Harry Styles

Harry Edward Styles was born on 1 February 1994 in Redditch, Worcestershire, England, the son of pub owner Anne Twist (née Selley) and finance worker Desmond “Des” Styles.

When he was a child, he moved with his parents and older sister, Gemma, to the village of Holmes Chapel in Cheshire. His parents divorced when he was seven years old.

As a child, he sang covers on a karaoke machine he was given by his grandfather, and the first song he recorded was Elvis Presley’s ‘The Girl of My Best Friend’.

Styles attended the Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School, where he was the lead singer for the band White Eskimo, which won a local Battle of the Bands competition.

At the age of 16, he worked part-time at the W. Mandeville Bakery in Holmes Chapel. The bakery welcomes Styles fans from around the world with a huge banner of Harry from his time there.

Following a suggestion from his mother, on 11 April 2010, Styles auditioned as a solo contestant for the seventh series of The X Factor, singing a rendition of Train’s ‘Hey, Soul Sister’. After Simon Cowell suggested that the track was not right for him, he instead sang a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’.

His musical career began in 2010 as part of One Direction, the boy band formed on The X Factor after each member of the band had been eliminated from the solo contest. Styles suggested the name One Direction to his bandmates, which they agreed to.

As of 2020, One Direction have sold a total of 70 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. The band won nearly 200 awards, including seven Brit Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards and six Billboard Music Awards.

Styles released his self-titled debut solo album in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US and was one of the world’s top-ten best-selling albums of the year.

Styles confirmed in 2017 that he has polythelia, a condition where a person has more than two nipples.

His favourite album is Astral Weeks by Northern Irish singer, and songwriter Van Morrison.

Styles’ second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 with the biggest ever first-week sales by an English male artist. Rolling Stone included it in their 2020 revision of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Styles auditioned for the role of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s musical biopic Elvis (2022). Luhrmann stated that while “Harry is a really talented actor … the real issue with Harry is, he’s Harry Styles. He’s already an icon”

Styles’ widely acclaimed third album, Harry’s House (2022), broke several records, receiving the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2023. Its lead single, ‘As It Was,’ became the number-one song of 2022 globally. Outside the UK and US, the song was a commercial success and topped the charts in 45 countries.

Styles is one of the most-followed Twitter users, with over 38 million followers, and has one of the most-followed Instagram accounts in the UK, with over 48 million followers.

‘As It Was’ earned the Guinness World Records title for the most streamed track on Spotify within 24 hours by a male artist, and broke the Apple Music streaming record for most first-day streams for a 2022 release.

In August and September 2022, as part of his Love On Tour, Styles performed 15 sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden. To mark the achievement, a permanent banner was raised in his honor inside the venue. He became the third musical artist in history to have a banner raised at Madison Square Garden, following rock band Phish and artist Billy Joel.

On 2 June 2022, Styles announced he was donating his appearance fee from Apple’s AirPods’ spatial audio campaign to the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian aid organization that is responding to the more than six million refugees being forced to flee Ukraine.

In 2023, it was announced that Texas State University would be offering a course on Styles called “Harry Styles and the Cult of Celebrity: Identity, the Internet and European Pop Culture.”

In June 2024, Styles’ childhood village Holmes Chapel launched a 2.5-3 hour guided walking tour around the area. The tour follows the bakery where Styles used to work, the Tremlow Viaduct featured in the One Direction documentary This Is Us where Styles signs his name, and other attractions. The Holmes Chapel Partnership were forced to hire tour guides to cope with demand after 5,000 fans visited the village in 2023.There were over 150 applications for the role of a tour guide.