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about this album
“Matilda” is the seventh track off "Harry’s House", the third studio album by Harry Styles. In the song, Harry somberly sings to somebody whose family did not treat her well. He takes inspiration from the Roald Dahl book Matilda and/or its movie adaptation of the same name, about a girl with telekinesis who was mistreated by her principal and parents. Though Roald Dahl’s character Matilda is gendered as female, Styles purposefully does not assign a label to the person he sings to. The song asserts a common theme in the album that home is not a place, but a state of mind. Styles does this by showing how Matilda’s house was not a home to her. "I had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, ‘Oh, that’s not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.’ This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is something to pay attention to.’ It’s a weird one, because with something like this, it’s like, ‘I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it’s not necessarily my place to make it about me because it’s not my experience.’ Sometimes it’s just about listening. I hope that’s what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, ‘I was listening to you.’" "I think “Matilda” is kind of self-explanatory I l
