Harry Styles’ new single, “As It Was,” gives us a masterclass in masking mediocre music with interesting visuals.
At first glance, the lyrics do not reveal anything insightful. They talk vaguely of the world “as it was” without offering any particular message or new perspective. Like many pop songs, the lyrics are fuzzy enough to allow the average fan to interpret it as a love song about a breakup or a valuable lesson about a post-COVID world.
The melody, harmonies, and liberal use of autotune fail to distinguish his song from the hundreds of pop songs floating around currently. The visuals, however, are what set the piece apart — and not necessarily for the better.
Styles, as has become his habit, donned some unusual outfits for the music video, including a long red overcoat, a scarf, and later a red-sequin jumpsuit.
Many fans and magazines have probably already developed a number of theories for the wardrobe choices, but I suspect the primary motive was to try to incorporate something special in a piece otherwise entirely unordinary.
Later, Styles stripped down to a pair of red boxer briefs. Other performers in the video also stripped down to their underwear and circled Styles as he lay down on a tiled mosaic floor.
The nature of those outfits and style choices offer all kinds of speculation into the meaning of the song. But I suspect the underwear sequence was little more than eye-candy to sell another generic music video.
It’s also worth considering the choreography of the music video. Styles spends much of the video on a slowly rotating circle alongside a female performer, and they spin around, at times embracing each other and at other times seeming distant and unable to catch up.
That, at least, provided some originality to the song, but didn’t add to the meaning of the song. Having that dramatic piece of the set could have been a ripe opportunity for incorporating metaphors for time or relationships as circular or unpredictable, but the lyrics barely acknowledge the events in the video.
And then the finale. Styles, after returning to his jumpsuit, ends the song with a sequence of him ecstatically throwing his hands, running around, kicking off the floor, and otherwise embodying the energy of a 1st-grader dancing his heart out. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to it, or tie-in to the song. It’s just Harry Styles being Harry Styles.
I’m sure in future interviews, Styles will call this a “liberating” song, a buzzword in pop culture used when celebrities want to talk about how they separate themselves from horrific “traditional” standards. The reality is, the lyrics and melody are anything but liberating in how they doggedly follow the same tropes and clichés of every other pop music video.
The only area of this song that stands out is the fan service of Styles languishing in his underwear or frolicking about in his jumpsuit. Without that, you’d be forgiven for mistaking this song and video for any of the other hundreds pumped out by pop music composers every year.
