Harry Styles reveals what his new song is actually about. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

“Just stop your crying, it’s a sign of the times,” Styles sings, over and over again, in the towering six-minute rock ballad.

“Just stop your crying, it’ll be alright / They told me that the end is near, we gotta get away from here,” runs the chorus.

So what’s it about — the end of a relationship? The doom-and-gloom state of the world?

Styles has revealed what the song is actually meant to be about in a revealing new interview with Rolling Stone— and you’d never guess, even if you’ve had it on constant repeat for the past two weeks.

Harry Styles tells all in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.Source:Supplied

“Most of the stuff that hurts me about what’s going on at the moment is not politics, it’s fundamentals. Equal rights. For everyone, all races, sexes, everything. ... Sign of the Times came from ‘This isn’t the first time we’ve been in a hard time, and it’s not going to be the last time’,” he said, before breaking down exactly what the hit song means.

“The song is written from a point of view as if a mother was giving birth to a child and there’s a complication. The mother is told, ‘The child is fine, but you’re not going to make it.’ The mother has five minutes to tell the child, ‘Go forth and conquer’.”

Right. So Harry’s singing “Just stop your crying” from the view point of a mother, serenading her wailing newborn just before she dies (for unknown reasons)? Huh.

And the bridge, where Harry sings “We don’t talk enough, we should open up / Before it’s all too much”? How is that a dying mother singing to their newborn? We don’t know either.

Elsewhere in the Rolling Stone interview, Styles opened up about his former relationship with fellow pop star Taylor Swift, describing it as “hard” and a “learning experience”.

Styles and Swift on their much-publicised Central Park date. Picture: Tom Meinelt / SplashSource:Splash News Australia

Styles and Swift met at an awards show and were caught by paparazzi walking through Central Park in New York City on their second date. They broke up a month later after a holiday together in the Caribbean.

“When I see photos from that day,” he said, “I think: Relationships are hard, at any age. And adding in that you don’t really understand exactly how it works when you’re 18, trying to navigate all that stuff didn’t make it easier. I mean, you’re a little bit awkward to begin with. You’re on a date with someone you really like. It should be that simple, right? It was a learning experience for sure. But at the heart of it — I just wanted it to be a normal date.”