HARRY STYLES: Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally (Erskine/Columbia)
Verdict: Harry hits the dancefloor
Four stars.
He completed last September’s Berlin marathon in an impressive two hours and 59 minutes – and Harry Styles is also showing remarkable stamina in a pop career that began when he was a callow teenage hopeful on The X Factor back in 2010.
His last album, Harry’s House, helped him to sweep the board at the BRITS in 2023, where he picked up all four awards he was nominated for.
Harry’s House also won album of the year at the Grammys, confirming Styles’s status as one of the few British singers who is a global superstar.
It’s a position the 32-year-old from Holmes Chapel in Cheshire will be hoping to consolidate when his fourth solo album – Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally – comes out on Friday.
Like George Michael and Robbie Williams before him, the former One Direction singer has made the difficult transition from boy-band pin-up to serious solo artist.
On Harry’s House, he did it with an agile blend of R&B and soft-rock. This time, he’s putting his own slant on dance music – hence the ‘disco, occasionally’ bit of the title.
Harry Styles is showing remarkable stamina in a pop career that began when he was a callow teenage hopeful on The X Factor back in 2010 (pictured with former One Direction bandmates Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, and the late Liam Payne)
The 32-year-old singer has released three studio albums, with a fourth, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally, scheduled for release on March 6 (pictured at the BRIT awards 2026)
Those expecting rowdy rave anthems should be wary, though. There are indeed several dance numbers, including recent single Aperture and the funky Dance No More.
But on the whole, the mood on the 12 new songs that cocoon the listener in a wall of silky sound and supple vocals is subtle and restrained.
Styles made Kiss All The Time… with regular collaborators Kid Harpoon, once a solo artist on the London indie scene, and American multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Tyler Johnson.
There’s one big orchestral ballad arranged by conductor Jules Buckley, and three tracks that feature backing vocals by Ellie Rowsell, of Wolf Alice.
Aperture, the song sung by a pinstripe-trousered Styles at the BRITs, opens the record with a pulsating electronic hum that sets a subdued, but danceable, tone.
‘We belong together,’ he sings, in a celebration of dancing the night away, and it’s a theme he returns to on Are You Listening Yet?: ‘If you must join a movement, make sure there’s dancing,’ he advises.
So much for the disco. What about the kissing?
Harry is a romantic at heart, and his amorous instincts are to the fore on atmospheric ballad American Girls (‘cause time will show that you should try it, those American girls you spend your life with’) and the orchestral Coming Up Roses, a loved-up ballad that could have come from the One Direction songbook.
His last album, Harry’s House, featured an agile blend of R&B and soft-rock. This time, he’s putting his own slant on dance music – hence the ‘disco, occasionally’ bit of the title
The tracks featuring Rowsell, including Aperture, add muscle. The Wolf Alice singer augments Styles on Taste Back, an electro-pop number about dating.
Season 2 Weight Loss is more of a fully-fledged duet. ‘Do you? Do you love me now?’ asks Harry.
Elsewhere, he reflects on his place in the showbiz world. ‘It’s just me on my knees, squeaky clean fantasy,’ he sings on Pop, sounding unusually jaded, while electronic ballad Paint By Numbers finds him trying to reconcile his growing maturity with his old, boy-band persona.
‘It’s a little bit complicated, when they put an image in your head and now you’re stuck with it,’ he sings.
But that’s as far as the soul-searching goes. Harry’s aim is to get us dancing. ‘It’s all waiting there for you,’ he sings on Carla’s Song, closing the album as he opened it – with pulsating electronic beats.
With his upcoming world tour including a record-breaking 12-night residency at Wembley Stadium, he’s going to be impossible to avoid this summer.
Out on Friday.
