Harry Styles drops video for ‘Satellite’ - will the former One Direction star earn another UK top 10 single?

Fans of the Disney film WALL-E and Harry Styles fans will meet in the middle of the metaphorical Venn diagram today as the former One Direction singer has released the music video for ‘Satellite’, the fourth single to emerge from the singer’s celebrated third studio album, Harry’s House, which was released almost a year ago and has since been certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).

How the two fanbases will meet in the middle stems from the concept behind the music video, featuring a small robot named “Stomper” who shares an eerie resemblance to WALL-E, the popular trash robot from the Disney film of the same name. “Stomper” is apparently named after a certain dance move that Styles fans are known to adopt from his on-stage presence, so expect the sentient robot to be dropping some dance moves akin to Harry throughout along with some luscious scenery as "Stomper" makes his way from the backstage area to around various areas of the world - including star gazing with Styles.

The premier stream on YouTube managed to draw in over 140,000 viewers, including three members of Peopleworld who have waited for finishing time to roll around to catch the music video - and all of us shared the same sentiment; it's pretty cute.

Such fanfare for the single has led many to believe that, should the single be released commercially, it may be another contender for a UK singles chart top 10 hit, following on from “As It Was,” “Late Night Talking” and “Music For A Sushi Restaurant” - which coincidentally also got the music video treatments.

Should Styles earn another top ten from Harry’s House, it would make his third album the most successful release in terms of generating UK single charts hits. Fine Line, his 2019 album, managed to elicit three top ten singles, a record Harry’s House currently holds too.

Will another music video create a bump in Harry Styles’ singles success, and has he seen any significant changes with his singles after the release of a music video? Currently, anything that is available for streaming is eligible for single chart consideration, so have previous promotional videos for Harry’s House singles help lift songs into the top ten?

As It Was

The music video for “As It Was” dropped in April the same time the single was released commercially - a pretty common practice for musicians these days to ensure a maximum impact in terms of promotion. 

Call it the music video’s success or call it all the anticipation for Harry’s third album, released May 20 2022, but the single and the music video helped Styles land only his second UK number one - the first since his debut solo effort, “Sign Of The Times” back in 2017. 

Late Night Talking

“Late Night Talking,” the second single from Harry’s House, debuted in the UK singles chart on June 2 2023; a full 19 days before officially being released as a single (those streaming rules we mentioned before came at play here). The single reached number two before slowly making its way down the chart.

However, after lingering around the 13 and 14 position for a number of weeks after the release of the music video on July 13 2022, the single managed to climb back into the top ten briefly for one week on August 18 2022. Though the music video has since amassed over 59 million views, we’d wager to say that a tour announcement gave the single an extra bump rather than the music video itself given the time frames involved.

Music For A Sushi Restaurant

Harry’s last single released from Harry’s House was “Music For A Sushi Restaurant,” released October 3 2022, and once again had a very strong opening week when the entirety of the album was released, earning Harry Styles three weeks in the top ten of the UK album chart. 

However, the video was released a few weeks later on October 27 2022, featuring Styles as a human-squid hybrid that is washed ashore and found by several owners of a restaurant, may have generated over 27 million views since its release, had no real bearing on Style’s chart success in the UK. By the time the video was released in full, it did manage to see the track return to the UK singles charts, but more as an outlier to the top 40 rather than carve its way through the charts to attain another top ten hit. 

The difference this time though is that looking at the UK single chart this week (w/e May 5 2023), there has been no sign of “Satellite” having made traction in the charts yet; perhaps much like “As It Was,” Style’s team are timing the release of the video the same time as the release of the single, creating a full package to finally break that UK top 10 mark Harry set with his last album.