Is Saturday Night Live, home of the effusive “Live from New York” call sign, kind of a weird choice to premiere a song that is at best ambivalent about the city’s virtues? Sure, kinda, yeah, but Harry Styles is a solo artist now, and that means doing things his own way, ever-so-slight tonal dissonance be damned. Styles debuted “Ever Since New York,” his second single after the exactly right “Sign of the Times,” during his stint as musical guest on this weekend’s SNL. The new track, speculated by some to belatedly respond to Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York,” slows things down a beat. That means less opportunity for Styles’s wiggly dance moves, alas, but we’ve got a whole album of potential coming May 12, so no matter.
