Songfacts®:

• This laid-back soft rocker about taking a risk on love was penned by Harry Styles along with his frequent collaborators Mitch Rowland, Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon. The bittersweet song finds Styles infatuated with a girl. He showers her with praise in an attempt to win her love, but she is wary of giving him her heart.
  
  You're so golden
  I'm out of my head, and I know that you're scared
  Because hearts get broken
  
  "I don't know much about Van Morrison's life, but I know how he felt about this girl, because he put it in a song," Styles told Rolling Stone. "So I like working the same way."
• Styles wrote "Golden" with the other three writers at Rick Rubin's Shangri-La Studios in Malibu. The singer told Zane Lowe about listening to the track while traveling down the California shoreline. "It's like driving down the coast, that is what the song is for," he said." It feels so Malibu to me."
• The first song written for Fine Line, "Golden" was penned on the second day of the sessions at Shangri-La Studios. Styles recalled to Apple Music:
  
  "We were all sat in the kitchen at Shangri-La, having dinner, and we played it on one guitar while everyone sang around the table. It just felt really good."
• Styles says the word "golden" 41 times during the song - we counted!
• Ben and Gabe Turner shot the song's music video on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. The clip features Harry Styles joyously running down an Italian cliffside road, singing to random strangers as he drives an Alfa Romeo vintage car, and diving into the sea.
  
  British director Gabe Turner is best known for directing documentary feature films such as In The Hands Of The Gods, The Class of '92, and I Am Bolt. Gabe and his brother Ben previously worked with Harry when they shot the One Direction videos for "Steal My Girl" and "Drag Me Down." Gabe Turner also co-directed the clip for "History," which won Best Video at the 2017 BRIT Awards.