Cracking the Zarry Code - how Deep is real.

What woke me up

Over the past few years I had seen Harry become increasingly "pansexual" in his public appearances: waving around rainbow flags and giving ambiguous answers to interview questions. But Harry had always been like that, I thought. Flirt with everyone, charm everyone, be all things to all people.

But then this year something changed. On 13 March 2018 Zigi broke up. Harry was still touring, in his increasingly flamboyant suits, singing covers of songs with the pronouns suggesting he liked boys as well as girls. So far, so on the fence. But around the time of the break-up, Harry sang a new song, Medicine, featuring the following lyrics:

Here to take my medicine/ take my medicine

Rest it on your fingertips

Up to your mouth / feeling it out/ feeling it out.

The boys and the girls are in / I mess around with him

And I'm ok with it...

I had a few / got drunk on you / and now I'm wasted

And when I sleep / I'm gonna dream / of how you tasted.

When I heard this I knew that the game had changed. There was a huge deal about the song, and the Larry shippers came out in force. At this point, I didn't automatically think Zarry was real, but my antennae were up and I started hunting for clues.

First clue: Harry's setlist on tour included the song Girl Crush by Big Town and he was singing it without changing the pronouns. For example:

I wanna taste her lips / Yeah cos they taste like you

Second, he was singing Just a Little Bit of Your Heart  ("JALBOYH"), a song he wrote for Ariana Grande in 2013 (released 2014). This song is interesting because when I first heard it (and I knew Harry had written it) I couldn't believe how accurately he had written from (I assumed) a straight woman's viewpoint. It was obvious to me that the words were addressed to a man, whoever was singing them.

I don't ever tell you / how I really feel / cos I can't find the words to / say what I mean /

I know I'm not your only / but at least I'm one

If this was written from personal experience in a straight relationship, Harry would have been describing his love for a woman who has more than one partner. I'm not saying women don't ever fit that mould but I found it very hard to imagine Harry Styles being in that vulnerable situation as regards a woman – unless it was someone the public knew absolutely nothing about. I assumed he was imagining what it was like for a woman who is being cheated on or two-timed by a guy.

I never imagined he was singing about his own feelings for Zayn....

*

At this stage in my search, I still thought Harry might just be exploring his sexuality through songs, or even expressing general feelings for men. The Larry shippers were of course claiming every little sign for their own.

So at the time of my writing this, Harry is singing JALBOYH regularly on his tour and not changing the pronouns.

My next step was the updated Zarry content on youtube. I looked at aestheticallyzarry, zarryslovestory, dark zarry and Havana stylik. But most of all, zarry documentaries. These amazing zarries have all done fantastic research on all the coincidences, including the tweets zarry have shared, the rings they wear that link them to each other and the matching tattoos. Zarry Documentaries (Bob Dylan) is beyond, and I recommend you see all of Bob's work on YT as it is awesome – detailed, logical and beautifully put together. What I am adding (I hope) is simply a closer look at the song lyrics and the videos.

Once I'd watched all of these I knew one thing for sure: we know so much more about Zarry than we did at the time I wrote Deep. Having studied those YT updates, I also started to believe Zarry was probably real – in other words that they had feelings for each other and had probably acted on those feelings at some point. But I still didn't believe that most of Zayn's songs were about Harry, or that most of Harry's songs were about Zayn. I felt there were a lot of coincidences (and that maybe Z and H were just playing games with us to increase their exposure/get more downloads). In short, I remained cynical.