A short clip of Harry Styles making his big screen leading man bow in Don't Worry Darling – the psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde – has caused something of a stir beyond the usual swooning.
'What is that accent?', asked one Twitter user. 'Which one?', replied another.
This strikes us as somewhat unkind. What we can observe, from the nineteen-seconds of evidence available, is that Harry, a 28-year-old British pop star best known for opening his mouth and singing, is playing a British character, Jack, with a habit of opening his mouth and talking. When you are the world's most famous pop star, this clearly prompts confusion. 'Not many people get this opportunity,' his character, who is not Harry Styles, roars at a perplexed-looking Florence Pugh, waving his finger in the air as if trying to distract somebody.
What we can say with surety is that Harry Styles is playing a character who sounds exactly like Harry Styles, probably on purpose - unlike co-star Florence Pugh, who plays an American flawlessly, definitely on purpose.
Of course, this leads us to the great existential question of this after One Direction (A1D?) age: what does Harry Styles sound like now? As recently as May, fans were scratching their little heads and asking for more information, please, about the Australian twang, American crackle and mockney bounce that had crept into young Harry's Cheshire brogue when he was interviewed by Apple's Zane Lowe.
To review: once upon a time (2010), Harry Styles left his sleepy Cheshire village with little more than his sleepy Cheshire voice to have a pop at The X Factor, join a little band, take a little me time, then tour the world happily ever after. Harry, like most twentysomethings, is very impressionable — he readily admits that his taste in fashion has been shaped by various people, places, things. He splits his time between the US, where his director and girlfriend Olivia Wilde (the brains behind Don't Worry, Darling) lives, and London, so he also has an apartment in New York around the corner from Taylor Swift and previously had a £4.8m pad in Los Angeles, which he sold in 2019. In his song Cherry, he writes 'I noticed that there's a piece of you in how I dress/ Take it as a compliment'. He takes things from people, tries them on, and sees how they look.
A shifting accent should also be taken as a compliment. Bidialectalism - speaking with two or more accents - is almost always subconscious. Doing it consciously is very tricky (see also: acting). Subconsciously, you always have the impulse to adapt to your surroundings, wherever you are. In London, you subconsciously drop all the little regional markers that make you hard for locals to understand - in California, you do the same. You move to the lowest common denominator accent.
Linguist David Crystal said that if you like someone you talk like them — you're like me, so you must like me. If Harry sounds a bit wonky, it's only because he wants you all to like him so much. Probably. Either that, or he's got a lousy dialect coach.