is Harry Styles the new Cliff Richard?
if making predictions is a fool’s errand, then i am a fool, for i present to you a prediction that i will proceed to justify in the next few hundred words: i think Harry Styles may be the natural successor to Sir Cliff Richard.
the thought came to me as i was listening to his new (now Mercury Music prize nominated) album Harry’s House. if Kevin McCloud was designing a house for Harry, i reckon it’d be a typically imposing structure carved from the hillside it is sunken into, approachable via a long windy path littered with bohemian shrubbery to reveal a ‘clean lines, block colours’ garden and interior aesthetic peppered with random conceptual artefacts sculptured by the finest artists in the business, and a few feature walls displaying the sort of art that looks wild because it is in an ancient foreign language (like hieroglyphics, or elvish, to virtue signal his bookishness).
but ultimately no matter how edgy it tried to look, it would still be very ordered.
that is in keeping with the reputation of Sir Cliff, the og edgelord of british pop. for anyone born after the 1950s, it is impossible to imagine Sir Cliff as britain’s answer to Elvis Presley (where is his biopic, i ask you?) but that is exactly what he was. he was it. he was the coolest. he was the teenage pin-up. he was the pop star other pop stars looked up to. and for all the men who have graced British pop music since, from David Bowie, Elton John, thru Robbie Williams, to today (George Ezra? Olly Murs? i’m struggling here), i’ve yet to see one who comes closer to resembling Sir Cliff than Harry Styles.
the single biggest difference is that while Cliff’s rebel image may have been believable to the public then, i am living through Styles’s period of cool now and i don’t believe it.
on Sir Cliff, i find it strange that today’s pop critics rarely mention him. nowadays he is more often mocked for his embarrassing grandad singsong routine for rained on tennis crowds at Wimbledon. whether they like it or not, he was british pop culture’s first rock’n’roll star, whose popularity as lead singer of the Shadows was unmatched until the Beatles came along, and was still scoring hits at the end of the 20th century; even as the relic that he was by then, only he among all solo artists could boast of topping the British singles charts every decade since records began (thanks Penguin™ wrappers for searing that fact into my mind). was it because he achieved so much without slipping into drug and alcohol addiction or flirting with fascism and indulging in paedophilia that he is neglected today? alas, he didn’t have the good sense to die on the toilet, like any rock’n’roll idol worth their crown. the King is out of service, why isn’t Cliff?
but that’s a different essay. back to the point, i believe Harry Styles has the ability to achieve something like Cliff’s extraordinary (and unprecedented) longevity partly because, when listening to his songs, i am never fully convinced of his rock’n’roll credentials. this is not to doubt the veracity of his antics, but for all the tabloid intrigue, he has the air of someone who’s not about that life.
contrast with R’n’B veteran Usher’s recent NPR Tiny Desk performance, where at times he came across like a church pastor giving thanks for his career while sweetly crooning through a song catalogue of sex jams and clandestine affairs-gone-wrong.
Usher on NPR’s Tiny Desk: yes, this is an excuse to use the meme. thank you for your time.
i believe he did all of the things in the songs he sings about, even if he didn’t. even Styles’s former One Direction bandmate Zayn Malik sounds genuinely more edgy. compared with them, Styles may seem a poseur.
then again, who needs edgy popstars when as performers they need only competently traverse multiple genres without seemingly belonging to any (which is why, as much as i enjoy songs like Devil Woman and Wired for Sound, i can never fully believe Cliff is doing anything more than cosplaying the characters he sings as) whilst capturing the hearts and minds of a bankable cohort of the music buying public with convincing enough displays of swagger and libido (i think it’s called having an aura)? all else can be patched up with kitsch.
it is a legitimate legacy to chase, as long as you remember that it is all entertainment at the end of the day, authenticity is fake, and therefore Art is Not Real. but again, i digress.
all that said, Styles stans (Stylers) sometimes get defensive over their hero’s sexuality in response to criticisms of the occasional androgynwear photo shoot.
as with many things that bother stans, it’s actually not that deep. at celeb level, visible solidarity in favour of free expression is an important responsibility: it can help legitimise the existence of marginalised groups in the public eye. beyond that, neither Styles’s dress sense nor sexuality matter much in the context of decades of pop music history. besides, the rich and famous have always had the privilege of accessing those levels of expressive freedom more safely than us mere hoi polloi. symbolism never won a single human being any civil rights.
so at the end of the day all we are left with is the art. and in relation to Sir Cliff, Styles represents more continuity than change. hence songs even tamer than his fashion sense, right down to his voice: as slick as it is, Styles’s vocal still embodies that boy-next-door-cut-glass-Britishness reminiscent of Cliff. any perceived differences between them are superficial, byproducts of Styles being born into a marginally more liberal but musically more stagnant mainstream culture.
career wise though, i can think of few british pop stars better placed to inherit a Barbadian estate as a base from where they can maintain a lucrative lifetime relationship with their dedicated fanbase like a wealth management asset (and perhaps argue for extending copyright in perpetuity as part of the portfolio). but that’s an essay for another day.