Ahead of the highly-anticipated release of his third studio album this week, Harry Styles is looking back at his career so far and he has one person to thank for his sporadic growth — Billie Eilish.
As you might know, Styles started his career as a member of the English-Irish pop band, One Direction, after an unsuccessful solo attempt at participating in the talent show, “X Factor.”
One Direction which consisted of Styles, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson, ruled the music scene from 2011 t0 2016, before going on an indefinite hiatus.
It was during that break that Styles launched his solo career and the rest is indeed history. However, he was only able to make the great leap after being inspired by a fellow singer.
Harry Styles Praises Billie Eilish For Inspiring Him
During an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the upcoming album, “Harry’s House,” the Redditch native talked about how his artistry has evolved over the years, especially when he first stepped out to become a solo artist.
“I definitely had a really big moment, I think, when Billie Eilish kind of first blew up,” Styles recalled. “I think being in the band, I’d always felt like … it was fun and exciting because we were young. And I had a moment, seeing her do this at such a young age, where I felt like, ‘I’m not that young anymore.'”
He continued, explaining how he battled doubts at the start of his solo career, “for a while, it was like, ‘How do you play that game, of like, remaining exciting?’ And I just had a moment where I felt like, ‘OK, we’re not the same thing.’ And in the same vein of, like, ‘You’re not always going to be the kind of young thing.”
The now-28-year-old got to thinking about who he wanted to be as a musician and that resulted in the brilliance that the world has enjoyed in his first two albums, “Harry Styles” and “Fine Line.”
As for if the “Watermelon Sugar” singer has told Eilish what she has done for his career, Styles said no. He opened up running into her a couple of times over the past year but the topic hasn’t come up.
“I’m kind of like, from afar, incredibly thankful to her,” he said, “because I feel like she felt like she represented something to me there.”
Styles continued, saying, “She [Eilish] just totally broke spell [sic] for me, in a way that I’m very grateful for.”
The ‘Adore You’ Singer Turned To Therapy For His Mental Health
Styles’ revelation about Eilish comes weeks after he got candid about the wonders therapy has done for his mental health and overall life.
As The Blast previously reported, in his cover story for Better Homes & Gardens June issue, the Grammy Award winner shared that he stayed away from therapy for years because he thought it meant “one was broken.”
“I wanted to be the one who could say I didn’t need it,” he recalled. However, once he went through therapy, he could now “open up rooms” inside him and tune into his emotions better.
I think that accepting living, being happy, hurting in the extremes, that is the most alive you can be. Losing it crying, losing it laughing—there’s no way, I don’t think, to feel more alive than that.
In the interview, he also talked about Eilish, drawing parallels between her rise to stardom from when she was just 15 and his from One Direction.
In his words, “She was so much younger than I am, and, when I was in the band, we were always the young guys. When I did my first solo thing, I was still like the young guy. I’m not like an old man now, but she’s just a different generation.”
Nevertheless, Styles maintained that he is nothing but happy for Eilish and had come to the understanding that one can’t “win music” like Formula One.
“I was like, in my lifetime, there will be 10 more people who burst onto the scene in that way, and I’m only going to get further away from being the young thing. So, get comfortable with finding something else that makes you happy. I just found that so liberating,” he explained.
