Harry Styles responds to live in Italy Backlash
As a reference, apart from a few, sometimes strange sightings – such as in the crowd for the election of the new pope in the Vatican, and running various races – the 32-year-old Harry has been enjoying a quiet life away from the spotlight since his world tour ended in July 2023.
But now, he is gearing up for the release of his long-awaited fourth album, Kiss Always. A disco, sometimesand while working the promotional circuit, he reflected on the slower pace of life he enjoyed after moving to Italy during his time off.
In a Sunday Times profile, it was revealed that shortly after his 30th birthday in 2024, Harry was living in a rented house just outside Rome with his friend Alessandro Michele, who was the creative director of Gucci. The star remembered: “It was a big, important, time of change for me – to stop working and settle down somewhere for a while. I was settling into that life and a new place. I knew how important that time was in my life.”
Later in the interview, Harry was asked what he had been up to over the past two and a half years, and said: “At the end of the tour, the idea of quitting felt crazy. I don’t know if I could do it. But it was the right time for me – we finished the tour in July and I turned 30 in February. It was time to focus on other parts of my life.”
“Italy has been something special for me over the last few years,” Harry said. “I drove from London to Rome during Covid, at that time you could walk. I had spent all my years before that trip – with small gaps in between – and if I had a week off, I would not drive anywhere, I would get there and come back as soon as possible. I was introduced to this moment, I drove there – and I thought: ‘I will be happy to do this. When I was in Rome, the city just taught me how to slow down.”
“Italy became very important for me because I was used to everything moving fast and being on the go, but then I remember going to a cafe and sitting drinking coffee and thinking: ‘I don’t remember the last time I sat down and drank coffee – if I ever sat down and drank coffee,'” he continued. “I had already learned, from my friends, that eating food is more than just sitting down and filling up on fuel. I saw the joy of being in the moment of what you do. The Romans are the best at that – that’s their choice. The pace he taught me was very special.”
And this is the part of Harry’s discussion that many disagree with, with social media users calling out his claim that the slow lifestyle is the “specialty” of people living in Rome, and his apparent ignorance of the wealth and privilege that has given him this lifestyle. To give you a sense of the general conversation, one viral tweet, which has been liked more than 137,000 times, responds to Harry’s words: “The right to call Italian life ‘slow’ is very amazing. You have the right to sit down and drink your coffee comfortably somewhere in Italy because you are a rich man, not because you are dumbare.”
Italians also weighed in, with a popular tweet that translates into English as: “For now, this is for the Romans to relax and in Rome he found a slow life. ROME. A slow life. The really rich live in the same reality.”
Harry didn’t publicly comment on the backlash at the time, but fans think he subtly acknowledged the answer in his latest interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, released on Wednesday. It was actually Zane who brought it up, telling Harry: “When you went to Italy, it didn’t surprise me because we had talked about it… What about Rome? What made you go back to that place?”
“It was just the place, for me, I was able to slow down for the first time,” Harry replied. “Sitting down to drink coffee. It doesn’t mean I’ve been drinking coffee all day. I’ve been doing other things.”
“For me, it wasn’t the coffee,” he continued. It wasn’t about this thing, it was about the appreciation in the way of life there, the way they treat special food, how special they treat their relationships with others, how special they treat the time they spend together.”
“Ultimately, I think it comes back to appreciating the love around you and the time you have,” Harry concluded. “It was for me, it was just the right time to… I think I knew that if I go on, and stop this tour, and make another record, and watch that, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life without taking the time to check myself, like: ‘Am I considering how important this is?’ Because you can’t miss something if you don’t go anywhere. You have to give space to allow something to be seen as special again. “
Reacting to this part of the interview, one person tweeted: “The fact that Harry kept stressing ‘MY’ about being able to take it easy in Italy and that he wasn’t planning and drinking coffee all day lmaoo didn’t see that tweet.”
“Harry talks about sitting down and having a coffee fight HELP IM CRYING HES ON TWITTER,” one wrote, while another added: “I’m uncomfortable dealing with the hate he’s getting when he talks about sitting down and having coffee in Italy I DON’T HAVE.”
