Rolling Stone UK Magazine (September, 2022) Harry Styles Cover

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That evening, Fleetwood Mac take the stage in London — a sold-out homecoming gig at Wembley Stadium, the last U.K. show of their tour. Needless to say, their most devoted fan is in the house. Harry has brought a date: his mother, her first Fleetwood Mac show. He’s also with his big sister Gemma, bandmates Rowland and Jones, a couple of friends. Styles shot Don’t Worry Darling between September 2020 and February 2021 in LA and Palm Springs. Those months were the longest Styles had lived in one place in 11 years. He thought about going completely off the grid while making it: maybe get a flip phone, stop making music. “The reality is you get there on the first day and wait around for 75 per cent of it,” he says. “And it’s like, ‘Actually, I’m going to text my mate.’” Vest and Skirt by Vivienne Westwood, Shoes by ERL Taken from theOctober/November 2022issueof Rolling Stone UK. Buy it online now.Available on UK newsstandsfrom24 August. In This Article: u201c@RollingStoneUK @Harry_Styles He is not no king of pop he\u2019s not even the prince dpmo\u201d — Rolling Stone UK (@Rolling Stone UK) Fans noticed something different about the encore: Styles didn’t end with his usual closer, “Kiwi”; instead, he opted to finish the night with a second performance of his new single “As It Was,” his dance-through-the-tears pandemic reflection on isolation and change. When he played it, the crowd exploded in a way even Styles had never experienced. It left him a bit shaken.

Styles shot Don’t Worry Darling between September 2020 and February 2021 in L.A. and Palm Springs. Those months were the longest Styles had lived in one place in 11 years. He thought about going completely off the grid while making it: maybe get a flip phone, stop making music. “The reality is you get there on the first day and wait around for 75 percent of it,” he says. “And it’s like, ‘Actually I’m going to text my mate.’”On fame and being known, he said: “If you make your life about the fact that you can’t go anywhere and everything has to be a big deal, then that’s what your life becomes,” he says. “Now, in London, I walk everywhere. It’s hard to stumble across things and restaurants and places and stuff if you’re just driving everywhere, and it’s just not that fun.” Photographed by Amanda Fordyce for Rolling Stone. Tank by Loewe. Suspenders, Stylists Own. Trousers by Gucci. Shoes by ERL. In the studio, he’s overseeing the string quartet. He has the engineers play T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” for them, to illustrate the vibe he’s going for. You can see he enjoys being on this side of the glass, sitting at the Neve board, giving his instructions to the musicians. After a few run-throughs, he presses the intercom button to say, “Yeah, it’s pretty T. Rex. Best damn strings I ever heard.” He buzzes again to add, “And you’re all wonderful people.” Like a true tousled-haired prince, Styles invites me to attend a concert with him by the philharmonic in Hamburg, eight hours before his own show. He says “collaborating for the sake of it” isn’t something he wants to do. “But if it happened in an organic way, then I’d definitely be open to it,” he explains. “I really like disappearing to go make music, and I don’t necessarily expect someone to come with me into that process in such a massive way. Maybe one day.”

Removing it was a tough call because of how much he loves the song. “It’s one of my favorites on the album. Because the new album had come out, it felt strange to close the set with it because it’s from a different album. Everywhere we’ve put it in the set, it feels squeezed in. But I love the song still. It’s not like I’ve changed my mind on that one,” he said. Over the years, Styles has been able to keep a few of his school friends by his side. Most of his closest friends are people he met after moving to London at the beginning of his career. He describes these past two summers as some of his favorites, since he was able to catch up with family and old friends in London. Pre-pandemic talks between Styles and the Darling team didn’t make it far; he was, after all, due on a global tour for most of 2020. Instead, Shia LaBeouf won the role, but by the end of that summer, Wilde had reportedly booted the actor for poor on-set behaviour. Those post-Wembley showers were especially gratifying. When One Direction, which Styles casually refers to as “the band,” played the stadium in 2014, he ended up with tonsillitis on the day of the show. “I was miserable,” he recalls. “We played the first one, and I remember I came off, got in the car, and just started crying because I was so disappointed.” Styles didn’t get to play live again until last fall, but something funny happened in the interim. While we were bound to our homes, Styles experienced his first Number One hit in Fine Line’s “Watermelon Sugar,” a tune so sweet it may take a moment to realize he’s singing about cunnilingus. Less than a year later, he won his first Grammy for it.Because of these traits, Styles was crowned the new “king of pop” in the Rolling Stones U.K. October/November issue of this year, which was published in August. This new title brought a lot of scrutiny to Styles’ name. Even in this sunny SoCal pop tune, there’s a tinge of bittersweet loss: As the sun goes down, he pleads, “I don’t wanna be alone.” As he says, “I don’t know much about Van Morrison’s life, but I know how he felt about this girl, because he put it in a song. So I like working the same way.” Other than that, acting wasn’t really part of his life plan. He liked it, but he found a new rush when he started performing with his band White Eskimo. When they debuted at — and won — a Battle of the Bands competition, it was the first time he felt “the switch”: his teachers looking up at him, instead of vice versa. “I think I was just a showoff,” he says, with a hint of cheekiness. “I say that like it’s past tense.”