Harry Styles is on quite a tear as of late: His new album Fine Line has been well-received, and he’ll kick off his Love On Tour world tour next month in his native England. So why not, you might think to yourself if you were Harry Styles, attempt a flawless live cover on The Howard Stern Show this week? In keeping with his current winning streak, he pulls off his own version of “Sledgehammer” from Peter Gabriel’s 1986 solo album So.
It’s honestly one of those covers that’s spot-on enough to make you wonder what the point of it is in the first place. Uproxx reports that Styles is a huge fan of the song, telling Howard Stern that it’s one of the “best-mixed songs” ever. (Uproxx adds that part of Styles’ new album was even recorded in Gabriel’s Real World Studio in the U.K.)
So on Stern’s show, Styles pulled “the same jazzy instrumentation from Gabriel’s original track,” but supplied his own near-identical vocals. It’s less a new version of the song than a straight-up homage, but it’s fun to hear Styles’ intonations mixed in everywhere possible. Like earlier this week, when he wowed a live crowd with a fun cover of his own One Direction hit.