With the recent announcement of Harry Styles’s new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, and the collective online uproar of calling 2026 the new 2016, it feels appropriate to say that a wave of nostalgia, a kind of wistfulness almost, has swept over us. As ever, life is eventful, and with each passing day we undergo a new metamorphosis as a stepping stone towards our wider development as individuals. Listeners of all music genres have songs they like to return to when the reality of change hits them in a bittersweet rush of complex emotions, and one of those songs for me is Styles’s As It Was.
In an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Styles reflects on the Covid pandemic and coming to the daunting and isolating realisation that ‘it’s never gonna be the same as before’. Thinking back on it now, we can all imagine it – the days seemingly bleeding into one another, a complete loss of any sense of time, waiting for news on what was happening outside the confines of your house in lockdown. Yet, there were moments of peace if you were fortunate, when you could sit with your family and enjoy some moments of solidarity, and love, and peace. Nonetheless, having a five minute conversation with merely five other people about five years ago lets you know that it was, more than anything else, a time of deep isolation and loneliness outside these rare and cherished moments of love. As It Was captures the feeling of thinking in retrospect of such profoundly altered reality. The song masks this bittersweet melancholy with an upbeat, almost deceptive, 80’s inspired beat, making it an enjoyable albeit retrospective listen. With the rather adorable sample of Harry Styles’s goddaughter, Ruby Winston, starting off the song with ‘come on, Harry, we wanna say goodnight to you’, the synth-pop inspired record immediately establishes a sense of nostalgia and, thematically, the human need for closeness. The seemingly trivial idea of wanting to say goodnight to someone is beautiful in its ordinariness, its colloquialism. An analysis conducted by the UK Government shows that close relationships significantly reduced the odds of adults feeling bogged down with loneliness during the pandemic in England. With the current upsurge in the global impulse to not show vulnerability at the cost of being perceived as somewhat ‘un-cool’, it is heartbreakingly easy to think that one must go through change utterly alone. But when all is said and done, it is people, and their love, their sympathy, their words, which will make the intimidating prospect of growing up and figuring out life bearable, and even enjoyable.
It goes to show that change acts as perhaps the most effective catalyst for artistic expression through music. Whether it is getting a degree, moving away from home, getting a job, surviving a pandemic, undergoing loss, or conversely feeling a rush of untapped happiness, everything can be felt vicariously through a few notes and words in songs. It is the reason for why music sometimes lifts you up, and takes the weight off your shoulders – it is not the immediacy of art and the boppyness of your favourite tracks, it is the reminder that they are a result of some familiar emotion experienced by a fellow human, which subsequently makes you feel less alone in your metamorphosis. It is a humbling relief, to know that you are not unique in your suffering. Even when ‘you know it’s not the same as it was’, there are memories to look forward to, and kindness to spread, and dreams to chase. And, always, there is art to make.