Why is Harry Styles linked to Michigan phone number?

DETROIT — A phone number tied to Harry Styles’ new viral marketing campaign has roots in Metro Detroit, and fans are clamoring to find out why.

Styles, the three-time Grammy winner and former One Direction singer, has launched a new website, webelongtogether.co. The site’s splash page features a wide-angle image of a massive concert crowd, shot from above, with some fans dancing, some fans with their lights from their phones lit up above their heads. The site includes a copyright notice from Sony Music Entertainment, the parent company of Styles’ record label.

Click anywhere on the page and the site goes to a page that mirrors an iPhone contact screen, tied to HSHQ, which one can presume is Harry Styles Headquarters. The phone number listed under the contact is 586-533-5477, a Macomb County, Mich. area code.

Call the number and it hangs up after one ring. Text it and it autofills a message, “We belong together,” and sends a link that takes users to Community, a “messaging engagement platform that connects global brands, sports teams, film and TV studios, music labels, public figures, artists, and more to their audiences at scale through personalized experiences,” according to a company bio.

But what in the world does Harry Styles have to do with Macomb County?

A spokesperson for Community, which was co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Madonna manager Guy Oseary, said Tuesday, “we cannot and do not discuss our client’s campaigns with outside parties.” An inquiry sent to Columbia Records, Styles’ record label, was not returned.

Styles, 31, has hinted that he is on the verge of announcing new music. A YouTube clip uploaded in late December featured Styles performing a piano ballad, with the words “WE BELONG TOGETHER” flashing across the screen at the end, over the same image from the We Belong Together website.

Earlier this week, posters tied to Styles with the message “See you very soon” started popping up in New York. Similar messaging popped up in other cities around the world.

So far, there’s been no official word from Styles’ camp on new music or touring plans. The New York Post’s Page Six is reporting Styles will be performing a residency at Madison Square Garden later this year.

Lee’s next novel explores Korean education

NEW YORK — Min Jin Lee’s first novel since her million-selling Pachinko is a long book that grew out of a basic question: What do Koreans care most about?

“We’re obsessed with education, and it became my obsession over why Koreans care so much,” says Lee, whose American Hagwon, scheduled for Sept. 29, will likely be one of the year’s most anticipated books. Hagwons are for-profit tutoring centers — sometimes likened to “cram schools” — where Koreans of all ages receive instruction for everything from English to guitar to cooking. Any language school or organization that gives private lesson music classes” can be considered a Hagwon, Lee says.

The author, 57, calls herself an “accidental historian,” a novelist who uses broad narratives to unearth the past, make sense of the present and explore race, gender and class among other issues. American Hagwon is the third of a planned quartet about Korea and the Korean diaspora that began with Free Food for Millionaires in 2007 and continued a decade later with Pachinko, a National Book Award finalist that was adapted by Apple TV+ into a series and has been translated into dozens of languages.

In 2024, the New York Times ranked Pachinko at No. 15 among the best novels of the 21st century.

Cardinal, a Hachette Book Group imprint, is calling her new release a deep look into “what happens when the rules shift, the world order becomes suddenly unrecognizable, and benchmarks of success are no longer a guarantee.” In American Hagwon, Lee sets her story everywhere from Korea to Australia to Southern California as she tracks the journey of a middle-class Korean family upended by the Asian financial crisis and hoping to regain its bearings.

Sutherland arrested in assault on his driver

LOS ANGELES — Actor Kiefer Sutherland was arrested and accused of assaulting a ride-share driver in Los Angeles, according to police, in the Hollywood star’s latest brush with the law.

L.A. police said in astatement Wednesday that Sutherland entered the ride-share vehicle and “physically assaulted the driver (the victim), and made criminal threats.” Officers arrested Sutherland at the scene, police said. The driver did not require medical treatment, they added.

Officers were called for reports of an assault at an intersection south of the Hollywood Hills, at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, early Monday, police said.

Sutherland, also a country musician and singer, is best known for his action-packed role as rogue agent Jack Bauer in the Fox television series 24, which ran from 2001 to 2010. He has also appeared in numerousmovies, including hits such as The Lost Boys (1987) and A Few Good Men (1992). The British Canadian star is the son of actor Donald Sutherland, who died in 2024.

Sutherland, 59, was arrested and released from jail Monday on a $50,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 2, Los Angeles County jail records show.

Representatives for Sutherland did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday.