Former One Direction star Harry Styles to go solo in Birmingham

Boy band star Harry Styles will bring the house down during a 75-minute headline set at Birmingham’s Genting Arena tomorrow.

The One Direction heart-throb has made a successful transition to solo artist after scoring a number one hit with his first solo single, Sign of the Times, which was released in April last year.

The video earned Harry a Brit Award while his self-titled debut album was released in May and debuted atop the UK and US charts, earning him rave reviews. Styles also made his acting debut last year, featuring in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk.

And now the one-time X Factor and former One Direction mega star is ready to headline the biggest solo shows of his career.

Recording a debut album was a unique journey for Harry, who didn’t know what the record would sound like when he began.

He settled on a pop-driven collection of songs that were redolent of the music he listened to during his formative years. He told The Independent. “Pink Floyd, Beatles, Stones, Fleetwood – all the stuff I grew up listening to.”

The record also featured English rock influences, like Oasis, Blur, though it was the McCartneyesque jangles that provided its defining characteristics.

Harry was able to make the record after the all-conquring One Direction decided to take a hiatus. He found it an enjoyable process.

“I just realised that I find writing to be very therapeutic – I think it’s when I allow myself to be most vulnerable. It’s exciting to kind of share a piece of me that I don’t feel like I’ve really put out there before.”

Harry flew out to Jamaica to record the record – to avoid the nine-to-five routine that he might have expected if he’d made it in London or Los Angeles.

“A lot of people, when they make music, they build a wall between them and fans. They think: ‘We’ll do this because people will get it.’ I really wanted to make an album that I wanted to listen to. That was the only way I knew I wouldn’t look back on it and regret it. It was more, ‘What do I want to sit and listen to?’ rather than, ‘How do I shake up compared to what’s on radio right now?’”

Harry had enjoyed a dizzying ascent after being born in Redditch 24 years ago. He was raised in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, after his parents moved there along with his older sister, Gemma, when he was a child.

He worked in a bakery as a teenager and spent his spare time singing, covering songs from Elvis Presley. His first band was White Eskimo, which won a local Battle of the Bands competition, and in 2010 he auditioned as a solo candidate for X Factor, singing Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely. He failed to progress but was put together with four other hopefuls by Nicole Scherzinger, a guest judge – and so began the success of One Direction.

The band recorded an acoustic version of Torn, which dazzled Simon Cowell, who said the group: “were confident, fun, like a gang of friends, and kind of fearless as well.”

The band finished third and soon signed a £2 million deal with Simon Cowell’s Syco records. Their debut single What Makes You Beautiful and Harry soon dated American singer Taylor Swift amongst other high profile stars and models.

Writing his own album gave him the chance to break free.

He’s had many years to grow accustomed to the intensity of being in the public eye – and now knows the pitfalls.

“I’ve never felt the need to explain myself in terms of my personal life. I very much feel like writing is the way you get to say what you want to say and be like, ‘That’s all I have to say on it.’ With that one, I think it’s up to everyone’s interpretation, which is obviously an incredibly diplomatic answer. The line in particular, in context of the verse, paints the picture of the feeling that I was going at. It’s much more powerful when not taken simply as what it is. Was that an all right answer for that question? I think it was all right! I think we danced around that OK.”

He remains enormously respectful of his youthful fans and frequently expresses gratitude for their support.

“When people have fans that are younger girls, people assume that their opinion on the music is tainted by desires that aren’t based around music. When, in fact, I believe that fans that I’ve had in the past, if anything, expect and demand more. Fans are usually the first people to tell you when stuff’s not good enough. And I just think it’s a little naive to just write off younger female fans, in particular, in the way people do. Like I’ve said, young girls were massive fans of the Beatles. It’s crazy to think that they’re not intelligent.”

Most of all, Harry was glad to be given the opportunity to tell his story and write about the things he’d experienced. “I wanted to write my stories, things that happened to me. The number-one thing was I wanted to be honest.”