To: Professor Katie Powell

From: Haley Zaker

Date: February 12, 2023
Subject: Rhetorical Analysis of Harry Styles’ “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” Music Video

INTRODUCTION
For my rhetorical analysis, I will be examining Harry Styles’ “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”
music video. The song itself was the first track on Styles’ 2022 album, “Harry’s House”, and
the accompanying music video was released on October 27th, 2022.

DESCRIPTION
The music video depicts a sushi restaurant called Gill’s Lounge—which had been teased on
social media with a possible connection to Styles in the weeks leading up to the video’s
release. The employees at Gill’s Lounge stumble across an anomaly in the form of a half-
squid, half-man washing ashore, played by Styles. The restaurant workers take the squid-
man back to Gill’s Lounge, where they prepare to kill him and make him into sushi. Before
they get the chance, the squid-man opens his mouth and begins to sing. The restaurant
employees seem to get the same idea at the same time: they realize that they can make
money off the sensation of a singing squid-man. And so, instead of slaughtering him, they
give him a performance slot at Gill’s Lounge. Gill’s Lounge’s popularity skyrockets, drawing
a crowd of people who want to watch the squid-man sing every night. The squid-man
becomes a bit of a diva, ordering the restaurant employees around and adorning jewelry
and being pampered. But, one night during his performance, his voice cracks and then dies
out. He looks around at the restaurant staff with fear in his eyes, knowing that, without his
voice, he is no longer of any use to them, and they will dispose of him. Fragmented shots of
flickering lights and sharpening lights and boiling water at the end of the video seem to, in
fact, confirm his fears, as the restaurant staff kills him and cooks him into sushi.
Behind the tentacle prosthetics and upbeat vocals, fans have speculated that this music
video contains underlying messages about exploitation in the music industry and Styles’
own relationship with his fame. In this analysis, I seek to dissect and evaluate the way
Styles and his production team demonstrated these themes.
Figure 1: “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” music video.

DISCUSSION
Masked by a whimsical narrative, Harry Styles and the production team utilize rhetorical
appeals to tell the story of the squid-boy, to draw the audience in, to demonstrate why this
story matters, and to indicate its underlying messages.

ETHOS
To consider why Styles would depict a story like this, one must look into his own
background. Harry Styles lived in Redditch, England, the son of a divorced working-class
couple, until he made it big on X-Factor UK in 2010. He joined the boyband One Direction,
which became one of the biggest and bestselling boybands of all time. (Bowles, 2020). Post-
One Direction, Styles’ solo career has comprised of sold-out stadium tours and hit albums.
Fans familiar with Styles’ life already have an understanding of all of these things, but even
if you are not a fan, it is nearly impossible to avoid hearing about him in your everday life.
He remains one of the most prominent figures in pop culture today. So, one can see why he
has the credibility to put himself in a fictionalized rags-to-riches story, and why he might
have nuanced opinions about fame. Like the squid-man, he knows what it is to be living an
unglamorous life, and to be unexpectedly discovered, and to have his life change overnight,
while expecting a fall to come at any moment. The inverse happened, so why not? As music
videos nowadays are largely watched by fans, Styles can expect his intended audience to
know him well enough to recognize these nuances.
At the beginning of the music video, the squid-man finds himself in a similar situation: quite
literally washing ashore and having his talent discovered. He then lives a life of glamor:
singing every night in front of a crowd, wearing beautiful outfits, having people wait on him
hand-and-foot. That is the sort of comfortable life Styles finds himself in right now. But the
squid-man’s end also seems to foreshadow a fear of everyone in the spotlight—that the
public will grow tired of you, or you will no longer be of any use to them, and then you will
be discarded.

LOGOS

Figure two: “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” music video.

One of the lyrics to “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” goes, “if the stars were edible / and our
hearts were never full / could we live with just a taste?” On first listen of the song, the lyric
seems nonsensical, as do many of the other lyrics. But, when paired with the music video
visuals, the lyric takes on a whole new meaning. It is the exact line the squid-man is singing
when his voice cracks and his fate is sealed.
Why would Styles put underlying messages about fame and exploitation in a video set to an
upbeat song? It was an intentional move. “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” is a synth-heavy
pop song, laced with horns and scatting vocals, and on the surface, its lyrics appear to be
nonsense about rice and green tea and other unconnected rambles. The song has been
generally criticized by the public for being “corporate friendly” and “music produced for
back-to-school sale ads”. Styles chose to make this music video for an easily-digestible song
manufactured for mass appeal and radio play. Pairing it with a video that seems silly on the
surface but has dark implications is a calculated move. In fact, it seems like a logical method
to get people to pay attention.

Figure three: “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” music video.

Figure four: “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” music video.

PATHOS
There is one moment in the music video that directly aligns Styles with the squid-man. One
moment that signals to his fans that this is more than a character he is playing. At the 1:59
minute mark, in the midst of a performance, the squid-man throws his head back and lets
out a spray of water. It is a move Styles himself is renowned for, a staple at all his concerts.
Fans have dubbed it “The Whale.” The squid-man utilizing one of Styles’ performance
rituals is a call-out that only audiences familiar with Styles would understand as a
reference to himself. In using “The Whale”, he is making an emotional rhetorical appeal to
his audience and signifying that there is more to the squid-man than what meets the eye.
He is connecting himself to the squid-man, drawing a direct line that perhaps only avid fans
would recognize. This could even be read as him expressing directly that this is how he
feels: that he has to keep singing and dancing and putting on a show, because once he loses
the attention and admiration of his fans, everything is over.
When I watched the music video for the first time, this was the moment that made me feel
as though Styles was connected to the squid-man in it, that it was not just a funny tentacled
fellow singing for a sushi restaurant, doomed to a tragic end. This is what made me, and
other fans, wonder if this is how Styles feels.

Figure five: “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” music video.

CONCLUSION
The rhetorical appeals constructed by Styles and his team definitely spoke to me. I was
initially drawn in by the premise of Styles playing the squid-man, and I laughed when I saw
him with prosthetic tentacles. On the first watch, I walked away from the music video
slightly weirded out, which was a common experience. But then, my brain began working,
deconstructing what was masked behind the special effects and synth sounds. To quote a
message I sent to my sisters (also avid Harry Styles stans) on the day the video dropped,
“it’s weird but also about the exploitation of the music industry.” Other artists have
expressed similar fears—that when their acclaim fades, they will be thrown away—so it
did not seem like such a leap to believe that Styles was suggesting the same thing. The
rhetorical appeals made by him and the production team—from the song choice, to the
storyline, to the parallel to Styles’ own life—made this a story I could reasonably believe,
and it also made me think critically about fame and exploitation. The message of the video
is summed up by sone of the most recent comments on the YouTube video:
“You’re everybody’s darling until you fall. Then the knives come out.”

REFERENCES
1. Bowles, H. (2020, November 13). Playtime with Harry Styles: "You can never be
overdressed". Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-styles-cover-
december-2020
2. Styles, Harry. [Harry Styles.] (2022, Oct 27.) Music for a Sushi Restaurant [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiwMDFh_Rog
3. Keto Rising. You’re everybody’s darling until you fall. Then the knives come out. The
video is art. [Comment on the video “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”].