Harry Styles is not a risk-taker. While much is made of his androgynous style (the first man to wear a skirt on the cover of Vogue!) or mammoth stadium tours (30 nights at Madison Square Garden!), the biggest risk Styles has ever taken was in 2016, when he and his One Direction bandmates decided to go on indefinite hiatus, prompting the start of their solo careers. Since then, Styles has released three critically acclaimed studio albums, each bigger and more of a marked “event” than the last. And while Styles’s sound changes slightly with each record — Fine Line was more 1970s soft rock inspired, Harry’s House more 80s, for example — he does broadly sound the same. Putting it simply, you can always expect Harry Styles to crank out some impeccably produced pop bangers every few years, with very little backlash.
But this January, something changed. Harry Styles released Aperture, the first single from his latest album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally (out this Friday). It was moody, considerably more electronic-leaning, and decidedly different to anything we’ve heard from Styles thus far. Fans leaving listening parties for the single described it as “techno”, a misguided description that I suspect is partly due to techno’s pervasive dominance in the electronic music world right now or, more likely, Harry Styles’s recent fondness for wearing a slogan baseball cap that says “techno is my boyfriend.”
While I do believe Harry’s fans (quite literally known as “Harries”) would adapt to nearly anything Styles released, they don’t have to worry about becoming Berghain-queuers all of a sudden. Aperture is the reverse Trojan horse of Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. What lies beyond track one is much more typical Styles, just with a little more dance influence. Far from divisive, the album is distinctly “Harry”, deliberately current, and undoubtedly Styles’s best album yet.
Fans are immediately snapped back into Styles’s older sound (almost as far as the One Direction era) with ultra-poppy second track American Girls, which is almost laughably crowd-pleasing. But it’s the next three songs that really prove Styles’ new mettle. The plucky bass and cascading synths of Ready, Steady, Go! force listeners to see that Styles means business.
There’s little time to catch any breath before he lurches into pseudo-protest song Are You Listening Yet? where Styles gives life lessons to his listeners in enjoyably patronising speak-singing. It’s here that we get to the core ethos of the album, with Styles instructing: “If you must join a movement, make sure there’s dancing,” before launching into a chant of the song’s title, a chorus destined for stadium-sized shouted repetition.
Rounding up the impeccable three-song run is Taste Back, a track that seems to take inspiration from LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip and Bombay Bicycle Club before turning into an unapologetic pop anthem as Styles croons the main refrain of “You just need a little love, you just need a little love.”
Other highlights from the album include the confusingly named Season 2 Weight Loss, an out-and-out belter littered with 80s synths and disorientating drums that could have come straight out of the Industry soundtrack. It’s one of the few songs on the album where Styles seems to display real vulnerability, singing earnestly about “holding out” for someone to love him back.
Like any good party person, Styles is best when he’s feeling playful, and when he’s not alone (many songs include a choir, or backing vocals by Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell). This is particularly true on Dance No More, Styles’s version of The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” fused with Dua Lipa’s “Houdini”. It also features one of the best lyrics of the album, with Styles dutifully instructing fans to “Respect your mother!” in a high-camp voice that will surely become a vocal stim for years to come.
The album is slightly let down by the slower songs, The Waiting Game and Coming Up Roses, which don’t have the same impact as the big pop anthems (of which there are many, and certainly more than any other Harry Styles album). They instead seem to disrupt the flow, as if Styles couldn’t quite square this new sonic era with barefaced sadness. Aperture is the closest he gets, which would make sense; it’s the last song he made for the album.
Maybe this signals that more risks are coming in Styles’s next era, but Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is not that: it’s Harry Styles doing what Harry Styles does best. Releasing a series of impeccably produced pop bangers, each better than the last.
