On “Boyfriends” — a lovely, Laurel Canyon-ish acoustic ballad from his new album, “Harry’s House” — Harry Styles runs down some of the many reasons such figures are to be avoided.
“They take you for granted,” he sings, close-harmonizing with himself like a one-man Crosby, Stills & Nash. They call only when they “don’t want to be alone.” Worst of all, he points out, they start “secretly drinking,” at which point it “gets hard to know” what they’re thinking.
When Styles, who found global fame in the British boy band One Direction before striking out as a solo act, debuted “Boyfriends” at Coachella last month, the 28-year-old introduced the song by asking how many people in the festival crowd had had a boyfriend and how many hadn’t. Then he added: “To boyfriends everywhere: F— you.”
