Harry Styles

Released May 12, 2017 via Erskine and Columbia, Harry Styles began in autumn 2016 at the Gee Jam studio in Port Antonio, Jamaica, where Styles and his team spent two months writing. Most of it was recorded at The Village in Los Angeles, with Jeff Bhasker executive producing alongside Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson and Alex Salibian. Guitarist Mitch Rowland, brought in when a session player dropped out, stayed on as the core of the band.

The record reaches back to late-sixties and seventies British rock and soft-rock balladry: ten songs, forty minutes. "Sign of the Times" is a slow, near six-minute piano ballad that climbs into a gospel finale, and it went to No. 1 in the UK and No. 4 on the Hot 100. "Meet Me in the Hallway" opens the record on voice and guitar, "Kiwi" is distorted stomp-rock, "Sweet Creature" a fingerpicked love song, and "From the Dining Table" closes on acoustic guitar and a vocal barely above a whisper. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called it a "superb solo debut"; The Guardian's Alexis Petridis noted that "not all the album's musical homages work."

It debuted at No. 1 in the US and the UK. Its 230,000 first-week US units were the biggest opening for a British male artist's debut since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking in 1991, and the IFPI ranked it the ninth best-selling album in the world in 2017.

180g black vinyl with a 12-page booklet.