Harry Styles just released his sophomore album, Fine Line—and it’s a breakup album full of allusions to his relationship with French model Camille Rowe.
Earlier this year, producer Kid Harpoon (aka Tom Hull) delved into the backstory with Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield. “He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him,” he said. “But I kept saying, ‘The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you’re writing.’”
Hull had a piece of advice for Styles when his relationship with Rowe ended. “The stars didn’t align for them to be a forever thing,” he said. “But I told him that famous Iggy Pop quote where he says, ‘I only ever date women who are going to fuck me up, because that’s where the songs are.’ I said, ‘You’re 24, 25 years old, you’re in the eligible-bachelor category. Just date amazing women, or men, or whatever, who are going to fuck you up, and explore and have an adventure and let it affect you and write songs about it.’”
At the same time, Styles is protective of his personal life in the midst of superstardom. “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,’” the pop star told 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.”
“Watermelon Sugar” is a sensual ode to a lover:
Tastes like strawberries on a summer evenin'
And it sounds just like a song
I want your belly and that summer feelin'
I don’t know if I could ever go without
As Genius user @tirelessmess pointed out, Rowe previously told Elle that Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar is one of her favorite books.
Styles talked to Rolling Stone about how he became an active reader. “Reading didn’t really used to be my thing. I had such a short attention span,” he said. “But I was dating someone who gave me some books; I felt like I had to read them because she’d think I was a dummy if I didn’t read them.”
On “Cherry,” Styles veers into pettiness as he takes stock of what it means to move on after a breakup:
Don’t you call him “baby”
We’re not talking lately
Don’t you call him what you used to call me
He also elaborated on the song’s meaning in an interview with Beats 1’s Zane Lowe. “I wanted to be true to [the breakup],” he said. “I wanted it to be true to how I was feeling then, in that moment. It was all part of being more open and not like, ‘I don’t care.’ You get petty when something’s not going the way that you want, and ‘Cherry' is pathetic in a way.”
But the song goes beyond mere references, as a recording of Rowe’s voice closes out the track:
Coucou ! Tu dors ? Oh, j'suis désolée…
Bah non… Nan, c'est pas important…
Ouais, on a été à la plage, et maintenant on—
Parfait ! Harry
According to Vulture, this section translates to: “Hello! Are you asleep? Oh, I’m sorry… Well, no… No, it’s not important. Well… We went to the beach and now we… Perfect! Harry.”
Styles talked to Rolling Stone about the choice to embed Rowe’s voice at the end. “That’s just a voice note of my ex-girlfriend talking,” he said. “I was playing guitar and she took a phone call—and she was actually speaking in the key of the song.”
On “Falling,” he reminisces about an ex-lover:
You said you care, and you missed me too
And I’m well aware I write too many songs about you
And the coffee’s out at the Beachwood Cafe
And it kills me ‘cause I know we’ve ran out of things we can say
As Genius users @rihanti and @tirelessmess pointed out, there’s a personal connection to the cafe:
It’s unclear who inspired “Golden,” a bittersweet love song that centers on Styles’ fools-rush-in mentality:
You’re so golden
I’m out of my head, and I know that you’re scared
Because hearts get broken
“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,” he told Rolling Stone. “So I like working the same way.”
This is his first full-length since his self-titled debut in 2017.
Read all the lyrics to Fine Line on Genius now.
