Happy Harry Styles Album Release Day to all who celebrate! To accompany the release of his first album in four years, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, Styles has debuted its second single, “American Girls.”
The music video for the track, which dropped at noon ET on Friday, is filled with green screens, high-speed drives, motorcycle rides and an array of desert explosions. Opening with Styles walking onto set with a motorcycle helmet in hand, the video follows the pop star as he and his fictional production crew film a series of action sequences. Online, some fans are also theorizing that the music video for “American Girls” references two of his One Direction-era music videos, “Kiss You” and “Steal My Girl.”
While the music video draws inspiration from big-budget, high-energy action films, the song itself is actually more somber. In a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Styles opened up about how feelings of loneliness informed the playful-sounding track.
On the upbeat “American Girls,” which features a funk-forward bassline, Styles reflects on watching his friends fall in love and settle down with American women, as he sings, “‘I’ve known you for ages,’ it’s all that I’ve heard/ My friends are in love with American girls/ I’ve seen it in stages all over the world/ My friends are in love with American girls.”
“The song to me is like, it’s actually quite a lonely song in a lot of ways,” Styles told Lowe. “I watched my three closest friends get married, and actually seeing them trust in something and risk something to find something truly fulfilling in a way that isn’t as, like, shiny and on paper as exciting.”
For Styles, the song serves as a reminder of sorts. Seeing his friends tie the knot made him introspective about his own life and what he wants out of it.
“‘American Girls’ is actually about watching them get married, and there just is a magic when you find the right person that you want to be with,” he said. “It’s like being truly vulnerable with someone, sharing a life with someone like that. Having the time to stop and assess all of it and really look at my life from a bird’s-eye view and go, ‘What do I actually want in my life?’”
Styles added, “I don’t want to be the guy who’s on his own. I want to be fulfilled, and I want to be in great relationships with people. I want to have great friendships with people. I want a family. I want these things. It just allowed me to go, ‘OK, what do I have to do to create space to allow these things to happen?’ I can’t just expect them to just happen to me.”
Some of Styles’s fans are also viewing the song’s title as a playful jab at the “Leave America” chant that emerged during the international leg of his Love On Tour. Fans famously shouted the “leave America” lyric from his track “As It Was,” as an attempt to discourage Styles from spending so much time in the United States and to instead return to the U.K.
In crafting a song about the idea of settling down with an American girl himself, Styles seems to be doubling down on the fact that he enjoys his time in the United States. Thousands of lucky American girls will also be able to see Styles live when he kicks off his 30-show residency, which runs from August through October, at New York City’s Madison Square Garden as part of his Together, Together world tour.