Look, nobody said that going solo after being in an astronomically popular boy band was going to be easy. Especially when your fan base picks apart your every suggested romantic entanglement. Especially when one of your more infamousentanglements was with another musician very famous for making the most of hers. Harry Styles learned this (again) the hard way when he sat down with BBC Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw, who merrily grilled the singer about his new single, “Two Ghosts,” which includes a line about blue eyes and red lips. “This has been on the actual news,” Grimshaw began, “apparently Harry Styles has written a song about Taylor Swift. . . . I’m doing you a favor here.” (Cue Styles, sotto voce: “Weird favor.”)
It’s a topic that has come up a few times for Styles, who spoke to Rolling Stone about the relationship for an April issue. “Certain things don’t work out. There’s a lot of things that can be right, and it’s still wrong,” Styles said. “In writing songs about stuff like that, I like tipping a hat to the time together. You’re celebrating the fact it was powerful and made you feel something, rather than ‘this didn’t work out, and that’s bad.’”
Cut to today. What is “Two Ghosts” about? Says Styles: “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory . . . sometimes things change and you can be, you know, do all the same things, and sometimes it’s just different, you know. . . . 2017, philosopher, London, England.” Fans of tabloid romances may remember that Swift allegedly penned both “Out of the Woods” and “Style” about Styles and his “long hair, slicked back, white T-shirt,” which made mention to none other than that “red lip, classic thing that you like,” and anyway, Grimshaw drew his own conclusion, queuing up the song while announcing it was about Swift. Styles’s response? A hearty scream. Which, honestly? Fair enough. Watch for yourself:
