By Kate McLaughlin
On Wednesday, March 23, 2022, popular artist Harry Styles announced his new album. After the singer’s world tour ended in December, fans have been impatiently waiting for new music from Styles.
The album will be called Harry’s House and has a confirmed release date of May 20, 2022. Styles posted an announcement on Instagram for his 43.3 million followers, informing fans about his new music, releasing the album cover, name, and release date.
The cover art of the album features Harry standing on the ceiling of an upside-down living room. This photograph paired with the album name Harry’s House has created a slight uprising within the Harry Styles fanbase. “I’m so excited for what’s to come in these next few days, weeks, and months.” said Ciara Lyons. Further, fans have noticed a common theme of “home” between Harry’s first two solo albums, and even on work he did during his days in the famous boyband, One Direction. Based on what fans have noticed, it seems Styles has been planning this album for much longer than some might thing.
Along with just the album announcement, Styles also released a 40-second trailer for the album. The video highlights the singer walking onto the stage as a yellow house appears behind him, while also flashing to different clips of the world and his fans. There have been many speculations that this implies that the stage is “home” or that we as fans are his “home”.
On March 28, Styles publicized the release date of the first single on the album via another Instagram post. The song “As It Was” was released on April 1, at midnight BST. Along with the release date and song title, the singer released some pictures from the music video that would come out with the single.
Observant fans have noticed Harry becoming very cryptic recently. There have been many theories proven to be true by the announcement of the new album and single. First, fans noticed Styles began to follow multiple social media accounts titled You Are Home. They also found a website that seemed to be correlated with the singer called YouAreHome.co. The website and social media accounts ended up being very on theme for Styles, and the album title release confirmed these theories.
There were even more theories that were proven true that can be argued were more of a reach. One example of this was a picture posted by Pleasing, a nail polish brand Styles works with. The picture shows Harry’s hands holding up the number five, and then the number two. It could be a coincidence that these numbers make the date May 2(0). However, some fans believe he did this on purpose. Whether or not his hand placement was intentional or not remains unknown.
One more discovery that many fans found fascinating had to do with some choices that Styles made back in October 2021. The singer performed at two shows entitled “Harryween” as they were on days surrounding Halloween. On night one of Harryween, Styles dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz. On the second night, he dressed as a clown that closely resembled the joker that would be found on a deck of cards. Both of these outfits were not very meaningful until the announcement of his new music. The common quote from the movie The Wizard Of Oz, “There’s no place like home” goes perfectly with Harry’s new theme of “home”. Additionally, April Fool’s Day is the release date of the album’s lead single. After investigation, fans found that the origins of April Fool’s day relate back to the joker. Now, these things could just be weird coincidences and it is hard to tell whether or not fans read too far into his actions.
The coming of new music for Harry Styles fans is not very common and seems to be creating immense excitement. Megan Swift is in tune with this idea, stating ,“You know, the fandom hasn’t had much interaction lately so it’s very exciting to hear from Harry again.” With the rising popularity of Styles’ music, there is no doubt that this album will shoot to the top of the charts. “You really never know what you’re gonna get, and there’s something really endearing about that!” said Ciara Lyons.
