Kid Harpoon (aka Tom Hull) has already told Music Week the story of how he and Harry Styles wrote Falling while the singer was in a towel fresh out of the shower, and now the new video for the song has landed.
Styles meets a watery end in the film, which matches the heavy emotion in the song. Hull has been a close friend and collaborator since working on Styles’ debut, and was part of a close-knit writing team on Fine Line. Styles told the story of the album when he starred on the cover of Music Week in December.
The video premiered today (February 28) and racked up more than 450,000 in less than an hour. The track is in line for a sales boost, its current OCC total is 110,531, with a highest to date chart position of 29.
Hull said Falling represents the bravery at the heart of Styles’ musical approach.
“There was an element of the unknown about making the whole album, it was about figuring things out,” he said. “Harry’s publisher could send him a song and say, ‘This is a hit, can you go and sing it?’ And he could just go and sing that song.”
There was an element of the unknown about making the whole album
Kid Harpoon
Hull said he and Styles actively fought against that idea. “There’s an element of, ‘Can we figure out what a hit song is and write it?’ But what was really fun about this was that we would can a lot of songs because they could have been hits for someone, but that's not what we're trying to do. We were trying to do something specific to Harry, that captures all the elements of his personality and everything he wants to do.”
Opening up about what makes Styles tick musically, Hull added: “He loves pop music, but he also loves Bon Iver, and weird ’70s records that you've never heard of, he loves [LA soft-rock band] Bread.”
“It's a credit to him, because our job is to make the best records we can, but if you don't have someone like Harry inspiring you to push on and do something interesting and ambitious, then it doesn't really work. You can't just manufacture that, and that the vibe,” Hull said. “There are some incredible songs that aren’t pop songs.”
Hull was at the BRIT Awards earlier this month where Styles performed Falling and downed tequila with Lizzo and host Jack Whitehall. He said he still enjoys Fine Line just as much as he did while they were making it.
“This sounds weird, but we listened to it all the time, everywhere we went, driving to a friend's house for dinner, on our way to a night out, we’d have it on in the background all the time,” he said. “It gives you a much better sense of, what songs you actually do enjoy and what songs you want to listen to all the time. I just want to listen to it, I still love it.”
Before Fine Line was released, Music Week visited Styles in the studio. Read our December 2019 cover story here. Read an interview with Sony Music Group CEO Rob Stringer here.
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