{"id":518410,"date":"2026-03-04T15:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518410\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T15:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T15:56:09","slug":"harry-styles-review-kiss-all-the-time-disco-occasionally-personal-bold-and-finally-sounding-like-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518410\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Styles review, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally \u2013 Personal, bold and finally sounding like himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Where has Harry Styles <\/a>been? Not where you might expect. He popped up at the Vatican<\/a> 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\u2019s also pressed pause on a hit-and-miss acting career, lost a central figure in former bandmate Liam Payne<\/a>, who died aged 31 in 2024, and revealed how a reset in Italy over summer gave him a newfound perspective on life: \u201cI remember going to a caf\u00e9 and sitting and having a coffee and thinking, \u2018I don\u2019t remember the last time I sat down and had a coffee \u2013 if I\u2019ve ever sat down and just had a coffee,\u2019\u201d he recalled. Now he\u2019s back: in the charts and on billboards. After a triumphant performance at the Brits,<\/a> he returns with a new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally\u2026 ready to be recrowned our pop king. \u201cLet light come in once in a while,\u201d he sings. <\/p>\n

La dolce vita certainly has its place on this album, perhaps Styles\u2019s most playful, bold and experimental to date. He sounds relaxed; there\u2019s none of the self-consciousness that\u2019s 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\u2019s ever been, exploring his feelings around relationships, adulthood, the loss of innocence. It opens with \u201cAperture\u201d, the single he released in January.<\/a> It\u2019s 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. \u201cGo forth, ask questions later,\u201d he commands.<\/p>\n

He follows his own advice. There\u2019s a curiosity to this album that was perhaps lacking in its predecessor, 2022\u2019s Harry\u2019s House. Critics reviewed it positively<\/a> (The Independent\u2019s Mark Beaumont hailed its \u201cfunk shuffle and future soul panache\u201d), 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.<\/p>\n

\"GoGo forth, ask questions later: Harry Styles lets his curiosity roam free on his new album (Stella Blackmon)<\/p>\n

Not so here. \u201cAmerican Girls\u201d opens with hushed piano and the soft skitter of the hi-hat, before a funk beat breaks onto the chorus: \u201cKnown you for ages\/ That\u2019s all I\u2019ve heard\/ My friends are all in love with American girls,\u201d Styles croons. It\u2019s Eighties Italo disco with a hint of French house, like a jolt of espresso to set you up for what follows. There\u2019s the brilliant chaos of \u201cReady, Steady, Go!\u201d with its dizzying outro, bloopy keys and Sons of Kemet co-founder Tom Skinner keeping Styles on a loose leash with his drum rhythms. \u201cDance No More\u201d is fantastic, riffing on Rick James\u2019s 1981 hit \u201cSuper Freak\u201d as Styles squawks: \u201cGotta get your feet wet\/ Respect\/ Respect your motheeeeer!\u201d<\/p>\n

As with \u201cAperture\u201d \u2013 and all of his solo albums, in fact \u2013 Styles favours songwriting in vignette form. No song exemplifies this so much as \u201cPop\u201d, a sexy, explorative number with squelchy funk beats and lyrics that play out like blurry snapshots of the night before. \u201cAm I in over my head?\u201d Styles questions, his vocodered voice adding a hazy, drunken quality. \u201cThis could go anywhere\/ I do it again and again\u2026 It\u2019s just me, on my knees, squeaky clean fantasy.\u201d He worries he\u2019s lost himself on \u201cAre You Listening Yet?\u201d, chastising the way he likes \u201cthe way she talks\/ Never what she says\u201d.<\/p>\n

While not everything works \u2013 there are still some clunky turns of phrase here and there \u2013 Kiss All the Time offers more insight into Styles\u2019s current psyche than ever. \u201cTaste Back\u201d finds him wrestling with a situationship, while \u201cPaint By Numbers\u201d seemingly addresses his guilt amid the fallout from his split with director Olivia Wilde,<\/a> who was seen bringing her two children to his shows while they were dating. \u201cHolding the weight of the American children whose hearts you break\/ Was it a tragedy when you told her\/ I\u2019m not even 33,\u201d Styles sings. You get the sense he\u2019s spent some time wondering \u201cwhat if\u201d things had turned out differently. His voice is full of yearning on \u201cThe Waiting Game\u201d, with a touch of Bowie in his deeper register over a lopsided, Radiohead-style minor chord on the guitar. <\/p>\n

\u201cComing Up Roses\u201d 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. \u201cTell me your fears\/ I\u2019ve turned back the clocks, it\u2019s that time of year\/ If we stay the course we could get it right\/ But I\u2019m not devoid of an appetite,\u201d he sings. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-518410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}