The Pop Culture Pundit

Sensitive boy/I am just a sensitive boy…just wanna cry inside my sweater with you. Doesn’t this just sound like the beginning of a Harry Styles song? 

In season 3 of Girls5Eva, the titular girl group looking to revive their Y2K one-hit wonder fame wants to open for Gray Holland (Thomas Doherty), a Harry Styles-type crooner with brown hair, bright eyes, and an English accent that would make pre-teen girls around the globe swoon with love. Ever the gentlemen, Gray instead sings with them in their much smaller, not-fit-for-stadium US tour, belting out the girl groups’ legendary hits, including “Bend Not Break,” and “B.P.E.” 

After the success of Holland and Girls5Eva’s impromptu performance, we learn that Gray has tragically died as the result of a plane crash, leaving Mario Lopez devastated on Access Hollywood (even more devastated than when Holland broke up with Sadie James, star of the “edgy” Andy Capp on the CW)…until we learn Holland has faked his death and is now performing standup in Canada under the pseudonym Mad Dog Williams with a bushy beard and terrifyingly sharp teeth. 

But for those sweet moments before Holland moved on from fame, his hit single “Inside My Sweater” provided an insanely catchy earworm that should be as famous as Styles’ “As It Was.” With a catchy guitar hook beginning the song and his English accent punctuating the word “sweater” with every breath, there is a future star waiting to be reborn (Netflix, please give us season 4 of this hidden gem of a show). 

The music video is perhaps even better, with Holland hiding inside his sweater (it is the title of the song, after all) as he invites his girl to “play hide-and-seek and sleep and dream with me” inside his cashmere world that probably costs more than my entire wardrobe. 

The lyrics showcase both his bubbly yet bashful personality and the entire range of emotions of having a crush on someone. The song starts with “Too shy to show you my drawings of you” in the first verse and continues on to “Never starin’ at my phone, when I’m around your eyes.” Not only is he sensitive (as the song proclaims), but he is also totally infatuated with and captivated by this girl’s presence. He has a totally relatable past, too, with lyrics such as “Never cocky ’cause I used to have bad acne,” possibly hinting at a vulnerable youth before the inevitable glowup. 

The song reflects Styles’ own songs and persona. He was once impersonated by Jimmy Fallon on SNL as giving up the spotlight to Lorde out of his own shyness yet bouncing up and down with joy in the background. Meanwhile, Styles’ songs such as “Adore You” have endearingly silly, lust-for-love-and-life lines including “Walk in your rainbow paradise/Strawberry lipstick state of mind/I get so lost inside your eyes.” Sounds like he’s not looking at his phone because he’s looking into your eyes, no? As a bonus, Gray Holland’s entire image screams “used to be part of a massively successful boy band,” mirroring Styles’ on career path, so if we get season 4 (hint, hint), perhaps he will make his return. 

Girls5Eva has plenty of catchy songs– “New York Lonely Boy” or “Yesternights,” anyone?–but it’s “Inside my Sweater” that most accurately captures the current zeitgeist of silly yet relatable songs that invite a so-called normie into a celebrity’s own journey, as if you’re reading their diary entries. Because despite their massive wealth, privilege and endless access to free beauty products, celebrities like Harry Styles and Gray Holland are just like us–listening to music at a sushi restaurant, daydreaming about the cinema, and getting cozy inside an oversized sweater. Because inside that cashmere hideaway, it’s magic being tucked away.