“Final show” suggests death, and “best clothes” indicates the following events occur at—or are the result of—a funeral, since the dead are traditionally buried in their finest attire.
Someone who “bribes the door” is trying to get into exclusive nightclubs with money or other appeals. However, the gates of Heaven have different standards—to enter, one’s life must speak for itself.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Harry revealed the song is written from the perspective of a mother giving birth:
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.’
Looks can be deceiving.
Morticians embalm, dress and cossette corpses to make them look peaceful and lively.
Styles is addressing both the person that passed away and people at the funeral. Both are dolled up for the ceremony, but he considers it all a façade.
The deceased is obviously not good since they’ve taken their own life, and the attendees aren’t good because they’re still caught in the same cycle of bad behavior—living disingenuously and hiding their true feelings away—that led to the death. He seems to warn that without change now, their corruption and the fallacy of their pretences will be exposed on Judgement Day in a somewhat karmic fashion.
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Here, “bullets” represent emotional issues, because it’s impossible to outrun your emotions. Harry carries around his own traumas, which he may be reflecting on here, including his father leaving when he was young, his friend Matt Irwin committing suicide in 2016, and One Direction’s disbandment.
In the first verse of One Direction’s “Same Mistakes,” which he helped co-write, he also expressed the feeling of being stuck:
Circles, we’re going in circles
Dizzy’s all it makes us
We know where it takes us
We’ve been before
The phrase “stuck and running from” substitutes Harry’s original lyric, “fuckin' running from” because his guitarist, Mitch, said it would be good to keep the album clean. Harry says using the new lyric is still a way to ‘cheat the system’ because he actually sings “stuckin' running from” which gets away with the same swearing sound without an explicit warning on the song.
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“A sign of the times” is typically judgment of an unwelcome period.
Harry’s talking about how repressing feelings in public, only to break down when alone, is a sign of the time we live in—a time when people feel more comfortable with happy appearances of those around them than with the real, at times damaged versions inside. This goes to the point where they may end their lives before allowing their inner demons to be seen by others.
In the Bible, Jesus prophesied that “the signs of the times” were soon to be followed by times of peril.
Prince also released a classic song and album called “Sign O' The Times” in 1987, seven years before Styles was born.
Harry explained in an interview with Rolling Stone:
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. … This isn’t the first time we’ve been in a hard time, and it’s not going to be the last time. 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’.
The chorus is this expression of wanting to escape a dire situation. She tells her child that life is going to be tough, especially with her gone, but he must keep going no matter what. It’s a striking poignant image: one person dying to give life to someone else.
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“Things are pretty good from here” specifically contrasts the end of the first verse, but as a whole, Styles is suggesting that, after death and upon reaching Heaven, the pain of the subject’s hidden personal issues is finally lifted.
As a result, he advises the living to accept death and focus on making their own lives worth living.
Styles revealed in a Rolling Stone interview that this song is from the perspective of a dying young mother. So, these lyrics, especially “We can meet again somewhere, somewhere far away from here” are the dying mother comforting her newborn child, promising that they will eventually be reunited in the afterlife.
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Carrying on with the theme of concealing emotions and pain, here Styles formally makes his argument that it’s important to discuss your personal struggles with other people. The cycle of keeping them inside and smiling on only leads to them growing and destroying sacred things, from relationships all the way up to lives.
More specifically, it is possible that Styles is feeling guilt and regret about not talking enough with Matt Irwin before his suicide; maybe one conversation could have resulted in him ‘opening up’ about his issues, getting him the help he needed, and still being here today.