Kid Harpoon

The man behind colossal hits for Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus and Florence + the Machine takes a surprisingly old‑school approach to writing and production.

“Our job is to make people feel something. You don’t need to be the best musician to do that. You can make someone feel something with two or three notes played slowly, or a song with just two chords. Harry Styles’ song ‘Golden’, which is one of my favourite songs that we have done together, has just two chords. I’m a professional, but I also try to maintain a degree of unprofessionalism. Otherwise, things get too shiny.

“You can go on TikTok or Instagram today, and there’s always some guitarist or piano player who is insanely, mind‑blowingly good. It kills me, and I think, ‘Oh, I suck. Why can’t I do that?’ But it doesn’t make me feel anything. It just makes me jealous that I can’t do the same thing. However, the goal is not to be good. The goal is to make you feel something. It’s important to remember this.

“Having said that, some people can be good in a way where they contribute to the music being incredible, and making you feel something. The Michael Jackson stuff is incredible, because amazing musicians and jazz musicians are playing with a pop mentality, and everything crosses over into a world where you can appreciate the musicians from a technical point of view, and the songs are great and they make you feel something. To me, that’s the pinnacle of music.”

Tom Hull, aka Kid Harpoon, co‑wrote all but one of the songs on Harry Styles’ hit album Harry’s House.Tom Hull, aka Kid Harpoon, is one of the world’s biggest songwriters and producers, as acknowledged by his 2023 Songwriter of the Year Brit Award and two Grammy Awards. He co‑wrote and co‑produced Miley Cyrus’ megahit ‘Flowers’, and dominated the charts in 2022 thanks to his work with Florence + the Machine, Maggie Rodgers, Lizzo and, most famously, Harry Styles. Hull co‑wrote all but one song and co‑produced all songs on Harry’s House, including the ubiquitous single ‘As It Was’, which spent 10 weeks atop the UK charts and 15 weeks atop the US charts, and was Spotify’s most‑streamed song in 2022.

The Ideas Man

Rather than rely on programming, samples and DAWs, Hull prefers to write songs with several people in a room playing traditional instruments, and using analogue gear to record them — again, with the emphasis on feel over technique. “The hardest thing in the studio is when the best guitarist in the world walks in, and everyone just accepts that they’re going to play guitar. But that’s not necessarily right. You don’t necessarily want the fastest or the best, you want the correct idea and something that feels exciting. Someone could play three notes really badly, but put it through Ableton and pitch it around, or put it through a sequencer, and you’re like ‘Holy shit, that’s amazing, that’s the vibe.’

“It is helpful to have skills. When you have skills and knowledge, you can experiment with it. It gives you more tools to work with. When I was younger I was into punk, but my school was very classical with grades and theory, and you needed to be playing cello or clarinet or something. Guitars were nothing. It made me stick up my middle finger to music theory. But as I got older, I was like, ‘I wish someone had shown me this.’ Because now I enjoy it. You learn one new chord, and at some point you remember it and put it in a new song, and it’s cool. Learning inspires the creative side.

“It is also helpful to have the right gear. I’m a very out‑of‑the‑box producer, and I have a lot of outboard in my studio. I come from the original approach to recording and like to record with microphones. I play guitar, piano, drums and everything, and have live amps, and so on. I also do a lot of programming on MPCs, and I have a ton of drum machines and synths. And I use samples and try to make things sound modern. It’s not like I want to be outside the box making pure live‑sounding music, but I find that it’s quicker and more exciting to play a synth, or to program a drum machine, or to play a drum beat, and to chop it up and edit it and place it where I want it, rather than use an Ableton station to come up with everything. There’s something about a drum kit and a drummer and that mindset that makes a drum beat way more tied together. Otherwise you end up thinking ‘kick drum’ and then ‘snare’, ‘hi‑hat’ and ‘percussion’, and then another snare is going to come in in the chorus. Even if you end up replacing all your drums, when sitting behind a kit you can feel a rhythm, and make it feel more natural.”

Kid Harpoon: I’m a very out‑of‑the‑box producer, and I have a lot of outboard in my studio. I come from the original approach to recording and like to record with microphones.

Out Of The Blocks

Hull’s philosophy has its roots in his early years in music. He was born in 1982 in Chatham in Kent, and started playing guitar when he was 10 years old. The instrument has remained central to his musical life.

“I started on acoustic, but also wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. I learned to sing and played some piano as well, and started performing live early. My first recording experiences were with Jim Riley at his Ranscombe Studios in nearby Rochester. He recorded to tape, and was very focused on the performances. Around that time I did a show under the name Kid Harpoon, after a character in a story that I had written, and the name stuck.

“What I did at the time was all acoustic, though I approached that very different differently than most. When someone goes on stage with an acoustic guitar your heart kind of drops because you expect it to be all sad and introverted. I wanted to do be the opposite of that. I was into Gogol Bordello and other indie punk bands, and wanted to have that kind of energy.”

Kid Harpoon’s only album to date was produced by Trevor Horn, an experience which made its mark on the young artist.When he reached his 20s, Hull moved to London and joined the music scene there, particularly at a live venue called Nambucca, where he became resident songwriter. He toured as a guitarist with acts like Jamie T and the Kooks, and in 2006 signed with the independent label Brikabrak, which released two EPs under the name Kid Harpoon. In 2009, Hull signed to the Young Turks label, which released his first solo album, again under the name Kid Harpoon. Once was produced by the legendary Trevor Horn.

“When it came to making my records, everything was fully Pro Tools, and I didn’t know what to do. I tried all sorts of different things, and we actually made a version of my album on tape, and then transferred things to Pro Tools, but we messed it up because we’d recorded too quiet on tape, and when we then in Pro Tools boosted everything, there was a ton of noise. I realised that I didn’t know how to do the studio thing. So I tried to find a producer.

“Trevor Horn’s publishing company, ZTT, had signed my publishing. He explained to me what we had done wrong with the recordings, and said, ‘Let’s go to LA. I’m going to put a band together and we’ll record it in just two weeks, because you already have the songs.’ We recorded the album at his house in LA, and did some mixing at SARM in Notting Hill.

“The record came out great, but I felt during the making that I had missed my moment. As an artist you’re looking for a wave and when you find one, and suddenly something goes viral, you surf that wave, and then the next one. When making that album I realised deep down, ‘I missed my wave.’ When you’re working on a project, you need everything to be rushing forwards so that when it comes to the release day everything comes together. But I’d been touring without an album and my momentum was gone.

“I didn’t know what else to do, but when watching Trevor I felt this spark inside. ‘Oh, that’s what a producer does. That’s incredible.’ He’s one of the best producers I’ve ever seen in the studio. He’s kind of brutal and demanding but amazing at the same time. Just the way he talked about stuff. ‘This is the bit where the fireworks happen.’ ‘This is where we do this.’ I was like ‘Yeah, that’s how you make records.’ It finally clicked. I made the transition from artist to songwriting and producing for others at that point.”

Standing On Ceremony

Hull’s career journey took the detour of being a musician for hire, which in turn delivered a stroke of luck. “As part of the music scene in the UK I toured with Dizzee Rascal, Adele, Florence, and others. I’d worked with Florence on some lyrics and music before, and when my artist career wasn’t going anywhere, I reached out to her and suggested we do some writing. Her A&R and manager were not too impressed, as I was unknown, but I got half a day with her. I was like, ‘This is my break, I need to go for this,’ and spent ages and ages working on a song we had started.

“Her A&R thought the song had potential, and by this point Flo was working with Paul Epworth, so I went in with them to work on the song. Paul’s very inspiring to be around when he’s in the zone, and he brought his magic to the song, which became ‘Never Let Me Go’. Then he was like, ‘Do you want to come back tomorrow?’ We made another song, ‘Leave My Body’, and some lyrics that I had written for ‘Never Let Me Go’ ended up getting used in ‘Shake It Out’. So I ended up with three cuts on Ceremonials. Paul was like, ‘Man you’re really good at this, you should focus on this. Try not to do everything. Do one thing really well.’”

Florence + the Machine’s hit album Ceremonials provided Kid Harpoon with his big break.Ceremonials was a huge commercial and critical success, and ‘Shake It Out’ earned Hull an Ivor Novello nomination. Hull’s work on the album opened many doors for him, and in 2013 he enjoyed songwriting and occasional co‑production credits with Jessie Ware, Calvin Harris and many others. “‘Wildest Moments’, which I did with Jessie, brought me a lot of attention, and I’m still really proud of that song. It’s the same with ‘Sweet Nothing’, which I did with Calvin and Florence. Calvin had sent a track, and Flo and I worked on it at Trevor [Horn]’s place and sent what we had done to Calvin. A few weeks later he had restructured it a little bit and created this whole new track underneath it, and it blew my mind. So I was having those hit songs, and then other things started to come in, like the songs with Shakira and Years & Years, and so on. Everything was growing.”

Hull’s career as a songwriter and producer has since taken in credits like Shawn Mendes (including 11 tracks on the singer’s Wonder album from 2020), Lykke Li, Maggie Rogers and many more, including the aforementioned Miley Cyrus, Lizzo, Florence + the Machine and Harry Styles.

Beats Working

“A lot of my writing starts with a piano and acoustic guitar,” says Tom Hull. “Nowadays you have producers who say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great beat,’ and they pull something up and you write a melody on top. I like working like that as well. But I do like writing with an instrument. Harry and I wrote the song ‘Falling’ at the piano in 30 minutes, and we wrote ‘Sweet Creature’ with me on an acoustic guitar. I find that it helps if you’ve got a really good acoustic guitar or piano part, instead of just playing chords. There’s a Harry Styles song called ‘Matilda’ that started with a great acoustic guitar part, and we wrote it around that.

“Writing on one instrument has that classic thing that if a song sounds good on just acoustic guitar or piano, it’s great. The problem is that sometimes when you write like that, it can get hard to produce it. You try things, and then you’re like, ‘Ah. It just still sounds better just with a piano and a vocal.’ I think that writing on an instrument as opposed to starting with a beat gives a bit more consistency to the song. When you’re producing a track in a DAW, it tends to be split up in sections, like ‘Here’s the chorus, here’s the verse.’ But when you’re writing on an instrument you’re moving chords and melodies in a more seamless way, as opposed to block, block.

“But both have their merits, and there’s something really exciting about a song being written and produced at the same time, because sounds encourage you. Also, you may not be sure a song is good, and the production can help you go, ‘I can see it now, it’s going to be great,’ and then it pushes you to finish a lyric or a melody.

“Like ‘Flowers’, which Miley had written with Michael Pollak and Aldae as a piano ballad. Miley came to our studio, Tyler jumped on the synth and I jumped on bass, we got a rhythm going and I got the bass line, and she sang along. It had a cocktail vibe, but we also wanted it to sound modern, so we played and programmed drums. We took a great piano song and managed to turn it into a disco‑type track.”

Creature Comforts

Hull started working with Harry Styles in 2017, when the two co‑wrote the song ‘Sweet Creature’ at Hull’s then studio in LA, Harpoon’s Barn. The production was completed by the trio who produced the whole of Styles’ debut solo album: Jeff Bhasker, Alex Salibian and Tyler Johnson, with help from Hull on ‘Sweet Creatures’ and ‘Carolina’.

“It was the first time I worked with Harry, and with Tyler. The stuff that was coming back from the production crew sounded great. The more people you get involved in making records, the more ideas you get, especially if the flow is good. Whereas when it all comes from one person it can start to sound flat. In this case, everyone was complementing each other, which gave the record depth and took it to a different place. I really believe in music as a communal thing, which is weird because I occasionally get some social anxiety, and my favourite thing is to make music on my own in my studio. But there’s nothing better than making music with a group of people.”

Harry Styles’ Fine Line contained the hit single ‘Watermelon Sugar’, co‑written and co‑produced by Kid Harpoon.

Styles’ follow‑up, Fine Line, was largely written and produced by Styles and Hull, with a lot of help from various people, mostly Tyler and drummer/guitarist Mitch Rowland, the four of them acting like a band. ‘Watermelon Sugar’ was one of several major hit singles taken from the album.

“‘Watermelon Sugar’ was the first song we wrote for the album. It was done in Tyler’s studio in Nashville. I came up with a riff and Tyler put some chords to that, and Mitch jumped on the drums. We made a demo of the song, but our problem was to beat that demo. ‘Watermelon Sugar’ was really tough to get right. It taught Tyler and I how to produce, because we had to figure out what was great about the song, and there were problems with the demo that we could not fix, so we went through many different versions to get it right. It took 18 months to finish that song! So when we started work on Harry’s House, we were like ‘Let’s get the demos as good as they can be,’ so we could use them for the final productions.”

House Band

Harry’s House was largely made by a small band consisting of Styles, Tyler and Hull, with help from engineer Jeremy Hatcher. The pandemic focused their minds in keeping the communal experience very contained.

“We started Harry’s House when Covid hit. Harry couldn’t go on tour, so he was like, ‘Let’s just go in the studio.’ We went to Rick Rubin’s Shangri‑La Studios for a month, where we had first met Jeremy during the recordings for Fine Line. We turned the studio round, using the control room as a live room, and using the board in the live room. Tyler and I each had our own workstation, and Jeremy his recording setup.

“What was beautiful about it for me was that we were all worried, as in, ‘Is this like the plague, are we all going to die? What the heck is going on?’ The last thing on our minds was making a record. We were just friends together, hunkering down, having fun in the studio. We didn’t really think about whether what we were doing was any good or not. That really translated into the music. I’ve honestly, hand on heart, never had as much fun as making that record in that studio.

“With one song we did at Shangri‑La, ‘Late Night Talking’, Harry came in with some slow, jazzy chords, and I suggested to do them faster. We then added some drums, and wrote some chords for the chorus section. We all just lean into each other’s ideas. What’s unique about the process with Harry, Tyler and I is that it really is just exploration. There is no judgement. Everything is up for grabs, no one’s ever like ‘That’s a bad idea.’ There’s no aim, other than trying to achieve something that we love, and the only way of finding that is by exploring.

“The beauty of working with someone like Harry is that he’s one of the best curators of people you’ll meet. His taste is impeccable. Harry said, ‘I trust each one of us and our tastes.’ We write so many songs, and we keep listening to the good ones, while the ones that aren’t as good sort of drift away. The beauty of my job in this situation is that I’m not making music for me, I’m making music to try and support the vision of the artist. So when we’re working with Harry, Tyler and I are really feeling deeply what he wants, so we know that he’ll like what we are doing.”

Kid Harpoon takes a surprisingly old‑school approach to writing and production, preferring to work with real instruments and live performances.

Library Music

After a month at Shangri‑La, the quartet disbanded. Other sessions took place later at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, joined by Mitch Rowland, and at Angelic and Henson Studios, in London and Hollywood respectively. But it was at the house of Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, that the biggest hit was conceived.

“Rob has a house out in the country west of London, in Henley‑on‑Thames. We hired a load of gear, and put gaffer tape everywhere. I was like, ‘I really hope Rob doesn’t kill us for this.’ We turned the TV room into the main room, and did a bunch of songs there, including ‘As It Was’, ‘Cinema’ and ‘Love Of My Life’. We did ‘As It Was’ in one day. Tyler came up with some chords, Harry started singing a melody, and I was like, ‘Let’s put a beat to that.’ I’d also just gotten a Moog One synth, and all synth sounds on ‘As It Was’ came from that.

“We recorded live drums in Rob’s library room, which was a real process. It has books everywhere, and we thought it sounded good, but in fact it sounded like trash. We had the beat, but with a really awful drum sound. So we separately recorded a kick, a snare and a hi‑hat, and we placed each into the session, replacing the first drum part. We got a cool drum sound like that.

“We wanted the drums to feel more natural, so when we were at Real World we asked Mitch to play across the track. But we actually felt it lost something with the live drums, so we kept the drums recorded at Rob’s place. However, at the end of the song the crazy fills Mitch was doing sounded awesome. So the drums in the first half of the track are a programmed, workaround kit, and then Mitch turns up and explodes the end of the song. It was a real build‑it‑together process. It’s how we work.”

Kid Harpoon: Whatever you do, start the day with a reference, and then as you work throughout the day, you can always go and listen to where you were at the beginning of the day.

Reference Material

Extensive work went into post‑production and finishing Harry’s House. “It is very much Tyler and I working in the box, and really getting into the details of it. We try to get the production and the rough mixes to the point where we’re listening to them all the time, and Harry listens and gives his comments. Sometimes I’ll do something else, and then do some work on my own, and Tyler will do the same, and we’re always referencing each other.

“That’s one thing Trevor [Horn] taught me when I worked with him: always have a reference of where you start. Whatever you do, start the day with a reference, and then as you work throughout the day, you can always go and listen to where you were at the beginning of the day, and listen to whether you have improved it. Maybe I’ve improved the drums and the bass but the vocals sound shit now, so I’m going to have to work on that. There’s a lot of referencing old versions.

“I’ve tried to make the drums sound bigger, and technically managed, but found it’s just not as good. They were better before. You don’t know why, but they just had a feel. It’s not about whether the drums sound good, because at the end of the day, people aren’t listening to songs going ‘Are the drums big enough, does the kick drum hit?’ They’re listening, going, ‘Yeah, this is great,’ because it’s the combination of all of it. So we’re constantly listening to the whole. It’s like cooking: always taste the food. That’s our finishing process.

“At the very end of the process we get into the Spike [Stent] world. Watching him mix is like watching David Beckham take a free kick. I like to get the rough mix to a place where I’m testing Spike, like ‘Go on then, let’s see how good you are,’ and every time he knocks me out, it’s insane. I go in there really confident, and he just makes me look bad at my job, because he just makes everything sound so much better!”

Bigger & Better

“Did I know that ‘As It Was’ would be as successful as it was? Genuinely, we had no idea that it was going to be as big as it was. You’re aware you have a great song, but you have no idea what it’s going to do. There’s so much more to it. There are marketing campaigns, cultural timing and so much more. Everything has to line up in a certain way. Clearly everything aligned for ‘As It Was’ to hit big. But it’s rare for all the stars to align like that.

“As part of the creative process, I find it very abstract thinking about a song commercially. When you’re making a song, you have to think just about that song. You have to think purely about, ‘Do I love it? Do you love it? What do we love about it? How does it make me feel?’ Everything else is a by‑product that you can’t control. To even worry about that is to the detriment of something special and magical: making music.”