This picture should be funny. But it’s not. It’s serious.
Photo: Stella Blackmon/Netflix

At one point during their extended conversation about Harry Styles’s new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., Q host Tom Power asks Styles about the now-infamous photo of him in Rome when Pope Leo XIV was elected. “I don’t know your spiritual background and it’s actually none of my business,” Power begins, teeing the singer up for a softball question where he can compare live music to spirituality. Before Power can finish his question, however, Styles leans forward with a shit-eating grin and goes, “No! It’s not!” with a big laugh.

We’ve seen this attitude from him on this press tour before. His first big Stateside interview wasn’t with any late-night host but instead vlogger and comedian Brittany Broski. When she asked him about fashion choices from the 2010s he regrets, like any good millennial, Styles rues the days of skinny jeans. “Can I offer one into the ring?” Broski asks. Styles goes “Oh, please,” before abruptly changing his mind. “Actually … no! No, actually. No,” he says with a snap. Laughing along with the rest of her crew, he adds, “I’m a serious person and I don’t deserve it.” It’s fantastic when Styles talks back — a brief reminder of what latent British wit lies dormant in him as he goes on his 12th spiel about how clubbing is about communal love. Toward the end of his One Night in Manchester performance, Styles tells his audience he’s going to leave them with one more song … or maybe two … “But maybe one,” he says. “We’ll see.” He gets hit with an immediate wave of boos. “Wow,” he says, moping around the stage, “I’ve been away for three years. Come back, first show, get booed.”

Styles is funny. He’s been funny. He will continue to be funny, hopefully, despite his seeming desperate to bury this part of him. Sure, there’s a broad levity to his music videos — look at him dance, look at him fly — but when Styles is most interesting, 100 percent of the time, is when he’s being a wry little brat, which he does with a great degree of finesse. Styles wants to be silly. He wants to run around the stage like a child. Why is he sitting down for hour-long interviews in which he continues to speak in vague platitudes and refuses to say what or who he is talking about. When Styles told Broski he’s a “serious person,” he’s so obviously kidding, but he can’t stop doing press like a serious person. Not to go full new-media circuit on him, but he needs to be doing Subway Takes; he needs to be on Chicken Shop Date; he needs to be put in situations that let him goof off a little. There are few longer hours available on the internet right now than his conversation with Zane Lowe. The two of them are practically having a “speaking quietly”–off discussing how Styles learned to take responsibility for when he does something wrong. (What did he do wrong? He’s not telling.) Styles’s music does not require such a meticulous deep dive. He is not a modern philosopher. He doesn’t really want to be serious, it seems, so why pretend for the sake of our enjoyment? Especially when no one really is enjoying it? Meanwhile, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. wracks up lukewarm reviews and scathing tweets.

I never thought I’d be writing these words, but we have never needed Saturday Night Live more than we do this week. It’s time to put Styles in a costume. It’s time to let him break onscreen. It’s time to let him do a monologue in which he’s being kind of a little bitch in the best possible way. Styles can take his art seriously for all he wants, but that doesn’t mean he should sacrifice the humor that’s always been latent to his appeal as a celebrity. He knows it’s a laugh when he calls himself serious, but he can’t stop himself from doing it anyway.

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