Congratulations to Harry Styles. His quietly pulsing new song, Aperture, is a lovely five minutes that starts off sounding like a comedown single but soon exudes the qualities of every stage of a night out.
He’s also just announced the 50-date Together, Together tour, which includes 30 nights at Madison Square Garden, in New York, and six at Wembley Stadium, in London, though that’s sadly the closest Irish fans will be able to get to him – for now.
Best of all, the British singer has unveiled the first properly great album title of 2026. True, it’s the record itself that’s important, but titles often bode well or ill for the effort that lies in wait, and in the former One Directioner’s case there’s a lot to love about his choice: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
Is this an instruction to the rest of us or more like a present-tense diary entry? Either way, it’s promising, it’s intriguing and it’s very Styles.
There’s just an enjoyably louche vibe to that title. Together with the continued employment of Kid Harpoon, his producer and songwriting collaborator, it implies he will pick up where he left off on his third album, the pleasing Harry’s House, then go somewhere new. The mirrorball on the cover suggests disco really does mean disco.
Surprisingly, then, Aperture is not a banger, but something better than that: a slow-building slice of electronica elevated by its layered beats and “we belong together” refrain.
It feels like a statement of intent from an artist who has entered a new era and is entreating us to come with him on a mission to kiss all the time, disco occasionally.
Styles might be in pole position sales-wise – Harry’s House shifted more than four million units worldwide – but a quick survey of some 2026 releases backs up my suspicion: the art of coming up with good album titles isn’t remotely dead.
[ ‘I’ve lost the feeling in my legs’: waiting for Harry Styles among the parentsOpens in new window ]
Several artists have been busy using them to double down on their established brands. The never knowingly cheery Sleaford Mods, for instance, have just unleashed The Demise of Planet X, while next month will see Peaches, the Canadian provocateur, return with her first album in more than 10 years, No Lube So Rude – a title that suggests she hasn’t changed much in the interim.
The March release of Make-Up Is a Lie firmly indicates Morrissey is still Morrissey. More appealingly, at least for me, is the sleekly Robynesque suggestion in the name of the Swedish dance-pop star’s forthcoming album, due the same month: Sexistential.
Consistency in a world gone mad is an underappreciated quality. If someone travelled back in time to tell the millennium version of me that Stereolab, Prolapse and Half Man Half Biscuit would release records in 2025 called Instant Holograms on Metal Film, I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face and All Asimov and No Fresh Air, I’d smile, reassured, and have no trouble matching the album to the band.
But the overall winner of the best album title last year was the American DJ and producer Skrillex, who honoured two separate album-naming traditions – taking inspiration from graffiti and the reclaiming of personal abuse – with his record F*ck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3.
For newer artists in the process of breaking through, album titles need to be representative of the kind of music they make while also sparking the curiosity of the uninitiated. I knew little about the American singer-songwriter Em Beihold, but her debut album, due in February, is called Tales of a Failed Shapeshifter, a title decent enough to send me to Spotify in pursuit of her earlier EPs. (Verdict: cute.)
2025 winner: F*ck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!! <3
Public bouts of indecisiveness can be undermining. Lana Del Rey was planning to make a country-flavoured album called Lasso in 2024, but she soon cooled on that idea, and it was renamed The Right Person Will Stay.
The wrong title won’t stay, however, so now the album, on the verge of release, is called Stove, which has the virtue of being more succinct than her last, question-mark-free one, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. (We do now.)
Back to Styles. As a manual for life, it’s obviously unrealistic to kiss all the time and disco occasionally – the other way around, maybe – but that’s pop stars for you, forever sharing their hedonistic mantras. Their best-kept secret is that they’re actually just like us (only better looking and more talented). They work all the time, sleep occasionally.
But because that’s boring and uncool, they give us glamour and enigma and wrap it up with a feather boa or, in the case of this new campaign, some vintage tech. One sold-out pre-ordering option for the album, which is due out on March 6th, bundles a CD with “a reloadable 35mm film camera” – or, as it used to be known, a camera.
Sold out: the limited-edition camera and CD box set of Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
Pent-up demand for the return of Styles and his excellent trousers has been all over the internet for a while. It’s almost four years since the release of Harry’s House and its sublime hit, As It Was. That’s a long time in music, and none of us are getting any younger.
The new record seems set to expand on the pop-rock grooves that made its predecessor so charming while diving, friction-free, through a selection of mood-boosting genres the way only an idol as confident as Styles can.
Aperture and the album title alone leave me optimistic for the supply of music as stylish as his punctuation. Once more, with admiration: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.