Harry Styles Explains the Meaning of 'Sign of the Times'

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Although Harry Styles complete self-titled album released today, we’re still groovin’ to “Sign of the Times.”

But has anyone else been scratching their heads over what the song is really about? Harry finally answered that… kind of…

Styles wants to leave his new music somewhat vague and open to fans’ personal interpretation, but in an interview with the New York Times, he revealed a bit about how our world’s social and political climate impacted the single. Styles said,

“We’re in a difficult time, and I think we’ve been in many difficult times before. But we happen to be in a time where things happening around the world are absolutely impossible to ignore. I think it would’ve been strange to not acknowledge what was going on at all. For example, ‘Sign of the Times,’ for me, it’s looking at several different things. That’s me commenting on different things.”

So…what kinds of “things”?

Reporter Joe Coscarelli asked if Brexit, Black Lives Matter, and Trump might be the “things” to which he is referring. Again, Styles remains vague but says that the “things” are,

“Everything you were talking about — just the state of the world at the moment. It’s very much me looking at that. It’s a time when it’s very easy to feel incredibly sad about a lot of things. It’s also nice sometimes to remember that while there’s a lot of bad stuff, there’s also a lot of amazing people doing amazing things in the world.”

I guess we might not really get the full story behind “Sign of the Times”, but I’m down with the idea of letting fans find their own personal connections with his songs.

Allie Bush
Allie Bush is a Contributing Writer at Femestella. She is interested in creating and sharing entertaining and engaging content, in whatever form it may take. She is a proud TV junkie and in her spare time can be found watching late night talk shows, talking about Chrissy Teigen or Amy Poehler, or eating off of other people's plates.