Harry Styles discusses his love of Joni Mitchell and The Cribs
In an interview with Nardwuar, Harry Styles talked about his nerve-wracking encounter with Joni Mitchell, his love of The Cribs, and how the Wakefield band of brothers almost contributed to a One Direction record.
Styles spoke with the iconic interviewer backstage at Coachella this year, ahead of his headline performance. During the chat, the ‘As It Was’ singer opened up about meeting one of his heroes, Joni Mitchell, and revealed he once covered her song, ‘River’, in front of the singer at her house in Los Angeles.
“She had a Christmas carol singalong one time and I was invited by the wonderful Brandi Carlile. It was very fun,” Styles said. “I wasn’t going to sing anything, and then Brandi volunteered me to sing ‘River’, which was one of the more nervewracking moments of my life,” he added.
Their conversation then moved on to The Cribs, who almost wrote songs for One Direction, but it didn’t come to fruition. Styles explained: “That was I think in 2012-2013. I had a couple of friends who were friends with [Ryan Jarman] and we spoke to him about writing something. I don’t think it ended up happening, but I like The Cribs.”
Last year, Cribs bassist Gary Jarman told NME: “There were definitely conversations between our managements, and me and Ryan were supposed to go to Los Angeles and London to do some writing, but our schedules clashed. We actually had ‘Burning For No One’ and ‘An Ivory Hand’ earmarked for One Direction on a demo, but when the sessions never happened, we used them ourselves.”
Meanwhile, Styles was recently supported on the European leg of his Love On Tour concerts by Wolf Alice, and invited their singer Ellie Rowsell on-stage with him on the tour’s final night in Lisbon to perform the band’s track ‘No Hard Feelings’.
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