Every Harry Styles Song Ranked

Lists like this are supposed to start with the duds. However, Styles has refused to release any duds, which is honestly rude. So the list has to begin with a flat-out excellent song. He wrote “Just a Little Bit of Your Heart” for Ariana Grande’s 2014 album, My Everything. The only reason it’s here is (1) Ariana already did the famous version, (2) Harry never officially released it himself, and (3) he’s got 29 other songs that are even better. But it became a staple of his first solo tour, bridging his past and future. As he said, introducing it live, “This one I gave away to somebody else — tonight I want to take it back.”Best line: “I know I’m not your only, but I’ll still be a fool.”

A clever mellow, stripped-down version of Little Big Town’s 2014 country hit, released as a Spotify Single. Harry lingers over the provocative words, originally a woman obsessing over her ex’s new girlfriend. But he doesn’t change the pronouns — putting a new gender twist on a tune that’s next to “Jolene” in the country lust-triangle department. Best line: “I wanna taste her lips/Because they taste like you.”

“Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and see what we find?” A great question to kick off a slow jam. “Woman” has a hook that sounds like a sexually agitated duck, quacking in ecstasy. As Harry told the BBC’s Nick Grimshaw, it’s not a kinky mallard — just his own voice through a filter. But when he first played his debut for his parents, “The whole album finished, then my stepdad said, ‘I’ve got one question — where did you get the duck from? How did you get a duck in the studio?’ I was like, ‘That was me, thanks.’” Best line: “You flower, you feast.”

As you may have heard, Stevie Nicks and Harry are devoted friends and soulmates, ever since he brought her a birthday cake in 2015. They’re everybody’s favorite rock-star BFFs. He covered this Fleetwood Mac classic on his 2018 tour, a way to honor one of his biggest inspirations while rocking out. He did “The Chain” with the Mac in January 2018, when they were honored as the MusicCares Person of the Year (their final show with Lindsey Buckingham). As Stevie told Rolling Stone in 2019, “He’s Mick [Fleetwood]’s and my love child. When Harry came into our lives, I said, ‘Oh, my God, this is the son I never had.’ So I adopted him.”Best line: “Damn the dark, damn the light.”

A glam-rock guitar rave, chasing an elusive femme fatale with muscle-car riffs and woo-hoo chants, as he sings “I’m happy just getting you stuck between my teeth.” It begins with dialogue from the 1987 film Barfly, starring Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke — written by the poet Charles Bukowski, one of Harry’s literary heroes. Best line: “Broke a finger knocking on your bedroom door/I got splinters in my knuckles crawling across your floor.”

A gorgeous showstopper on the 2018 tour, but never officially released, with guitar ripples that jump like the Grateful Dead circa Europe ‘72. He also tips his cap to George Michael, slipping in a quote from “Faith.” 
Best line: “Every time I see your face/There’s only so much I can take.”

Harry had long used the slogan “Treat People with Kindness” as a personal mantra. So he finally wrote a song to go with it, with a full gospel choir singing along. It’s a departure from any of his other music, with 1970s theater energy. Phoebe Waller-Bridge makes a delightful dance partner in the video—two kindred spirits hitting the floor. As Harry told Rolling Stone, he told producer Jeff Bhasker, “‘I would love to someday write a song called ‘Treat People With Kindness.’ And he was like, ‘Why don’t you just do it?’ It made me uncomfortable at first, because I wasn’t sure what it was — but then I wanted to lean into that. I feel like that song opened something that’s been in my core.”Best line: “Floating up and dreaming / Dropping into the deep end.”

The first cut on his debut, “Meet Me in the Hallway” is a warning: He’s never going to play it safe. Instead of a pop hit, it’s a moody ballad brooding over a distant lover, with a bit of Lennon/Bowie in his voice and a Pink Floyd vibe in the guitars. (One of his lifelong favorites, his intro mix on tour was the 13-minute “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”) “Meet Me in the Hallway” served notice that after One Direction he was going his own way, even if it led him to dark places like this. Best line: “I walked the streets all day, running with the thieves.”

A trippy dub-wise romance, with flourishes of reggae skank and South African mbaqanga guitar, plus Greg Kurstin’s electric sitar. “Keep it sweet in your memory,” he purrs, while kissing in the kitchen like it’s a dance floor. Best line: “My eyes want you more than a melody.”

Like so many songs on the debut, “From the Dining Table” is a guy waking up alone in his posh hotel room and wondering how it all went so wrong. With 1D, Harry might have been an outspoken advocate of causing trouble up in hotel rooms. But this is definitely not the glamorous life: “Played with myself, where are you/Fell back asleep and was drunk by noon/I’ve never felt less cool.” It’s a lovelorn ballad, wondering if that woman he lost is ever going to remember him again.Best line: “Comfortable silence is so overrated.”

“I met her once and wrote a song about her.” Give the boy points for honesty. A fantastic upbeat beach groove about a muse who’s got a book for every situation — just his type. (What’s she reading? Murakami? Didion? Emerson?) The music has a bit of a sun-dazed psychedelic vibe, evoking some of the old-school English rock poets of girl worship, like Donovan (circa “Sunshine Superman”) or Marc Bolan (circa “Planet Queen”). The “oh, yeah” chants evoke a lost classic from one of his fave Hall & Oates, “Adult Education” — not one of their famous hits but one of their steamiest. Best line: “You better swim before you drown.”

One of those late-night drunk phone confessions that turns out to be a terrible idea in the morning. In “To Be So Lonely,” nothing can console Harry except maybe the guitar of Mitch Rowland, demonstrating his tender and twangful touch. (It’s one of those tracks where you can hear Rowland’s taste for pickers like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.) It was written on a guitalele — a ukelele with six strings, which Harry took on a journey to Japan. “‘To Be So Lonely’ is just really like the articulation of Mitch’s brain,” Styles said. “Even when Mitch plays to himself, he’s got the swing.”Best line: “I’m just an arrogant son of a bitch/Can’t admit that he’s sorry.”

Harry wilds out on the dulcimer, dreaming about wide-open West Coast skies. “Canyon Moon” is a song about going home, but also a song about making a home in your memories, taking your loved ones with you every time you go away. Harry got so obsessed with his idol Joni Mitchell (“I was in a pretty big Joni hole”), he and Kid Harpoon tracked down Joellen Lapidus, the woman who built Mitchell’s dulcimer for Blue. She not only made one for Harry, she gave him and Kid Harpoon their first dulcimer lesson at her house. His next album, Harry’s House, shares a title with a 1975 Mitchell song. Harry tagged “Canyon Moon” as “Crosby, Stills & Nash on steroids” — no wonder it was Stevie Nicks’ fave song on Fine Line.Best line: “She plays songs I’ve never heard/An old lover’s hippie music, pretends not to know the words.”

A beautiful soft-rock heartache ballad — and a turning point for his songwriting. “’Two Ghosts’ I wrote for the band, for Made in the A.M.,” he said in 2019. “But the story was just a bit too personal.” This is the song where he realized he needed to tell these stories by himself. In “Two Ghosts,” he’s dancing by the refrigerator light with a lover with red lips, blue eyes, white shirt. (But did they move the furniture so they could dance?) Note: Bob Dylan is conspicuously absent from Harry’s pantheon of classic rock idols — he just can’t get past the voice. But in the Behind the Scenes documentary for the album, he does a hilariously precise imitation of Dylan wheezing “Two Ghosts” (around the 13:45 mark). It’s one of the funniest damn scenes in the film.Best line: “We’re just two ghosts swimming in a glass half empty/Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.”

In April 2019, when he thought Fine Line was nearly done, he got a blaze of inspiration and came up with three crucial songs in the final week: “Adore You,” “Lights Up,” and “Treat People With Kindness.” (Hey, the Beatles wrote half of Rubber Soul in a week.) “Adore You” seduced pop radio so fast, it’s easy to overlook how radical it is musically — a Top 10 hit with a guitar solo? It wasn’t done at the time, until this guy did it. The Rosalía-narrated video is one of his most touching, starring Harry as a peculiar boy bringing love to the fish of Eroda.
Best line: “Walk in your rainbow paradise/Strawberry lipstick state of mind.”

The epic finale of his second album, building over six minutes, from folky strums to horns and strings. “Fine Line” has the introspective power of the final scene of Fleabag, where Phoebe Waller-Bridge takes one last look before taking off on her long, cold solitary walk home in the dark. (A fan did a brilliant video syncing the scene with this song — it keeps getting pulled off YouTube, but try it.)Best line: “I don’t wanna fight you and I don’t wanna sleep in the dirt.”

“Watermelon Sugar” blew up into his first Number One hit, a playful summer guitar groove that moves like Bill Withers sipping a mushroom milkshake, flirting with every item in the food-and-produce aisle. Not bad for a song so eccentric, it almost got cut from the album. “That one we reworked a bunch of times, and it died a couple times,” Harry told Rolling Stone in 2019. “Then it just kept coming back. We fully killed it a few times, but it kept coming back in. So I thought, ‘There’s a reason it’s surviving.’” As co-writer and sidekick Kid Harpoon put it, “To break through with a song called ‘Watermelon Sugar’ about oral sex is awesome and kind of fun.”Best line: “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evening/And it sounds just like a song.”

Weird as it seems now, a lot of people just weren’t ready to hear Styles do a straight-from-the-heart confession as great as “Ever Since New York.” (People were so fixated on 1D as a cultural phenomenon, they slept on the group’s musical brilliance in “Stockholm Syndrome” or “Story of My Life.” Crazy, right?) “Ever Since New York” sounds hushed but intense, with so much empty space in the music, just Mitch Rowland’s guitar strums and Harry pleading, “Tell me something I don’t already know.” He feels lost in his room, not sure whether he’s praying or just talking to the walls. But he knows he’s disconnected from where he wants to be.Best line: “Brooklyn saw me, empty at the news/There’s no water inside this swimming pool.”

Damn right we’re including the new tunes he debuted at Coachella — it might be cheating to count “Late Night Talking,” since he’s only sung it in public once, but it’ll sound even sweeter when the studio version drops. “Late Night Talking” is a suave turn-your-love-around moonwalk through Eighties R&B, perfect for roller-skating, about how intimacy warps your mind and alters your life. Harry makes a Carole King-style pledge of devotion, vowing, “I’d follow you to any place/If it’s Hollywood or Bishopsgate/I’m coming too.” (The theme of cross-country romance fits right in with “As It Was,” on which he sings “Leave America, two kids, follow her.”)Best line: “Nothing really goes to plan/You stub your toe, I break your camera.”

The beatific opener for Fine Line, with wave upon wave of Seventies AM radio mellow gold. But under all the sunshine, there’s a sense of loss, as he begs, “I don’t wanna be alone.” “Golden” was the first song written for the album, on the second day of the sessions. As he said, “That was just always going to be Track One.” “Golden” has one of the most exhilarating climaxes in his music: The perfect moment when everything stops dead, Harry declares “I know that you’re scared because I’m so open,” and it rips into that pleading guitar break. Best line: “I’m hopeless, broken, so you wait for me in the sky.”

A massively quiet song that still seems to silence any room where you hear it. “Sweet Creature” is just a boy and a guitar pondering the dilemma of two hearts figuring out how to fit together. It’s a meditation on the concept of home, and how home is something you make up as you go along — themes he was exploring long before Harry’s House. But his voice packs enough emotion to pierce your heart. “Sweet Creature” sounds fragile, yet you gasp out loud when he hits that chorus: “When I run out of road/You bring me home.” Best line: “We don’t know where we’re going, but we know where we belong.”

“Lights Up” was the first taste of the Fine Line era — a sashay into the pop future, going for head-spinning disco late-night bliss. On one level, it’s a love song to his fans and how they helped him find his way after the demise of 1D. But “Lights Up” captures the moment where you step into the light and finally recognize your true self, even if the light is just coming from the glittering mirror ball in your heart. “I think ‘Lights Up’ came at the end of a long period of self-reflection, self-acceptance,” he told Rolling Stone. “I just had the conversations with myself that you don’t always have. And I just feel more comfortable being myself.” “Lights Up” is full of doubt and fear, yet it’s also an exuberant pop celebration. Best line: “Lights up and they know who you are/Do you know who you are?”

Harry at his lustiest, glammiest, raunchiest, and just plain best. “Medicine” has been one of his most fiercely beloved fan faves since his early shows — a depraved, sex-crazed Stones-y rock & roll strut. But somehow he’s never released it officially. So “Medicine” is a song that fans light candles and pray for. When he pulled it out of his clown suit at the HarryWeen bash in New York last October, for the first time in years, the crowd exploded at just the sound of drum goddess Sarah Jones counting in. The climactic hook is when he yells: “The boys and the girls are in/I mess around with them /And I’m OK with it!” The official lyric is “them,” but most ears hear it as “him” (including mine), and obviously he relishes the ambiguity, so nobody’s wrong — may the debate rage forever. A great way to see the song evolve: this fan-made mastercut of every time Harry sang the line “and I’m OK with it” on tour.Best line: “And when I sleep I’m gonna dream of how you tasted!”

Love — the most psychedelic of drugs. “She” is a deranged six-minute space-sex trip that feels like Prince jamming with Pink Floyd. It’s Harry and his loyal crew at their most unhinged, which is probably why he loves this song so much. Halfway through “She,” Mitch Rowland steps into the stratosphere for a cosmic guitar voyage. “Mitch played that guitar when he was a little, ah, influenced,” Styles said. “Well, he was on mushrooms, we all were.” They forgot about “She” until they went back later. “But Mitch had no idea what he did on guitar that night, so he had to learn it all over from the track.” “She” is the kind of fucked-up beauty you can only get from making music with trusted friends — Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, Jeff Bhasker, Rowland — instead of hired guns. And throwing the rulebook out the damn window.Best line: “She lives in daydreams with me/And I don’t know why.”

One of the absolute highlights of Harry’s House, his best album, and he just introduced it at Coachella, which means it’s fair game, though there’s no way to begin processing the beauty of “Boyfriends” without hearing the real thing. (It would rank even higher if we were going by the finished version.) As he said when dedicating it live, “To boyfriends everywhere: fuck you!” The song dissects a man so pitifully out of touch with women (like the dude from “She”?), he can only relate by turning them into a “daydream.” It’s full of empathy for the girlfriend who’s misunderstood and taken for granted, who doesn’t want to live in that daydream anymore. The vibrant folk guitar evokes the Paul Simon of “I Am A Rock” or “Armistice Day.” Since Harry grew up in a pub hearing Simon and Garfunkel constantly, he knows this turf well. But S&G never had a song like this. “Boyfriends — are they just pretending?” is a tragically timeless question.Best line: “You love a fool who knows just who to get under your skin/You still open the door.”