Fine Line by Harry Styles // 5 Year Anniversary Album Review
Harry Styles embarked on the creation of Fine Line with a new state of mind, wanting to push himself a little further than he ever has before. It is deeply honest and reflective; he fully embraced his creative freedom and lets it fully shine through in the music. It's fun, fresh and modern, while also incorporating elements of the rockstars that came before him.
In an interview with NPR, he talked about the way his mindset changed going into the creation of his sophomore album, especially following the positive reception of his debut solo album released two and a half years prior. He said, "I think I had a lot of fear — whether it was conscious or subconsciously — just about getting it wrong. When I listen back to the first album now, although I still love it so much, I feel like I was almost bowling with the bumpers up a little bit. I can hear places where I was playing it safe." With Fine Line, he fully leaned into some of the weirder psychedelic influences he was drawn to at the time and went all the way with it. It turns out that trusting your instincts and fully committing to your artistic vision really does pay off because Fine Line is such a masterpiece and one of the greatest albums of all time.
Harry worked primarily with his frequent collaborators, Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, who wrote and produced nearly every single song with him from his first three records. He also wrote several songs with Mitch Rowland, his band's guitarist, as well as songwriters Sammy Witte and Amy Allen, among others. Together they made a perfect pop album, but it's so much more than that at the same time. They experimented with incorporating elements of classic rock, indie rock, folk, soul and more into one incredibly varied body of work. This album takes the listener on such an emotional journey with dynamic production and deeply introspective lyrics. Much of Fine Line is written through the lens of heartbreak and trying to navigate how to move on from a relationship without ignoring the lingering feelings he has for this person. He doesn't hold anything back in sharing how difficult this time was for him. From all of the sadness and loneliness he was experiencing, to some of the happy and sensual moments he had too, this album gives his fully unfiltered experience. To put it more simply in an interview with Rolling Stone, Harry said Fine Line is about "having sex and feeling sad". Harry does such a great job at depicting every stage that this relationship went through, including his acceptance of what happened between them in hindsight.
They recorded the bulk of it at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, California - the setting that serves as the backdrop for the entirety of this album. In his creative process, psychedelics also played a key role too, "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine," he told Rolling Stone.
Harry frequently draws from influences of the 1960's and 1970's, artists like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and more. There is an element of freedom in much of the music from that era that he has continuously found inspiration in and especially wanted to translate that same energy into Fine Line. He has also been very vocal about the impact Fleetwood Mac's music had on him throughout his life, his friend Stevie Nicks even once called Fine Line "his Rumours". That influence is perhaps the most evident of all, especially in the way that both albums were shaped by the breaking down of very formative and intense relationships. Much like Rumours was for Fleetwood Mac, Fine Line will surely go on to become a defining moment of Harry's career and continue to be a beloved piece of his discography for decades to come. I can see Fine Line becoming a generational album much in the way Rumours is too - fifty years from now people will be discovering it for the first time and it will still be just as relevant then as it was in 2019. This music has a very timeless quality to it, due in part to the intentions Harry and his collaborators had with making something fully authentic to himself. It is a very honest and personal reflection of that time in his life, with some of the most specific and deeply personal writing of his career thus far.
There was an article written by Margaret Farrell for GQ in 2019 with a title that I think best sums up what makes Harry so special and important as an artist in the current music landscape and what continues to make Fine Line such an impactful record. The title is, "Harry Styles is the rockstar we need and the popstar we deserve", which is a statement that has only come to be more true with each passing year. A record like this doesn't come around often, nor does an artist like Harry, and its such a joy to be able to witness the magic of his art in real-time.
When Fine Line was released in late 2019 it was unbeknownst to everyone what was about to come next in the world about three months later. It was one of the last albums to be released before everything changed forever, with it really only having about two and half months out in the world before it all closed down. This album really ended up being such a source of joy and inspiration for myself and many others during the pandemic. Obviously, his initial tour dates in support of this album were postponed for over a year and a half, so for a long time the only way this music was experienced was at home, largely in solitude. Much of this album actually reflected a lot of the emotions many were feeling at the time, especially with the common theme of looking introspectively at who you are when you're alone by yourself. Although it would be so sweet if things could stay the same, Fine Line really captures that yearning that comes inevitably with major life changes.
Some of the fun summer hits, like "Golden", "Watermelon Sugar" and "Adore You", all served as such an escape from the harsh reality we were going through in the thick of 2020 as well. There were several albums released during the pandemic that I have a deeper connection to than a lot of the other music I have ever heard in my life, with Fine Line being among the most significant for me. It was just a different experience then, it's hard to even describe the feeling when looking back all of these years removed, but I always have a special place in my heart for the music that was the soundtrack for that time in my life.
At the time, it felt like there was no end in sight to the quarantine, so when Love on Tour was among the first pandemic-era tours to eventually begin in the fall of 2021, it felt like an experience none of us would get to have again. I will always look back on those two nights seeing him in New York City in October of that year as some of the most joyful and exciting of my entire life for that very reason. It felt so euphoric and cathartic to be there in that room surrounded by so many people that all collectively went through the exact same experience together and held so much of the same connection to this music for the past two years that I did. The fact that a tour that big could be done safely on that massive scale really transformed the concert industry in the post-pandemic landscape too. Looking forward to those two shows for all that time was such a bright spot in the midst of everything else going on for those years and getting to hear Fine Line live in its entirety was nothing short of life changing for me too.
For an album that is this stacked with massive hits and instant pop classics, the lead single of Fine Line was one of the more unexpected choices of the track list. "Lights Up" was such a bold way to start this era - a song that is simultaneously very personal to his own singular life experience, but also innately universal at the same time. At its core, "Lights Up" is an anthem for embracing newfound self-confidence, freedom and fluidity. It comes from a place of feeling like he was holding parts of himself back or keeping himself in the shadows for too long, wanting to finally break free of all that he felt was holding him back.
I interpret it as being written through the lens of his life in the public eye, with everyone thinking they know him, even though what we see on the outside is only just the surface of who he actually is - and in actuality he doesn't even really know himself yet. It's an interesting perspective to make a song about growing up in a world where you're a stranger to no one but everyone is a stranger to you. "All the lights couldn't put out the dark, running through my heart, lights up and they know who you are," he sings in the chorus which ends with the thesis behind this entire album: "Do you know who you are?"
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harry shared a quote by David Bowie that inspired him in the creation of Fine Line that really captures so much of the energy of this album and specifically the sentiments behind releasing a song as personal as "Lights Up" is. He said, "Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. When you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting."
"Golden" goes right into the iconic "Watermelon Sugar", which went on to become the biggest song from the album and will forever be an essential summer anthem. Before the song was released, Harry tweeted, "'Kiwi' walked so 'Watermelon Sugar' could run." - which honestly seems to have been kind of prophetic for how massive it went on to be! This was Harry's first song to ever hit number one on Billboard Hot 100, as well as the first Grammy Award he ever won, which was for Best Pop Solo Performance. The title was inspired by Richard Brautigan's 1968 postmodernist novel In Watermelon Sugar, which is set in a post-apocalyptic world where everything is made of watermelon sugar. It's so different than any other book I ever read before, but I really loved it and would highly recommend it! Apart from the title, the song isn't really about that though, in his episode of NPR's Tiny Desk Harry said it's "kind of about that initial euphoria of when you start seeing someone, you start sleeping with someone or just being around someone and you have that excitement about them." It's very sweet and sensual, I love it.
Those same feelings of infatuation and blissful joy carry through into "Adore You", which is truly one of the greatest songs he ever made. You can really hear how much fun everyone that worked on this song was having when they made it, which really makes for the best listening experience. Also, getting to hear it live several times and hear that pure happiness translate into an in-person setting like that is so magical. He sings, "Oh, honey I'd walk through fire for you, just let me adore you, like it's the only thing I'll ever do". The guitar solo and the harmonies on the bridge are also so amazing too, I can never get enough of this song.
The mid-point of Fine Line takes a turn away from the blissful beginnings of a new relationship as he tries to now navigate his heartbreak after this relationship ended. I kind of view "Cherry", "Falling" and "To Be So Lonely" as a trilogy of sorts, as they all thematically reference each other in some subtle ways. "He had a whole emotional journey about her, this whole relationship," his close friend and producer Kid Harpoon told Rolling Stone, "But I kept saying, 'The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you’re writing.'" He doesn't hold anything back in sharing the emotional rollercoaster he's experiencing at this moment in time. He gets achingly specific and often very self-deprecating too. Something that also happens in much of this album that I don't see artists take too often if their work, is he takes a lot of accountability for where it all went wrong too. Specifically, on "To Be So Lonely", he even calls himself an "arrogant son of a bitch who can't admit when he's sorry".
"Cherry" is one of the most vulnerable songs he has ever written for all of those reasons too. It really gives so much context to what happened and what this entire album is centered around. "I confess I can tell that you are at your best, I'm selfish so I'm hating it," he sings in the opening lines of the song, "I noticed that there's a piece of you in how I dress, take it as a compliment"
I also love when lyrics are so specific in a way that the song could only ever be about one person. It's like we're just listening in on some kind of inside conversation between the people involved and their shared memories. "I just miss your accent and your friends, do you know I still talk to them?" he sings. A lyric like "Does he take you walking around his parent's gallery?" is the most overtly specific lyric of them all, it's like the listener is kind of unaware of the full context, but the person he is singing to will know exactly what it means and what it's referring to. That's what kind of song "Cherry" is to me overall, which is a style of songwriting that Harry has always done really well in the past.
He is very honest and doesn't hold back the fact that he's bitter and spiraling over his ex moving on with someone new. "I wanted it to reflect how I felt then," Harry said in an interview with Zane Lowe. "I was feeling not great. It's all about being not great. Because, you get petty when things don’t go the way you want it. There's parts that are so pathetic." The song even ends with a voicemail of his ex-girlfriend Camille Rowe, who this entire album is inspired by. Hearing that part of the song for the first time all those years ago was so unexpected, as he has never really been one to make his relationships very public like that - at least at that time. "It's not like I’ve ever sat and done an interview and said, 'So I was in a relationship, and this is what happened,'" he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "Because, for me, music is where I let that cross over. It's the only place, strangely, where it feels right to let that cross over," he added in an interview with Rolling Stone.
The following piano ballad, "Falling", continues that same spiral and identity crisis over the end of this relationship and all of the loneliness he was left with in the wake of it ending. He looks introspectively at where it all went wrong and bares it all again with taking accountability for his part in it. "What am I now? What if I'm someone I don't want around?" he asks himself in the chorus. Again, the same specificity is present in his writing, which really paints the picture of this moment in time. "And the coffee's out at the Beachwood Cafe, and it kills me 'cause I know we've run out of things we can say", he sings in the second verse. By the end of the song he comes to the harsh realization that "I get the feeling that you'll never need me again".
Following that personal revelation, he wallows in that emotion for a bit on "To Be So Lonely" but really ties together tracks five through seven. He opens the song with saying, "Don't blame me for falling, I was just a little boy". Sonically is completely different than the previous song too, as it was composed on a guitalele and created such a different vibe from the previous heavy piano ballad.
There are actually quite a few parallels that can be drawn between "Cherry" and "To Be So Lonely" specifically - especially in the chorus as he says "don't you call him baby...don't you call him what you used to call me" on "Cherry" and "don't call me baby again, you've got your reasons, I know that you're trying to be friends, I know you mean it". The song seems to be an official apology to his ex for his own wrong doings in their relationship and wanting to move on despite the lingering feelings he still has.
"She" is another major highlight on Fine Line. This is a song that is very ambiguous, and many interpretations can be drawn from this sprawling six-minute track. Maybe "She" is a real person, maybe "She" is more of a metaphor or feeling - or maybe "She" is both! Harry writes with more of a narrative focus in this song, as if the lyrics are him telling the listener a story. It is written from the perspective of a man fantasizing about a woman he may actually know, one that he turned into an idealized figure, but also she may be a complete figment of his imagination. "She lives in daydreams with me, she's the first one that I see and I don't know why, I don't know who she is", he sings in the chorus. As I mentioned before, Harry once said that "'Kiwi' walked so 'Watermelon Sugar' could run," but the same also applies to the deep cut on his debut album called "Woman" with "She" too. It feels very reminiscent of Pink Floyd's music, I love when Harry incorporates that psychedelic rock sound into his work.
Of course anyone who has heard this song will know the best part of "She" is the three minute guitar solo at the end, which was performed by his band's guitarist and frequent collaborator, Mitch Rowland. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harry recalled when he and Mitch had recorded "She", during a particularly inspired mushroom trip. "We had no idea what we were doing. We forgot all about that track, then went back later and loved it," he said. "But Mitch had no idea what he did on guitar that night, so he had to learn it all over from the track." That guitar solo at the end is so incredible and one of the very best moments of the entire album. I love that they didn't cut down that part of the song for time because it just keeps getting better and better as it goes on. I had the most incredible experience getting to meet Mitch in 2023 at a special album release show for his debut Come June at a small record store in Philadelphia. He is so kind and talented and I always think back to how amazing that experience was when I listen to this song now.
In my mind, I've always thought of the following three songs as another trilogy within the album too, as they are all made up of very sweet and nostalgic love songs. They are also all rooted in the sounds of Laurel Canyon folk music of the 1960's and 1970's, I love how he was able to take that signature sound and feeling that era of music has and translate it with a modern, unique approach. He takes some of the weirder and more unexpected influences and totally owns it and makes it all his own. They are all so colorful and vibrant in the world these songs create through the production and lyrics.
Despite being some of the deeper cuts from his discography, songs like "Sunflower Vol. 6", "Canyon Moon" and "Treat People With Kindness" are truly the heart of Fine Line to me and represent so many of the core themes of the album. I will never forget hearing that specific sequence of songs live at Love on Tour too, there was pure joy radiating off of everyone in that room as the ground of Madison Square Garden literally trembled underneath the crowd. That feeling is unlike anything else and I always think back to those moments when I listen to these songs now. That part of Love on Tour was easily one of the best live concert experiences of my entire life!
"Sunflower Vol. 6" is one of the sweetest songs he has ever written, I really can't express how much I love it. This song feels very inspired by Paul McCartney, which Harry has noted as a massive influence when making this record. "Sunflower, my eyes want you more than a melody, let me inside, wish I could get to know you," Harry sings in the opening lines of the song. He describes his muse to be as bright and beautiful as the sun once again, or a sunflower in this case. The difference is now it is written as if he's looking back on the time that inspired a song like "Golden". It still has that same radiant joy as that song or "Adore You" has, but just now sung with more nostalgia for how it felt to have those feelings at the time. It also features some of my favorite lyrics he has ever written, "I've got your face hung up high in the gallery" is particularly one of the best.
"Canyon Moon" fully dives into the folky Laurel Canyon influences that were already sprinkled throughout the album. The Joni Mitchell influence is so apparent all over Fine Line, but it shines through most of all on this song. Harry once again is very specific in his storytelling and in the way he captures a snapshot of this time of his life. He reminisces back on his time under the canyon moon, with details of "doors yellow, broken, blue" and "Jenny saying 'Go get the kids from school'". Although he has traveled all over, he carries the feeling of the canyon with him wherever he goes. My favorite part of the song is the bridge; "Quick pause in conversation, she plays songs I've never heard, an old lover's hippie music, pretends not to know the words and I keep thinking back to a time under the canyon moon".
Before this album existed, Harry's slogan during his 2018 tour was the phrase "Treat People With Kindness", a simple, but sincere, sentiment. Those four words kind of took on a life of it's own amongst his fans and became a universal mantra surrounding his work. In an interview with Music Week, Harry said "It was a pin I had on my guitar strap and we made T-shirts for it, then I saw a lot of t-shirts around," said the singer. "I'd be driving or something and see someone in one and I started feeling like, 'Oh this is a bit of a thing.'" On Fine Line, he finally made a song to match the mantra, a "tribute" he called it, which I love so much.
"When I first wrote it I wasn't sure if I really liked it or really hated it, but as it was going on I was like, 'Oh I really like this, this is really fun,'" Harry continued in his interview with Music Week. "I'd seen this clip of David Bowie talking saying that you usually end up doing your best work when you feel like you can’t quite touch the bottom, and realizing that the fact that it made me feel a little uncomfortable didn't mean it was a bad song was big thing."
It's difficult to even describe the song if you haven't heard it before, it was definitely very unexpected for many when it was first released, but to me it embodies everything that Harry represents as an artist. He sings of wanting to create this utopia that is only filled with happiness and everyone feels free to be whoever they are. Honestly, it's as if that wish comes true every time he performs this song, the energy at his shows during "Treat People With Kindness" fully embodies that, even if it is just a fleeting moment.
This song very much spreads the message of knowing that no matter what the world throws at you, it'll all be ok in the end. It literally radiates pure joy throughout this fun and wild psychedelic masterpiece. It also has a bit of gospel and soul elements throughout too. "Small changes end up making a big difference," he said. "It's about being a lot nicer to each other rather than, 'Don't do this, or don't do that, not this yes that.' It's just saying, 'Treat people with kindness,' you know."
The final song on the album is the gorgeous title track "Fine Line". Another six-minute-long song that beautifully closes out the album and the chapter of his life this album is centered around. "Put a price on emotion, I'm looking for something to buy," he sings in the opening lines of the song, "You've got my devotion, but man I could hate you sometimes". After such a range of emotion was explored from the opening song all the way to the end, he begins to make peace with what the future holds for him and his ex. "Fine Line" explores both sides of this relationship, all of the happy moments together and the complicated and bitter feelings he had when it was all over. Despite the conflicting feelings he now holds towards his ex and their relationship, the impact she had on him and the deep love he had for her will always remain. He begins to accept that their relationship now is now over. What's left of it is not love but not hate, not friends but not enemies, they will just always be somewhere in the middle of it all, even though there is a fine line that divides each side. It is such a powerful song that is fueled with so much emotion within his performance.
Considering the time of which this song was released, "Fine Line" ended up taking on a new life in the wake of the pandemic. The repeated mantra of "we'll be alright" became such a source of inspiration and comfort for all who heard it. It builds in intensity through the end, at one point he is almost screaming those words, both for himself to believe and for the listener to believe too. There is something so beautiful and moving about the repetition of that simple statement being the closing lines of the album.
Harry's unwavering pursuit to release something fully authentic to himself and truly bare it all in each song is so beautiful to see. An album as special as Fine Line really doesn't come around often. The confidence he has in his artistic vision is so inspiring and resulted in some of the very best music he ever released.
I have written about Harry Styles' music many times over the years, all of which are linked here and below. Check out my in-depth reviews of his self-titled debut album and Harry's House - plus my experience visiting the iconic Beachwood Cafe. I have also seen him perform this music many times too for Love on Tour, which I wrote all about each here. Pink and blue forever 🩷🩵 Thanks for reading!
Treat People With Kindness! 🍒🍉🌞🌻
Photo Credit: Harry Styles, Erskine Records, Columbia Records, Tim Walker
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