Harry Styles is sharing new insight into his hiatus.
Following the end of his 22-month Love On Tour in July 2023, the 32-year-old Grammy-winning singer took some much needed time off of work and away from the spotlight.
In a new interview promoting his upcoming album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally., due out on March 6, Harry shared some of the changes he made to his lifestyle, and admitted that he’s learned he needs to slow down.
Keep reading to find out more…“At the end of the tour, the idea of taking time out felt insane,” Harry told The Times. “I didn’t know if I could do it. But it was the right time for me. We’d finished the tour in July, and I was turning 30 in February. It was time for me to stop for a bit and pay some attention to other parts of my life.”
“Presented with this time, I drove [to Italy], and I thought, I’m going to enjoy doing this. When I was in Rome, the city just taught me how to slow down,” he shared. “Italy became so important to me because I was so used to everything moving so quickly and being on the go, but then I remember going to a café and sitting and having a coffee and thinking, ‘I don’t remember the last time I sat down and had a coffee—if I’ve ever sat down and just had a coffee.’”
He continued, “I was suddenly learning, through my friends, that eating a meal is more than just sitting down and refueling. I realized the pleasure in just being in the moment of what you’re doing. The Romans are the best at that; that’s their speciality. The pace they’ve taught me has been so special.”
Harry said that his hiatus also allowed him to experience things he would have missed otherwise, like spending time with his sister Gemma Styles‘ daughter.
“Also, in that time, my sister had a baby, and at any other time in my life, I would have missed a lot of that,” he said. “To be there to get to know my niece as she’s growing up, it’s so obvious to me what’s real. It was really obvious that was where I wanted to be.”
As he prepares to go back on a new world tour, Harry shared some of the lessons he learned as he enters this new phase of his life.
“It was important to get away from the image I had of myself. Since I was young, I’d been seeing this version of me that other people see and that was constantly being mirrored back at me,” he explained. “That’s especially the case in the way we use social media now, for everyone, and I’m not immune to that. In having time away from everything, it’s allowed me to have conversations with myself on a deeper level that I didn’t have time to explore before. I’ve made small changes, like not having Instagram on my phone anymore.”
“I feel so much healthier in my relationship with this world that I’m stepping back into,” Harry concluded.
If you didn’t see, Harry does the Dirty Dancing lift in his new “Aperture” music video!