To experience the real "Sign of the Times"—the piano that sounds like it is falling down a staircase, the orchestral swell that lifts you out of your seat—you need the lossless integrity of FLAC.
The magnum opus. This piano-led, quasi-Britpop anthem was criticized by some for its length (5:40), but in FLAC, every second counts. The dynamic range—from the whisper-quiet verses to the thunderous, multi-tracked vocal explosion at the end—survives intact. On streaming services, the "loudness war" compression crushes the crescendo. FLAC preserves the shock of that chorus.
While Harry’s House sounds 95% the same in 320kbps MP3 as it does in FLAC (due to its digital production), Harry Styles (2017) is an instrument album. The acoustic guitar on "Two Ghosts" has a string squeak that feels intimate. The cymbal decay on "Only Angel" lasts three seconds longer in the lossless file.