Where has Harry Styles been? Not where you might expect. He popped up at the Vatican when they announced the new pope, rubbed shoulders with locals at bars in Rome, and was even filmed trying (emphasis on trying) to help a fan park their car. Since concluding his last world tour in 2023 he’s also pressed pause on a hit-and-miss acting career, lost a central figure in former bandmate Liam Payne, who died aged 31 in 2024, and revealed how a reset in Italy over summer gave him a newfound perspective on life: “I remember going to a café and sitting and having a coffee and thinking, ‘I don’t remember the last time I sat down and had a coffee – if I’ve ever sat down and just had a coffee,’” he recalled. Now he’s back: in the charts and on billboards. After a triumphant performance at the Brits, he returns with a new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally… ready to be recrowned our pop king. “Let light come in once in a while,” he sings.
La dolce vita certainly has its place on this album, perhaps Styles’s most playful, bold and experimental to date. He sounds relaxed; there’s none of the self-consciousness that’s plagued him in the past, when he was trying to be the millennial answer to David Bowie. The former One Direction star is also the most vulnerable he’s ever been, exploring his feelings around relationships, adulthood, the loss of innocence. It opens with “Aperture”, the single he released in January. It’s the perfect scene-setter, a dizzying, euphoric dance track layered with lush harmonies and a pulsing synth beat that spins around like a strobe light. “Go forth, ask questions later,” he commands.
He follows his own advice. There’s a curiosity to this album that was perhaps lacking in its predecessor, 2022’s Harry’s House. Critics reviewed it positively (The Independent’s Mark Beaumont hailed its “funk shuffle and future soul panache”), and it also won the Grammy for Album of the Year. To me, though, it felt like Styles was trying too hard to be what others hoped he might become: the former boyband star turned great pop auteur, leaning into a lush, layered Laurel Canyon sound that washed blandly over the listener.
Not so here. “American Girls” opens with hushed piano and the soft skitter of the hi-hat, before a funk beat breaks onto the chorus: “Known you for ages/ That’s all I’ve heard/ My friends are all in love with American girls,” Styles croons. It’s Eighties Italo disco with a hint of French house, like a jolt of espresso to set you up for what follows. There’s the brilliant chaos of “Ready, Steady, Go!” with its dizzying outro, bloopy keys and Sons of Kemet co-founder Tom Skinner keeping Styles on a loose leash with his drum rhythms. “Dance No More” is fantastic, riffing on Rick James’s 1981 hit “Super Freak” as Styles squawks: “Gotta get your feet wet/ Respect/ Respect your motheeeeer!”
As with “Aperture” – and all of his solo albums, in fact – Styles favours songwriting in vignette form. No song exemplifies this so much as “Pop”, a sexy, explorative number with squelchy funk beats and lyrics that play out like blurry snapshots of the night before. “Am I in over my head?” Styles questions, his vocodered voice adding a hazy, drunken quality. “This could go anywhere/ I do it again and again… It’s just me, on my knees, squeaky clean fantasy.” He worries he’s lost himself on “Are You Listening Yet?”, chastising the way he likes “the way she talks/ Never what she says”.
While not everything works – there are still some clunky turns of phrase here and there – Kiss All the Time offers more insight into Styles’s current psyche than ever. “Taste Back” finds him wrestling with a situationship, while “Paint By Numbers” seemingly addresses his guilt amid the fallout from his split with director Olivia Wilde, who was seen bringing her two children to his shows while they were dating. “Holding the weight of the American children whose hearts you break/ Was it a tragedy when you told her/ I’m not even 33,” Styles sings. You get the sense he’s spent some time wondering “what if” things had turned out differently. His voice is full of yearning on “The Waiting Game”, with a touch of Bowie in his deeper register over a lopsided, Radiohead-style minor chord on the guitar.
“Coming Up Roses” is wonderful, from the opening sound of the orchestra tuning up to the pluck of violins and glide of the cello, beautifully arranged by conductor Jules Buckley. Styles channels Chet Baker here on what is perhaps his best vocal performance, with gorgeous phrasing and careful annunciation. “Tell me your fears/ I’ve turned back the clocks, it’s that time of year/ If we stay the course we could get it right/ But I’m not devoid of an appetite,” he sings.
It’s almost a relief to have Styles back, given how women in pop have been doing so much of the work in recent years. And really, he has no true male peer (artists such as Bad Bunny, Sam Fender and The Weeknd excel in their own lanes), as much as newcomers such as Benson Boone might try. No one can match his level of pizzazz. By stepping away for a minute, allowing any fears of getting left behind to cease, Styles has been able to return with newfound clarity and, more importantly, music that actually sounds like him. He let the light in, and it shows.
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