Harry Styles says he needed to “fall in love with music all over again” after taking three years off.
READ MORE: Harry Styles takes things slow and steady on new single ‘Aperture’
The soloist and former One Direction star released his new single ‘Aperture’ yesterday (January 22). It’s the first from his upcoming fourth solo album, ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco Occasionally’ out on March 6, which has been executive produced by Kid Harpoon and is set for release on March 6. Visit here to pre-order.
It marks his first new music since his third album, ‘Harry’s House‘, which was released in 2022.
Now, Styles has explained the three-year gap between albums in a new interview on Capital Breakfast this morning (January 23), saying he needed a break after his last worldwide trek for his ‘Love On Tour’.
“I think for me, when I finished the last tour, it was quite long, and I think I got to the end of it and I felt like before I make another album, I really need a strong why of why I would be making another album,” he said.
“The answer can’t just be ‘well, I’ve finished the tour so now I’m going to make another album, and then after that I do this, and then I put it out, and then I do another tour’,” Styles continued. “I think a lot of it for me was kind of paying a bit more attention to some of the other corners of my life that when I’ve been touring for long stretches, I haven’t always given that much attention to.
“So, I think for me it was a really important couple of years for me personally to kind of honestly just fall in love with music all over again and to kind of understand why being in a crowd is so special to people.”
He went on to say: “I felt like I had some of my own experiences like that that I haven’t always had that many of. And I think being able to go to a show and really enjoy it and immerse myself in being an audience member is the thing that influenced why I wanted to make this album.”
The new track sees Styles stray from the synth pop of ‘Harry’s House’, and adopt a more electronic atmosphere. The shift in sound, he says, is inspired by “going out” and spending time in Berlin.
“I was meeting a lot of fun and interesting people and hearing a lot of different kinds of music,” he told Capital. “And I kind of just started feeling how that was influencing the music I was making. And I was just kind of loving what I felt like it would allow me to do on stage and just be really immersed in the music. That was kind of the goal was to make an album that I could enjoy playing as much as I enjoyed making it.”
NME‘s Rhian Daly gave the single four stars, in a review that read: “It’s also Styles as we’ve not heard him before. Rather than the loosely retro pop-rock of ‘Harry’s House’ or the grand theatrics of ballads like ‘Sign Of The Times’, the star heads in the direction of electronic music.
“‘Aperture’ is propelled by a lightly thumping beat that’s made more or less euphoric by the stabs of house piano that dip in and out, the jittery blasts of distorted fuzz, and the 31-year-old’s resonant delivery in the chorus: “We belong together”. Add in a series of drawn-out, droning chords and it’s (likely) as close as we’re going to get to Styles fronting LCD Soundsystem.”
In support of ‘Kiss All The Time, Disco Occasionally’, Styles has also announced a huge comeback tour, which will see him play residencies in seven major cities around the world.
The ‘Together, Together’ tour will consist of six nights at London’s Wembley Stadium and a total of 30 shows in New York’s Madison Square Garden, as well as strings of concerts in Amsterdam, São Paulo, Mexico City, Melbourne and Sydney.
In total, Styles will play 50 dates from May to December, and he will be joined by names including Robyn, Shania Twain, Fcukers, Jorja Smith, Jamie xx, Fousheé and Skye Newman. You can see a full list of dates and all ticket information here.
Styles first started teasing his new album last week, through a series of posters with the phrase ‘We Belong Together’ that popped up in cities across the globe. He then sent out a brief, lo-fi voice recording to fans on WhatsApp, which contained audio of him singing the line, “we belong together”.
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