Music Review: Harry Styles’ ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally’ swings, sweats and surprises
By MARIA SHERMAN, AP Music Writer
There is one experience Harry Styles will never get to have, though he’s been asked about it ad infinitum: Communing in the crowd at a Harry Styles concert.
On “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” the superstar’s fourth solo album and first full-length project in four years, Styles aims to soundtrack the anonymous exhilaration of being in the audience. It’s a bold choice, following 2022’s synth-pop “Harry’s House,” which earned him album of the year at the 2023 Grammy Awards, with bolder reference points.
Styles started working on the 12-track album in early 2025 in Berlin, with his longtime producer Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. The location proved to be a source of inspiration for him: Styles’ listening habits became more electronic, in line with the German capital’s reputation. His running playlists featured acts like Four Tet, Floating Points and Jamie xx as well as techno DJs Ben Klock and Fadi Mohem. Repetitive, physical productions — synths that rumble with arpeggios and bass kicks — get very close to meditation. That’s clear on “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” a remarkably consistent album dead-set on evoking mood without sacrificing music.
The first taste arrived in the form of “Aperture,” a Styles’ opening track if there ever was one, a five-minute slow-burn built of accelerating synths. He said the song was at least partially inspired by seeing LCD Soundsystem live and listening to ’80s English post-punks The Durutti Column. Freedom, he seemed to be teasing, comes from anonymity, a dance floor, and braking as music speeds.
And it does, with some restraint. Spirited experimentation carries throughout the album, in particular, its stellar back half. The gamble pays off on the funky “Dance No More,” a loose rush of dopamine. (It takes a strong party to press play and not come off wanting to join in the chant, “Gotta get your feet wet / Respect / Respect your mother!,” recalling both Rick James’ “Super Freak” and drag culture all in one.) Or the maximalist production and Spanish guitars of “Ready, Steady, Go!,” or the suggestive “Pop,” a lustful, electric good time. The 2010s dance-punk band Hot Chip feels like a direct source of inspiration.
Elsewhere, Styles’ voice is sacrificed, buried beneath his ambitious production, like on “Season 2 Weight Loss.” In others, he’s front and center, as on “Coming Up Roses,” written by Styles alone and featuring a 39-piece orchestra arranged by conductor Jules Buckley.
A familiar Styles, too, emerges in spurts, like in that song’s romance, or the album’s two lyrical references to Simon & Garfunkel on the closer “Carla’s Song” and “Dance No More.” There’s also the late-’60s, early-’70s channeling “Paint By Numbers,” his acoustic guitar, singer-songwriter, “Matilda” moment.
“Oh, what a gift it is to be noticed,” he sings. The simple statement becomes an existential revelation, Styles’ realizing his fame is a conduit for community, not its source: “But it’s nothing to do with me.”
“Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” takes big swings, but Styles’ approach is often understated — like on “Are You Listening Yet?,” which never really resolves but satiates, or the midtempo “American Girls.”
The freedom Styles appears to have been chasing has built a subversive album, one that doesn’t play into any contemporary pop star rule book. It’ll prove to be divisive for his loyal listeners, or at the very least, unexpected. Still, risk doesn’t mean “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” is wholly unrestrained, which may be its central hope. Because at the end of the day, even in the early morning haze of a sweaty nightclub, strangers’ bodies holding strangers’ bodies, he is still Harry Styles.
But the effort to unshackle himself from expectation? That sounds like elation.
“Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” by Harry Styles
Three and a half stars out of five.
On repeat: “Pop,” “Dance No More”
Skip it: “Taste Back,” “The Waiting Game”
For fans of: Residencies, loosening your necktie, 2010s electro-indie
From breaking news and local politics to art exhibitions, live music, high school sports, small businesses, and cultural events, we celebrate the people and places that make Connecticut unique.