By Camille Rasor | Arts & Life Editor
Harry Styles released a music video Monday to “Golden,” the first song on his most recent album, “Fine Line.”
One of the first things viewers will notice about the video is that Styles’ fashion choices are not typical. Both in this video and in his everyday life, he mixes masculine and feminine pieces to make an eclectic look that still looks good in spite of, or perhaps because of, the way his wardrobe pushes gender norms.
The video itself has no particular plot or storyline. Instead, the video just shows different clips of Styles vibing in different outfits across a gorgeous Italian landscape. I don’t know what it was about the video, maybe just that I love Harry Styles in general, but it made me smile the whole time.
The lyrics of the song depict Styles thinking back to the beginning stage of a relationship where things were delicate and unknown. “I’m out of my head, and I know that you’re scared / Because hearts get broken,” Styles sings to the subject of the song, both individuals worried they might get too attached to each other too quickly and then crash, burn and fizzle out in the blink of an eye. However, Styles says he’s willing to give it a try.
The rest of the album explores the stages of this relationship that goes exactly as he predicted. From “Adore You,” a song of Styles pouring out infatuation for this person to “Falling,” a lyrical piano ballad about heartbreak and loss, to “Fine Line,” where Styles fully accepts that this relationship has become a delicate balance of history and forgotten feelings, the album is a masterpiece that I sure hope is nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys.
I heard “Golden” for the first time in March, but with this new video I heard for the first time an aspect of the song I’d never caught before. At the transition from the second chorus to the bridge, Styles sings the word “golden” over and over with vocal effects that make it sound, at least to me, like some sort of xylophone. Hearing this for the first time gave me a new appreciation for the song and the complexity that went into it.
All in all, this video is full of Styles having so much fun that it honestly doesn’t make sense to me that it was filmed in 2020. In a year that has been chaotic to say the least, I want nothing more than to be in the set of this music video, dancing and driving around an Italian villa without a care in the world.
