On the eve of his final show of Love on Tour, Harry Styles dropped the highly-anticipated music video for “Daylight,” most likely the final single from his Grammy-winning third album, Harry’s House. Rather than teasing the music video days in advance, Styles cheekily teased the music video’s release in the middle of his Lisbon show on July 18, where fans got their first look of Styles flying through the air.
Hmm…☀️ pic.twitter.com/DEdg37KwDt
— HSD Love On Tour (@hsdlot) July 18, 2023
In his interview with Howard Stern, Styles described the writing process for Daylight as a “stream-of-consciousness.” “Daylight” delightfully describes the early stages of a long-distance relationship and gorgeously captures the addictive euphoria of experiencing things with someone new for the first time and the giddy anticipation of the next interaction. The dreamy synths and instrumentals in “Daylight,” and in other songs on Harry’s House, perfectly evoke the hazy, dream-like state of infatuation Styles details in the song. He croons about “cursing the daylight” so he can finally spend time with his person.
Directed by Tanu Muino, who previously worked with Styles on the “As It Was” music video, “Daylight” features Styles traipsing around a circus, surrounded by aerialists, knife-throwers, and other zany characters. The video opens up to an image of a never-ending ladder and pans down to Styles climbing down. He proceeds to enter the circus and skip around the grounds. Throughout the video, Styles joins in on all the circus antics, juggling, walking on a tightrope, serving as the knife-throwing target, and is even blasted out of a cannon. However, he remains unbothered throughout it all and floats around like his head is up in the clouds.
“Daylight” is the perfect song to close out the Harry’s House era since the song was completed at sunrise. In his 2022 interview with Zane Lowe, Styles went into further detail about the writing process for Daylight, recalling that ”‘We have to find a way to stay awake and finish this because if we all go to bed then this is going to turn out not what it would if we finished it tonight.’ We pulled an all-nighter and then went down to the beach as the sun was coming up.”
As the sun sets on the pivotal Harry’s House era and the final leg of Love on Tour, his fans and the world will curse the daylight until Styles re-emerges once again for the next phase of his career.
