Harry Styles is aware of the discourse around him.
In his second time pulling double duty as both musical guest and host (though the Grammy winner has been a musical guest a number of times before as both solo artist and band member for One Direction), the musician addressed his queerbaiting allegations with a tongue-in-cheek — rather, tongue-in-Ben-Marshall’s-cheek — joke.
“Back then,” Styles began, addressing his career pre-hiatus, “people seemed to pay a lot of attention to the clothes I was wearing and some people accused me of something called ‘queerbaiting.’ But did it ever occur to you: You don’t know everything about me, Dad!”
Noting his time away from the studio, the “Fine Line” singer said he was “tremendously boring” and that “people pretend to find that [his hobbies] interesting” because he’s Harry Styles.
Watch on Deadline
“It’s better than the alternative,” he quipped, as the screen flashed a paparazzi image of Prince Andrew, who was recently arrested for his connections to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
However, the “Aperture” songwriter said he was “happy” to be back at work with his new album, called Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
“What’s better than kissing all the time? Which I don’t actually do — I don’t kiss all the time,” he said, as repertory player Chloe Fineman appeared on the Studio 8H stage and left in dismay.
“Sometimes, kissing can be great,” Styles continued, “you know, if you’re really good at it, and you’re a good person,” as Sarah Sherman rolled her eyes and stormed off.
“Or if you have a tight little bum,” the multi-hyphenate posited, as Marshall showed up. “C’mon, Ben, everyone knows there’s nothing little about that thang. You’re holding a damn wagon back there.”
“Whatever, come here,” Styles relented, as he leaned in for a peck with Marshall.
“Now that’s queerbaiting,” he concluded with a wink.
Watch the opener above.