever, were locked out. we were not able to purchase tickets uh firsthand through ticket master for that date, which meant that I had to go to the resale market immediately after and pay an exorbitant amount of money uh for these tickets.

[00:05:39]And I'm not alone. The the tickets in the first place, they were already expensive. They got even more expensive uh via the resale market. And like I said, this is not an issue that is unique to Harry necessarily, but as I'm probably going to say at some point in this script, because Ticket Master is not going to step in to make this process fairer or less stressful for everyone, the blame, whether it's fair or not, does fall to the artist. This whole experience left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths because it should not be this difficult or this expensive to get tickets for any artist. And because the corporations won't do anything about it, it's up to the artists to take some steps to mitigate that fallout. The backlash for this got so bad that even one of Harry's former bandmates, Zayn Malik, shaded him for it on stage.

[00:06:28]>> Hopefully the ticket prices went too high.

[00:06:34]>> Just saying. Anyway, >> at the same time, the roll out for Kiss All the Time Disco occasionally was underway. The album was reportedly inspired by Harry's time living in Berlin and took inspiration from David Bowie, an LCD sound system. I really enjoyed this album, but it was a bit more divisive among his fans. Many have actually criticized it for being a bit safe, less emotionally vulnerable than some of his other projects. So now you have fans paying exorbitant prices for a tour that's not a tour, for an album that isn't as beloved as the previous three. All the while, Harry is running marathons, gearing up for his residency, and publicly dating actress Zoe Kravitz with rumors stirring up that the two of them are actually engaged. And we'll get back to this in a minute, I promise.

[00:07:18]Anyway, the resentment slowly bubbling under the surface from Harry fans and haters alike really kicked off following the release of the music video for his song Dance No More. Not sure what I can get away with here in terms of copyright. At the very least, I'm showing screenshots from the music video, but Dance No More is a very choreographyheavy video, and this isn't exactly a surprise because Harry has been incorporating that more into his live performance recently. It's a bit jarring because this is definitely uh something new for him.

[00:07:46]>> Probably never worn this much clothing before. This is a very unique silhouette for Lana. I've never worn nails this long before. I'm wearing a gown, which is something very different for me. You know what's funny? People were like getting upset with me about that, but I'm like, I really have not done a lot in my life.

[00:08:02]>> Usually during his live performances in years past, he would just energetically around on stage and that was enough for people. This video, combined with all of the other issues we've discussed already, has led to the great queer baiting debate of 2026. Now, Harry, since Fine Line in 2019, has been consistently trying to incorporate sort of the David Bowieesque gender bending aesthetic into his own visuals.

[00:08:26]Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But Harry has long been accused of trying to co-opt LGBT aesthetics for branding purposes despite not being LGBT himself. And people are pointing to this new music video as a perfect example of that. By the way, I I am going to explain that I don't think that that's what he's doing. I don't think that that's a thing. I'm just trying to paint the full picture here. You know, Harry has actually talked about this in interviews before. He's pushed back on the accusation, emphasizing that he likes to keep his private life private.

[00:08:58]And to be fair, it's not exactly like he's going to the tabloids and announcing his engagement to Zoe Kravitz or anything. People have just spotted them getting coffee in New York. Take a look at this quote from a previous Rolling Stone interview. Some people say, "You've only publicly been with women." And I don't think I've publicly been with anyone. If someone takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn't mean you're choosing to have a public relationship or something. Now, you can interpret this in one of two ways. that he's just lying or he's purposefully being ambiguous about it in order to try to keep capitalizing off of his feminine and progressive leading audience. But I want to pose a genuine question to the class here. What if that is not up for you to decide? Is it possible that Harry Styles is co-opting aspects of queer culture in his visuals because it will land well with his audience of Instagram girlies? Sure, I guess. Is it also possible that he just enjoys expressing himself this way and wants to incorporate new things into his work?

[00:09:55]Whether he's successful at it or not, and whether or not anybody told him that he's bad at dancing, also yes. But I think there's a difference between critiquing Harry or other artists like him for co-opting queer aesthetics while not doing much to advocate for LGBTQ people and accusing him of being straight and lying about his sexuality by choosing to address it in a more ambiguous way. The most common argument that I see for this is that he's been seen getting coffee with various girlfriends over the years, but has never been publicly with a man. And so therefore, identifying ambiguously or not identifying at all obviously means that he's performing femininity for clout, which, you know, critically overlooks the fact that the performance of gender and sexuality are two different things. That bisexuality exists, and that this man spent a large portion of his adolescence being publicly and aggressively shipped with one of his male bandmates to the point where it destroyed their friendship.

[00:10:44]ship entirely. Maybe my view of this is being clouded by all of the arguments that I got into about it on Twitter over the weekend, right? But I think that a lot of you don't see celebrities as people and maybe there is valid reason for that because they are selling a branded version of themselves at the end of the day. That's pretty understandable. But it just feels like in order to make the criticism of these celebrities hit harder, you have to attack the things about them that are the most human. You can critique Harry for his music or his high ticket prices or his lack of advocacy for marginalized people, which is a thing that a lot of people have been criticizing celebrities for lately given the state of the world.

[00:11:30]But the thing that always sticks with him is that he's not performing gender the right way or that he is appearing and pretending to be feminine for clout.

[00:11:39]And the thing is that no matter how much you insist that that is the case that he is lying, you are never actually going to know unless he says it himself.

[00:11:51]There's no way for you to know that. And because you don't view celebrities as people, there's a general unawareness that this trickles down to regular people who have to deal with harmful stereotypes as a fallout of these kinds of conversations. That all by people who publicly date the opposite gender must be lying. That everyone must publicly and loudly declare their sexuality and a list of the genders that they have slept with all the time to you, a cop. Hello, stranger. Please present me your gay badge before you proceed to the next checkpoint. Harry Styles is not above critique. This new album roll out has definitely had some aesthetic missteps and logistical fumbles, and it's okay to demand better from one of the biggest pop stars in the world who can spare a bit of the expense in order for his fans to be able to enjoy his music and see him live. It's okay to want him to be smarter and more eloquent about his impact and his platform and even his influences. If you think he's just an ally, there's certainly better ways for him to be one. But you don't have to police who he is as a person to make that point. You do not owe people an explanation for your queerness. But you do owe me $5. That's right. I never forgot the fact that you never vended me back for a McDouble. It's time to pay up, Thank you so much for watching, everyone. What you're seeing behind me is my office that will soon turn into the set that we all know and love with the neon sign and the play button and what have you. Uh but thank you for bearing with me as we came up with a creative solution uh to film this week's video. Couple of reminders. A reminder to check out my link tree which is somewhere on the screen right now with all of my updated social media accounts that you can connect with me at. I also have a reading channel. Uh it's called Kayla Reads. I have a couple uh reviews of books on there right now.

[00:13:44]It is just like a side project that uh I didn't think was like gonna really go anywhere. It was something that I was just doing for me. Uh and that channel actually like took off a bit and it's now partnered which is kind of crazy. Uh so check it out if you haven't already.

[00:13:57]I just posted a review of um a popular uh book called Yestery Year. So uh go take a look if you like to hear me yap about books. Thank you so much. Uh be kind to your neighbors. Don't be a cop and enjoy this parting clip of Brian testing out the shot for the closet.

[00:14:17]Bye. Hello. Which Spider-Man is your favorite Spider-Man?

[00:14:22]>> Um, Toby Maguire.

[00:14:26]>> Thanks for your time. You're >> welcome.

[00:14:28]>> We'll be in touch.

[00:14:29]>> Okay.