The Daily Spin, August 2
Harry Styles | Fine Line
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Fine Line (2019)
Artist: Harry Styles
Link:
It’s a testament to Harry Styles’ gravitas as an artist that he has, in many ways, outdone the peaks he achieved as a member of world sensation five-piece One Direction, first through his self-titled debut, then through Fine Line, and most recently through last year’s Harry’s House.
The thing about reaching those peaks is that you have to distill yourself into the most acceptable version of yourself in most cases, and that leaves Styles in the unenviable position of whittling his persona down into the commercialized sensation that we get here. With Harry’s House, it feels as though more of his authenticity shines through, peeks of the man behind the grandeur, but Fine Line feels as distorted as the image of Harry on the cover.
These sacrifices are absolutely hand-waved away by the instrumentation and production on the album - though there are definitely occasional misses, largely in the safe plays on the album and the weirdly religion-tinted ‘Treat People With Kindness’, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable listen.
At its absolute best, it matches the artists that the record feels as though it wants to imitate, the Bowies and Fleetwood Macs of the world, pushing forward the standard for what pop music can be both on a personal and a sonic level, but too frequently it has to rein itself it just that little bit, toeing that fine line between success and the record that it feels like Styles wanted to make.
Rating: 8.2/10
Best Tracks: Golden; Adore You
Worst Tracks: Treat People With Kindness; She