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Harry Styles' successful Saturday Night Live solo appearance a Sign of the Times to come
Traditionally, America uses the musical guest performances on Saturday Night Live as an opportunity to take a bathroom break. Occasionally, an artist is so unexpectedly engaging they cause the nation to cross its collective legs. This happened in 2008 when Adele appeared on the feverishly anticipated Sarah Palin episode and saw her 19 album rocket from the low hundreds to the top 20. Sometimes, a musician performs so horrifically that their career expires on the spot.
That was the sad fate of Ashlee Simpson who dissolved into a puddle of embarrassment when her pre-recorded voice track malfunctioned back in 2004. And then there are the times when the show goes all out to make a star. At this early stage in his I’m-a-big-boy-now solo career, no one knows for certain whether Harry Styles has Justin Timberlake-style mass appeal in his destiny. But SNL absolutely treated him like it’s a foregone conclusion.
In the same way the show always rolls out the red carpet for frequent host and musical guest Timberlake, Harry Styles was all over this episode. He popped up in the opening moments of host Jimmy Fallon’s painstakingly choreographed singalong to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. He displayed decent comedy chops impersonating Mick Jagger in a Family Feud skit – where he made a meta-reference to the madness of walking away from a successful band One Direction to go solo – and threw himself into the role of a singing Civil War soldier in a subsequent sketch.
Halfway into the show, he stopped being funny and dealt directly with the lingering question of whether he could stand on a stage without conjuring up sad memories of his missing bandmates. A matter of seconds into his performance of Sign of the Times, all doubts were erased. He looked dapper in a bold plaid double-breasted suit. He oozed charisma and whether you think the song is an instant classic or a decent tune that’s been dragged kicking and screaming into passing for an anthem, he and his back-up musicians tore into it like it was his Greatest Hit.
Actual Americans reacted to the performance with enthusiasm. “Finally, a British rock star,” gushed Lori Majewski, host of Sirius XM’s daily music talk show, Feedback. “He blew me away. His hair. His suit. The song. He’s the anti-Ed Sheeran.” Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, co-executive producer of Family Guy and a ride-or-die One Direction superfan had previously pronounced herself `meh’ on the song. Last night changed that meh to a wow. “He sounded amazing. He opened with the same kind of power he used to close Drag Me Down with and then built from here. He left it all out on the field and he still has another one to go!”
The second song, Ever Since New York, proudly displayed its Seventies folk-rock roots, and saw Styles strumming a 12-string guitar and displaying a gift for harmonizing with his bandmates that wasn’t always evident in the 1D era. “It’s pretty and calm, but also a smidgen not calm,” noted Chevapravatdumrong. “I want to listen to it while walking through a field that is mostly grass but also some flowers.”
Lori Majewski has no doubts that Harry Styles, solo artist, is standing on the precipice of massive stardom. “He brought out the cougar in me and he’s going to do the same to every woman in America.” Maybe she’s right. Or maybe Styles’ appeal will remain limited to grown-up One Direction fans. The only conclusion that can safely be drawn at this juncture is that Harry Styles SNL performance put him much closer to the Adele category than the Ashlee Simpson one.