Arcade Fire dropping a Harry Styles cover might not be on your bingo card, but sometimes good things come in unexpected packages! The Canadian art rockers made their BBC Radio 2 studio sesh pop with a jangly cover of Styles’ “As It Was”, and fans were here for it. Hazza’s worldwide smash synthpop hit got a rockin’ glow up thanks to Arcade Fire, with the band’s driving rhythm section giving some real bite to proceedings.
Needless to say, that big vocal hook in the chorus was the main event, and frontman Win Butler hit all the right notes on that gorgeous falsetto, with a little help from the band’s backing vocal lineup. Arcade Fire brought “As It Was” home with a heavenly violin melody, while the band kept the rhythm groove chugging along like the midnight special. In The Music Man’s book, sometimes weird and wacky covers like this are the best ones, and Arcade Fire sure gave fans a real treat with this one.
BBC Music uploaded Arcade Fire’s take on “As It Was” to YouTube on May 12, 2022, where it gained 1.6 million views. Fans were digging the new interpretation of the pop favourite, and added comments such as “The original is great, but this one is incredible. I love how Arcade Fire-y they made it sound. And you know, everything is better with strings, and a xylophone, why not!” and “Personally I think ‘As It Was’ is one of the most perfect pop songs ever recorded, but this is incredible in a totally different way.”
Just two weeks after Arcade Fire dropped into the BBC for their “As It Was” cover, Harry Styles himself appeared at the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge and performed a live cut of the song. This was just three weeks after he dropped the hit single, and his live rendition also did some major numbers, drawing 8.4 million views. Seeing Styles work with the energy of the live band behind him was really something, and his magnetism as a frontman just can’t be denied.
Styles released “As It Was” on April 1, 2022, as the first drop from his third studio album, Harry’s House. Styles co-wrote the new wave throwback with Thomas Hull and Tyler Johnson, with the latter pair also handling production. “As It Was” lit up the charts like a firecracker, spending 15 weeks at number one in the US and 10 weeks on top in the UK. The Music Man readers may recall that as a result of these huge chart runs, the single became the best-selling single on the planet in 2022, cementing Styles’ place as pop royalty in his own right.