Is Harry Styles really the new David Bowie?

There’s something ludicrous about old people trying to understand the pop music preferred by youth. Mind you, youth is relative and here I am at the age of 62, explaining Harry Styles.

Styles isn’t just a pop star, he’s a phenomenon and therefore worthy of examination by ancient people like me. Last week, Radio 4’s flagship news programme Today featured him alongside Ukraine and ‘partygate’, asking: ‘Does Harry Styles ever put a foot wrong?’

Having just played his first London gig in four years, where nearly 5,000 teenage girls sang every word to his latest album, this month he will play Wembley Stadium, entertaining 140,000 people over two nights. The album in question, Harry’s House, became the most streamed album by a male artist on its first day of release ever.

So what’s the secret of the 28-year-old who grew up above a Worcestershire pub before leaving school at 16 to work in a bakery, and whose career started when his manufactured boy band came third in the 2010 series of TV talent show The X Factor?

For a start, he’s not Ed Sheeran, the most successful pop star of our times, whose voice is best described as pasteurised ‘urban’ delivered with an insistent, hollow enthusiasm.