Boyband Harry takes country music in one direction ... bland
The BBC is clueless about pop music and always has been. ever since the Beatles teased presenter Brian Matthew for his posh accent on Saturday Club in the Sixties, Auntie has been hopelessly cloth-eared.
The hour-long, one- off music special, Harry Styles At The BBC (BBC1), was in the Beeb’s worst pop tradition. It was sycophantic, cheesy, slow and embarrassing.
harry, if you don’t know the name, was the cheeky chappie in the manufactured boy band One Direction. These days, at the mature age of 23, he’s a solo artist who plays country-tinged melodic rock.
It’s an ambitious genre, ruled by prolific songwriters with a mean streak, from Neil Young to Ryan Adams. Putting harry in with that lot is like taking a chihuahua to a greyhound track: it won’t win, and it might get eaten.
his debut album sold respectably, though he’s no ed Sheeran, the real British mega- seller. Perhaps that’s why the bean- counters at the BBC awarded harry a ‘special’. he’s big enough to be famous, but not big enough to say No.
his voice was constipated and faintly flat on the first number, though he did get better. Not that the audience cared — almost all female, they waved their arms and squealed at the loud bits.
harry’s backing band are session musicians who barely move or look at him, and create an efficient, anodyne sound. But nobody in the history of rock ever said: ‘I want to hear some of that note-perfect, passionless country music, yee-haw!’
The strongest number of the night was a cover of Girl Crush by Little Big Town. The original is thrilling, a recent country music ‘song of the year’. The best you can say about harry is that he didn’t ruin it completely.
Wearing the sort of florid suit that looks like pyjamas anywhere but Nashville, harry was quizzed between songs by Radio 1’ s Nick Grimshaw. here, he showed what he’s really good at: avoiding questions.
every reply in his transatlantic accent was corporate and meaningless, humble and uninformative. The girls shrieked at every halfhearted remark. Grimshaw gave up trying to learn anything, or even getting harry to crack a joke.
Instead, we watched a bizarre tape of the two of them visiting an old people’s home, and having a fish supper. harry revealed he doesn’t like vinegar on his chips. he must prefer them flavourless and bland, like his music.
Actor and journalist Ross Kemp doesn’t look like a One Direction fan. Maybe he is — he could have a poster on his bedroom wall for all we know, but he doesn’t seem the type. That gives him a licence to make documentaries among the world’s hardest criminals.
They don’t look at him and think: ‘Poncy actor!’ They just take a step back.
Behind Bars: Inside Barlinnie (ITV) saw him admitted as an inmate at Glasgow’s notorious jail. It began with a claustrophobic ride in a prison truck, before Kemp was strip- searched for weapons and phonecards.
Though he wasn’t banged up in a cell, he did take the camera crew into every part of the prison — the landings, the exercise yard, the kitchens — and coaxed some highly candid interviews out of the inmates.
he baulked at the idea of prison as a place of punishment. Deep under that tough exterior, there’s a bleeding heart.
But he knows how to wring answers out of people, even when they are incriminating themselves with admissions of crimes. he could even get Styles to say something interesting.