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 a few dozen 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.” —R.S.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. —R.S. 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” is one that really thrives in its festive live versions. The studio version 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. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n8wm5 ] 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.’” —R.S.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.” —R.S.Best line: “Damn the dark, damn the light.”

A landmark moment in the history of human wetness. For the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, Harry did a bang-up version of “Wet Dream,” the great 2021 indie single by the U.K. art-punk duo Wet Leg. It’s a heavy-breathing guitar rush of hypersexual come-ons: “I was in your wet dream, driving in the car/What makes you think you’re good enough to think about me/When you’re touching yourself?” Harry should do an entire album of feminist indie-rock sex bangers. (Muna’s “Pink Chiffon”? The Breeders’ “Divine Hammer”? Bang a gong, H.) —R.S.Best line: “I’ve never seen anything so obscene/It’s enough to make a girl blush.”

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. —R.S. 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.” —R.S. 
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.” —R.S.Best line: “Floating up and dreaming/Dropping into the deep end.”

“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 and Oates songs, “Adult Education” — not one of their famous hits, but one of their steamiest. —R.S.Best line: “You better swim before you drown.”

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. —R.S. Best line: “I walked the streets all day, running with the thieves.”

Styles flips a sample from the Brothers Johnsons’ 1978 throwdown “Ain’t We Funkin’ Now” into 2022 soul-pop gold on “Daydreaming,” which feels like it was made for remixing into a late-night party jam at least four times its original three-minute length. Whooping and hollering, he’s the center of its funked-up storm, backed by crisp brass, a thumping beat, and backing vocals that sound like they’re egging him on in real time, even if they were originally recorded four-plus decades ago. —M.J. Best line: “You know I’ll be gone for so long/ So give me all of your love, give me something to dream about”

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,” Styles purrs, while kissing in the kitchen like it’s a dance floor. —R.S. Best line: “My eyes want you more than a melody.”

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.” —R.S.Best line: “I’m just an arrogant son of a bitch/Can’t admit that he’s sorry.”

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’ve 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.” —R.S.Best line: “Comfortable silence is so overrated.”

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, and Nash on steroids” — no wonder it was Stevie Nicks’ fave song on Fine Line. —R.S.Best line: “She plays songs I’ve never heard/An old lover’s hippie music, pretends not to know the words.”

This contemplative, brief ballad from Kiss All The Time captures Styles as he realizes what a decade and a half of fame have done to him — “It’s a little bit complicated when/They put an image in our head, and now you’re stuck with it,” he notes at one point, an observation that puts the rest of his fourth album’s pull toward the dancefloor into a fuller context of his need for freedom and release.  Best line: “Holding the weight of children whose hearts you break”

This hazy, slow-burning ballad is full of vivid images — Halloween parties, kitchen counters — while guitar arpeggios push for resolution with a lover who’s hard to pin down, although that elusiveness might be for the best. The acoustic chorus is pure pop candy, with Styles’ crooning “I’m just thinkin’ about you/Just thinkin’ about you” in a way that’s guaranteed to make hearts melt. —M.J.  Best line: “I disrespected you/Jumped in feet first and I landed too hard/A broken ankle, karma rules”

Harry’s House closes with this regret-soaked ballad, where Styles summons the full brunt of his voice to recall good times with an ex. Blown-out synth hits and spun-up backing vocals add to the gravity, while the singsong melody of its refrain gives his thoughts the feeling of being constantly present, like a memory that refuses to fade no matter how fervent the effort. —M.J.Best line: “Maybe you don’t know what’s lost till you find it”

Styles reckons with fame and the idea of love on this Kiss All The Time cut, on which frantic, pounding drums that feel inspired by the Chemical Brothers’ similarly existential “Let Forever Be” and buzzing synths crowd out his voice on the verses. The chorus, which is propelled into chaos by Styles in chorus demanding, “Do you love me now?/ Do I let you down?” has an increasingly paranoid feeling, with him mumble-singing the tracks’ final lines—You could’ve been here in my arms/ You want a piece or nothing at all”—in a way that sounds utterly defeated.Best line: “It’s hard to tell when the thoughts are my own/ And the old hat gets harder to hold”

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.
 —R.S.Best line: “Walk in your rainbow paradise/Strawberry lipstick state of mind.”

A midtempo track with a gentle swagger that places Styles’ falsetto front and center on its loose-limbed chorus, “Grapejuice” finds him grappling with the gravity of romance while he kills a bottle of wine (the good stuff, since he can afford that these days). The grunged-up bass line and simply elegant countermelodies give “Grapejuice” the vibe of a late-in-the-day garden meetup, where sun and drink bring big thoughts into the picture. —M.J.Best line: “You’re always there, so don’t ovеrthink/I’m so over whites and pinks”

Pairing wall-to-wall synths with acid-tipped situationship flirtations (“Where’d you find the confidence to call me baby?”) this Kiss All The Time confection floats by with the sort of easy feeling that can only transpire between two people who know each other a bit too well.Best line: “Talk in tongues, no common sense/ Like two old friends”

The introduction to Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally was a curveball — a five-minute-plus, vibe-forward cut with lyrics as abstract as the synths surrounding Styles (“Go forth, ask questions later,” he muses at one point, which feels like a guiding light for both this cut and Kiss All The Time). Its muted verses and sky-cracking choruses set the table for much of Styles’ fourth album, which feels as inspired by the loo run on Björk’s otherwise clamorous Debut cut “There’s More To Life Than This” as it does by indulging in LCD Soundsystem shows and trips to Berghain.     Best line: “I’ve no tricks up my sleeve/ Game called review the player”

“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.” —R.S.Best line: “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evening/And it sounds just like a song.”

Inspired by watching a friend be overtaken by the pure force of hearing Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Kiss All The Time’s final track blossoms from Styles cooing sweet Paul Simon-related nothings over dialtone synths to him repeating a phrase that’s part thrill in watching someone close have a musical epiphany, part mantra of apop savant: “I know what you like, I know what you’ll really like.” (Now and then, a devil on his shoulder beckons, “It’s all waiting here for you.”) It’s a fitting closing to Styles’ sometimes-fitful, sometimes-exuberant ode to dancefloor release.Best line: “You’ve been a baby sleeping upon a candy bar”

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 — like many, he just can’t get past the voice. But in the Behind the Scenes documentary, 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. —R.S.Best line: “We’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me/Trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat.”

“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.” In other words, where you lead. (The theme of cross-country romance fits right in with “As It Was,” where he sings, “Leave America, two kids, follow her.”) —R.S. Best line: “There’s a haze on the horizon, babe.”

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 on “Stockholm Syndrome” or “Story of My Life” or “Fireproof.” 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. —R.S.Best line: “Brooklyn saw me, empty at the news/There’s no water inside this swimming pool.”

Over a steady post-punk bassline, this Kiss All The Time track’s seduction powers vacillate between simmer and boil, with the chorus’ titular mantra giving Styles license to amp up the intensity until things nearly fully fly off the rails at its close.  Best line: “You touched me tonight/ Butterflied both our bellies”

The opening track for Styles’ third album is — appropriately enough — an inviting slice of pop funk, bringing listeners into Harry’s House with promises of rubbery bass lines and Styles fully owning his grown-and-sexy mode. He tosses off surrealistic food metaphors and carefree scatting with a winking élan, orbited by a party that’s already in full swing and that shows no signs of stopping. —M.J.Best line: “If the stars were edible/And our hearts were never full/Could we live with just a taste?”

Harry has turned this ballad into a Love on Tour harmony showcase, starring his fab bandmates Ny Oh, Elin Sandberg, and Sarah Jones. (You just know there’ll be a night when they get extra harmonies from Stevie Nicks. Guaranteed to happen, right?) The folksy 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. “Boyfriends — are they just pretending?” is an unfortunately timeless question. —R.S.Best line: “You love a fool who knows just how to get under your skin/You still open the door.”

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.” —R.S. Best line: “We don’t know where we’re going, but we know where we belong.”

“It was this moment of, like, ‘I feel so alive right now,’” Styles told Apple Music about the moment in Berlin that inspired him to pen this flinty celebration of “feeling like the music has been heaven sent” at the club. Styles exhibits a practiced cool over the verses’ spitting bassline, while the choirs that join him on the chorus encourage him out of his media-trained shell, and as he drops his cool more and more, he’s finally ready to accept their invitation to “get your feet wet” and let loose.   Best line: “I don’t think we should be here, I see no water or friends”

A percolating portrayal of romantic frustrations, this Kiss All the Time cut’s combination of Mavis Beacon drums, ping-pong synths, and frantically picked guitars illustrate the annoyance roiling underneath Styles’ chilly demeanor.Best line: “Do you tantalize and titillate/ Knowing it won’t make the grade?”

Bedheaded and besotted, “Daylight” is a snapshot of a long-distance relationship’s highs and lows, with Styles ruminating on his obsessive tendencies and day-to-day routines. With grinding guitars at its base and honey-sweet “ooh oohs” in its upper altitudes, “Daylight” is a synth-swathed study in romance’s contradictions. —M.J.Best line: “If I was a bluebird, I would fly to you/You’d be the spoon/Dip you in honey so I could be sticking to you”

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 Harry 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. —R.S. Best line: “I’m hopeless, broken, so you wait for me in the sky.”

Styles’ bellow recalls fellow British pop megastar Chris Martin’s trips to the club on this midtempo cut, which pairs his cocked-eyebrow observations on his pals’ romantic proclivities with crystalline pianos and massive atmospherics. Its spike-synth breakdown feels beamed in from a dimension where distinctions like “American” pale in comparison to interplanetary differences—an ideal location for Styles’ next multi-night mega-residency.Best line: “Time will show/ That you should try it”

“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 when 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. —R.S.Best line: “Lights up and they know who you are/Do you know who you are?”

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.) —R.S.Best line: “I don’t wanna fight you and I don’t wanna sleep in the dirt.”

Charged with the thrill of transgressing one’s fresh-faced image, this Kiss All The Time cut has a skip-step beat and a possible callback to the Harry’s House cut “Cinema.” On that funk-lite offering, Styles noted, “You pop when we get intimate,” while here, he revels in being “just me, on my knees/ Squeaky clean fantasy/ It’s meant to be, ‘pop.’” Styles’ personal slang for le petit mort aside, “Pop” has the hazy vibe of an initial trip to some other side, with a chorus that does, indeed, pop in a “leap from the speakers” kind of way.Best line: “I wanted to behave/ But I know I’ll do it again”

One of those songs that illustrates the ways carnal pleasures summon wild front-of-mind utterances, “Cinema” is a sinuous pop-funk cut with lyrics that balance the sublime and the ridiculous. “I just think you’re cool/I dig your cinema,” an abashed Styles wails on the chorus, an admission of his facade being shattered that almost — almost! — excuses the rhyming of “cinema” and “intimate” on the song’s spaced-out chorus. —M.J.  Best line: “Do you think I’m cool, too?/Or am I too into you?”

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. —R.S.Best line: “I had a few, got drunk on you, and now I’m wasted/And when I sleep I’m gonna dream of how you tasted!”