It’s been four years since we heard from Harry Styles. When he dropped Harry’s House in 2022, the megastar leveled up with the ubiquitous pop-rock gold of chart-topper “As It Was,” won his first Album of the Year Grammy, and helmed an impressive two-year live run with the Love On Tour.
After so many highs, Styles is finally back with Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, and eclectic project that goes heavy on the disco ball introspection. From the way Styles draws inspiration across decades to his honest lyrics, here are all the takeaways from the star’s fourth album.
He’s Been Spending Loads of Time at the Club
Perhaps you’ve heard — Styles has been spending a lot of his downtime hanging out in clubs, mostly the techno and electronic scene in Berlin. He goes anonymous, just another sweaty body in the darkness of the dance floor, where we are all fam. Hence the album’s recurrent vibe of dirty electro-sleaze, with “Aperture,” “Ready Steady Go,” and “Dance No More,” featuring the party chant, “Get your feet wet! Respect your mother!” Club sounds are all over the music; he’s cited Floating Points and Jamie XX. “When you’re out at night, it’s such a community, but you’re also watching people have such individual experiences,” Styles told the legendary Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. “I wanted to recreate [what] I had on the dance floor, being lost in the instrumentation and the musicality.” Also, you have to applaud how “Dance No More” stresses the importance of keeping hydrated in the club, where “It’s feeling like the music is heaven sent / And there’s no difference in between the tears and the sweat.” —Rob Sheffield
It’s His Sound of Silver Moment
While promoting Kiss All the Time, Styles said he’s been listening to a lot of LCD Soundsystem, catching recent shows in Madrid and London that influenced his new album. “It was so joyous watching them be immersed in it,” he said of James Murphy & Co. “The inspiration from watching and realizing, ‘That’s how I want to feel when I’m on stage,’ and it matched the music I was making.” He’s not wrong. Styles dances himself clean a lot here (or, as he puts it, “squeaky clean fantasy”), particularly on the glitter ball smash “Are You Listening Yet?” and the shimmery synths of “Season 2 Weight Loss.” He dips his toes into the 2010s without overdoing it — see his expert track sequencing, and how he puts the gentle stunner “Coming Up Roses” in between “Season 2 Weight Loss” and “Pop.” It’s in his Sound of Silver era, and we’re here for it. —Angie Martoccio
“Coming Up Roses” Is a Massive Heartbreaker Ballad
“Just for tonight, let’s go hangover chasing,” Styles purrs, in the album’s one big romantic ballad, the only song he wrote totally solo. It sounds like a seductive invitation, but there’s strings attached: fear, doubt, pain, awkward confessions of past damage. “I’ll talk your ear off about why it’s safe,” our boy sings, “as I fumble my words and fall flat on my face through the truth.” It’s a heart-rippingly intimate tune, just piano and orchestra, with pizzicato strings that sound like his heart is pounding. In other words, it’s a Fine Line-worthy ballad. (For people who love Styles because they love to hear him siiiiing, Fine Line’s still the album to beat.) It’s one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful tunes he’s ever done — especially the final minute, when he leaves the lyrics behind and just sings along with the orchestra wordlessly, not needing any words at all to break your heart. No disco in this song, maybe not many kisses, but it’s the album’s most brutal soul-punch. — R.S.
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary All the Thyme, Simon & Garfunkel Occasionally
On Kiss All the Time, Styles turns his lonely eyes to Simon & Garfunkel quite a lot (“One time is all right, two times is one too many,” he sings, but we beg to differ). He references “Keep the Customer Satisfied” on “Dance No More,” and honors Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” by commanding Kid Harpoon to solo — just like Simon did for bassist Bakithi Kumalo. “Carla’s Song” is named after “Kathy’s Song,” Simon’s heartbreaking ballad to his English girlfriend, and it opens with a tribute to “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” In an interview with Zane Lowe, Styles said he introduced his friend Carla to the 1970 classic, and watched her experience it for the first time. “Watching her listen to it, having never heard that song, felt like I was watching someone see in technicolor or discover magic,” he said. Consider this our official plea for this English muffin to cover “Punky’s Dilemma” next. —A.M.
He Gets Real About Boy Band Trauma
If you’re a One Direction fan, “Paint My Numbers” just might break your heart. The acoustic number marks the first time Styles has written about his boy band past with such a devastating vulnerability. “Oh what a gift it is to be noticed / But it’s nothing to do with me,” he admits, trading his typical tenor for a whisper. When Styles evokes the image of “kids with water guns, watch them run,” it’s enough to make anyone who remembers videos of 1D onstage let out a tear or two. Meanwhile, on the propulsive “Pop,” Styles shatters the “squeaky clean fantasy” of his teen pop past and leans into his fantasies, be it misbehaving or not. —Maya Georgi
Goodbye Seventies, Hello Eighties
Remember just a few years ago, when Styles made his name as a sensitive singer-songwriter in Laurel Canyon? The days when he wanted to be Joni so bad, he not only got a dulcimer, he got it built by the same luthier who made Joni’s? Well, he’s put that era on pause here. The vibe on Kissco is “What IS a dulcimer? Who is this Stevie Nicks person you speak of?” He goes hardcore into the Eighties, with loads of old-school synth gadgets. There’s so much Depeche Mode on this album (both Eighties AND Nineties DM — check that Speak and Spell synth on “Season 2 Weight Loss” along with New Order, Prince, the Jonzun Crew, Yaz, and Mantronix. Talking Heads are such a huge inspiration, it sounds like he made a point of watching Stop Making Sense on VHS tape. (Especially “Dance No More,” where the low-end synth revs like the late great Bernie Worrell over the Chic-style bass.) But he weaves all the Eighties sonics into something fresh and original. —R.S.
He Manages to Tap a Choir — And an Orchestra
Styles follows the lead of other stars, like Rosalía, by incorporating live instrumentation into a dance-inflected LP. There must be something in the lustful Berghain air that makes you crave symphonic drama — it’s almost like the two musicians went to the Berlin mainstay and left with similar inspirations. On lead single “Aperture,” he employs a choir to flesh out the idea that we belong together, while the lovely “Coming Up Roses” swells with the waltzy strings of a 39-piece orchestra.
The Man Loves Radiohead
In the Lowe interview, Styles mentioned that he saw Radiohead in Berlin late last year, during their momentous comeback tour — and it had a profound effect on him (same, dude). He takes his fandom a step further on Kiss All the Time, recruiting jazz drummer Tom Skinner, who plays in Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s side project the Smile. Skinner plays on six songs here, plus backing vocals for “Dance No More.” (In another great move, Styles also tapped Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell to sing on several tracks). It’s proof that Styles is a true music geek, who probably has a lot to say about In Rainbows Disk 2. —A.M.
He Keeps It in the Family
Harry, you’re no good alone. After the massive success of Fine Line, Styles had his pick of musical collaborators — no doors were closed to pop’s It Boy. But he chose to keep working with the same trusted core of longtime collaborators who’ve been with him every step of the way, like Tyler Johnson and his loyal wingman Kid Harpoon, who executive-produced for the first time. (But who probably still calls him “Gary.”) No features, no guests; he keeps tight with the friends who speak his musical language. By now it’s like the Janet Jackson/Jam & Lewis partnership, a long-running creative bond that can’t be replicated. The album has a dedication: “For those who helped me make this. For those who inspire me to make anything. For those who helped me to know when to say NO, when to say YES. For all my friends to dance to.” —R.S.
He Feels Your Pain
“You’ve been a little over-honest lately,” Styles tells himself in the poignant and soaring “The Waiting Game.” The man isn’t kidding. He goes deep into 2020s angst all over the album, dissecting the madness of modern life. He runs down the symptoms in the witty “Are You Listening Yet?”: “God knows your life is on the brink / And your therapist’s well fed.” Other details include forgetting your mantra, ignoring what your therapist advises, and escaping into “un-intimate sex.” No wonder the characters on Kissco crave the sweet release of the club — the daylight world is driving them crazy. But Styles offers his own therapeutic advice: “If you join a movement, make sure there’s dancing.” —R.S.
