Former boy-bander Harry Styles’ third solo album, Harry’s House, had a break in. The full album leaked almost a month ahead of its May 20 release date, and fans had a tumultuous response — one side called the cops, the other threw a rager.
It’s not necessarily breaking news. Album leaks are par for the course in large fandoms, especially among the pop aficionados, from Taylor Swift to Charli XCX. But the response to the leak of Harry’s House is a strange example of how a fandom, something that’s fundamentally a form of escapism and entertainment, is often fraught with community fabricated moral issues. As the 13-song track list of Harry’s House made its way through fandom spaces, Styles’ fans quickly divided and drew strict moral lines over listening to the leaked songs.
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The debate is representative of the divisive nature of fandoms, spaces that constantly seek to assign moral superiority to the way they consume content and support their idol. Like is typical of these fandom rifts, the Harry’s House leak probably won’t affect the millionaire pop star, as leaks have become a somewhat inevitable part of the modern album cycle.
Breaking into Harry’s House
Within hours, Harry’s House spread on Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, and Discord, and with it, of course, circulated fandom ethics discourse. “I went on Twitter on my lunch break and the first thing I saw was tweets from mutuals saying, ‘if you see the leaks don’t listen to them,'” said Emily Alvarado, a 23-year-old cashier in Stockton, California who has been “living, breathing Harry Styles,” since the early days of One Direction.
“It was an inner battle for me. Harry worked so hard on this album I shouldn’t listen to it, but on the other side of me was like, ‘Listen to it, listen to it, listen to it.’ I eventually gave in and listened to it not even two minutes after finding the audio on Tumblr,” continued Alvarado. She said she stopped herself after two songs because she thought to herself, “Girl, how dare you?”
While Alvarado battled her inner “What would Harry want me to do” monologue, the debate grew. Fans quickly discovered it wasn’t just Harry’s House that leaked, but additional unreleased songs from Styles’ self-titled debut album, as well as One Direction demos from his early pop star days. Some fans theorized that the older songs were leaked to distract from Harry’s House. Others didn’t speculate. The question became: What should we do with all of this new content?
The loudest online accounts had an immediate answer: It was OK to listen to the older leaked songs, but unforgivable to listen to Harry’s House. This subset of the fandom then sought to enforce its ethical code on their mutuals and followers.
To those outside of the contentious and insular fandom, these dividing lines may appear contradictory, the entire “respecting Styles’ artistic vision” argument works for the Harry’s House leaks, but doesn’t extend to the older tracks. But this is just the kind of faulty logic that dictates fandom spaces. This popular stance was legitimized by a now-deleted tweet from the official Sony Twitter account that read, “PSA: Friends don’t let friends listen to Harry’s House before May 20.” The popular music and fandom podcast, Every Single Album, that breaks down Styles’ career echoed the opinion that Harry’s House leaks are off limits, but the rest are a free-for-all.
Styles fans and leaks have a whole lot of history
For some veteran fans, album leaks are just a part of the fabric of fandom. Jess, a 24-year-old who works in advertising in Los Angeles who has chosen to remain anonymous out of fear of being blacklisted from Harry Styles events, felt no hesitation over listening to the leaked version of Harry’s House. Jess has been involved in the online Taylor Swift and Harry Styles fandom since she was 13. “I remember when Red leaked in 2012 and there was this same discourse then, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t listen. It’s disrespectful. I have to wait.’ But at this point I have been a fan for so long. I’m still going to buy the concert tickets, listen at midnight when the album comes out. They’re not going to know and I don’t think Harry would really care,” Jess told Mashable.
Tweet may have been deleted
And Jess is right, Styles is no stranger to music being leaked. Nearly every One Direction album was leaked a week in advance of its release date. When One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories, leaked back in 2013, Styles told Digital Spy, “If there was an album I liked and I could listen to it a week before, I probably would.”
If there was an album I liked and I could listen to it a week before, I probably would.
Pro leakers used Styles’ quote to justify listening to the album, but those opposed don’t find the situations comparable. “A week-early leak and a month-early leak are two different fish in my opinion,” explained Lily Marsden, a 23-year-old admin worker in Birmingham, England. “One Direction put out new music literally every year, whereas this album took three years. That’s a lot more work and time and crafting he’s put into it,” maintained Marsden.
A few of the older leaked songs were familiar to fans, like debut album cuts “Medicine” and “Anna,” which Styles used to fill out his first tour’s setlist and rose to fan favorite status, so much so that Styles performed “Medicine” at his second weekend headlining Coachella.
“I listened to the ‘Anna’ and ‘Medicine’ leaks without hesitation because we all knew ‘Medicine’ and ‘Anna’ word for word anyway, so it didn’t feel naughty to do,” shared Marsden.
Devoted fans also recognized two infamous song titles among the batch of leaked music, “Complicated Freak” and “Baby Honey,” which had been spotted years ago on a whiteboard in the background of a photo of Styles working on his self-titled album in 2016. The two tracks had previously sparked speculation and intrigue in the fandom, which made fans feel entitled to them. The sustained fervor over “Complicated Freak” and “Baby Honey” is typical of members of the fandom that obsessed over and “claimed” these songs for six years before even hearing them.
Now, “Baby Honey” has been used in at least 10,000 videos on TikTok, which Styles and his label could have removed if they wanted.
Like Marsden, I am drawn to Styles’ fandom because I want to be a part of a community that enjoys dissecting his music, style, and interviews as much as I do. Depending on what pocket of the fandom you find yourself in, the presence of a leak has intense social repercussions — you might listen to the leak because all your mutuals online are doing the same, or you might avoid it like the plague as your algorithm fills with public shaming of those who do listen. At its core, fandom is about staying apprised of everything your fave is doing, building connections around those cultural moments, and being in on a niche set of knowledge and jokes. A leak can compromise that natural order.
When the Harry’s House fell into my lap two weeks after it leaked courtesy of my very offline friend who is a casual listener of Styles, my first thought was, “Will any of my Harry Styles besties listen to it with me?” It was a significant question, as I wondered if listening to the leak would sacrifice the experience of hearing the album and reacting to it in real time with my friends.
Otten herself advocated against listening to the leak on her One Direction TikTok account @1d4president, she told Mashable. “I’ve been keeping up with the promo for the album, and it’s all super exciting, and I didn’t want to ruin that for myself and for Harry, because he’s been building it all up and it’s so fun… He didn’t want to give us the album until May 20, so I’m not going to take that away from him,” explained Otten.
While Otten didn’t listen to the Harry’s House leak, she did listen to the older leaked songs. “I think it is okay because we were never supposed to hear them anyway,” said Otten. “If you’re going to listen to the leaked content, listen to the stuff we were never supposed to hear, don’t spoil things for yourself.”
Fandom is a fine line
What many fans seem to be ignoring is the nature of album promotion. Reviews of Harry’s House published before its release date include direct lyrics from most of the songs, so even if you avoided the leak and the subsequent posting about the leak, the album may still be “spoiled” for you.
But fans argue that the album roll out is part of Styles’ artistic vision. “People are saying it’s not OK to listen to the Harry’s House leaks, because he wants you to hear it in a certain way. Yeah, he has worked hard on it, but I don’t think you’re underselling it by listening to it. By the same token, he didn’t put those other songs out for a reason. If we are respecting his artistic vision by having Harry’s House come out the way he wants it to, but listening to the old songs that he didn’t want to come out, it’s the same difference,” shared Morgan Anderson, a 22-year-old recent graduate of UC Berkeley’s environmental engineering masters program. “Listening to [the One Direction and Harry Styles leaks] doesn’t really make you morally better.”
Anderson ruminated over whether or not to listen to the leaks, but ultimately decided to. “I’d had a pretty bad day. My whole timeline was already tweeting lyrics and stuff, so it was already getting ruined, and that sparked my curiosity beyond repair. I decided to only listen to it one time,” shared Anderson. She ended up listening to some songs more than once.
Is being a fan a devotion to an artist’s success? Or is it about your own personal experience with the artist’s music and other fans?
Don’t worry darling, Anderson listening to the leaks probably won’t impact Styles’ success, “As It Was”, the single that was officially released ahead of the album, broke the single day streaming record on Spotify. And the fans Mashable interviewed for this piece that did listen to the leak, like Anderson and Jess, pre-ordered the Harry’s House vinyl and will also stream the shit out of the album. Instead, the debate surrounding the Harry’s House leak is a reflection of how groups within a fandom conceptualize what it means to be a fan. Is being a fan a devotion to an artist’s success? Or is it about your own personal experience with the artist’s music and other fans?
Regardless of what you land on, that doesn’t affect the fandom urge to moralize everything: “Why did being a fan of pop stars, become such an ethical debate in every single thing they do? Like, no one is a better or worse person for listening to a leak or having a certain opinion as long as it’s not offensive. It’s like, just let people do what they want, like mind your business,” shared Jess.
