You can’t help but get a familiar feeling when dining at the Hard Rock Cafe, surrounded by rock and roll memorabilia, vintage posters, and decades-old classic hits blasting through the speakers. It’s a safe space for any average rock fan and for those who firmly stand by the words, ‘Rock is not dead.’
After all, it’s been a long while since critics started uttering how rock was far from reviving into mainstream music, and with icons like KISS’ Gene Simmons agreeing on those statements, it could be tough to challenge the argument. Still, fans have never been eager to let the genre slip into the abyss, so they started looking for new icons, even declaring how Greta Van Fleet or Billie Eilish could be the next great rocker.
Well, it would be only fair for fans to pick their heroes and decide whether Van Fleet or Eilish could be their mighty warriors, but it could also be safe to say there is one name, perhaps, a possible savior, people often disregard or overlook: Harry Styles.
The singer has come quite a way from his days with One Direction, where he focused on creating commercial music that was easy to appeal to younger audiences. As Styles established a name for himself in the industry through the years and had major tours while showing off his natural trait for showmanship, it was quite easy for people to compare the musician to the likeness of Freddie Mercury or even Elvis.
I’m not saying Styles is destined to be the next Mercury or turn into the legend Presley was, but from what anyone could gather from his monthly streams and sold-out shows, it could be easy to say that the singer is quite the hot topic as he knows how to have the audiences under his spell.
At least, that’s what I gathered when his track, ‘As It Was,’ started playing through Hard Rock Cafe’s speakers, and the restaurant’s atmosphere changed in a blink. People seemed to engage with the song, as the tune made the diners stop for a minute, search for the lyrics in their minds, and quietly [or not] start murmuring along.
One can’t say for sure whether it was Harry’s vocals or lyrics, or charm that grabbed people’s attention, but whatever it was, it sparked the interest of the room, and although it sounded nothing like the AC/DC or the Who tracks played previously on, people didn’t question why Styles’ pop track featured in the Hard Rock’s playlist, accepting things ‘as it was.’ [Not a bad pun, is it?]
Of course, one can’t expect Styles to be a classic rock act and feature raw elements and instruments in his materials, and perhaps, some might even say that he has a long way to go with his career. Still, it seemed that his tunes didn’t sound so strange or out of place for rock fans, showing that through a sense of pop-rock, the British singer could find himself among the names who might save rock.
The matter here is, after all, to bring the genre back to its popularity, appeal to mainstream audiences, and return rock to the grandiose fashion it had back in the last few decades.
So, with his charming stage persona that might remind one of Robert Plant, a knack for grabbing people’s attention like Freddie Mercury, and a gift to deliver his songs in a way that could easily fit into a rock playlist, Styles could be one of the most prominent figures of the next generation of rock.
