Since Harry Styles’ last album, 2022’s ‘Harry’s House’, the pop superstar has made some changes in his life. That record arrived amid a period of constant gossip and speculation around his personal life, and in the years since, he’s tried to wrest back control of his privacy, using his time off to travel and find a new pace. Where, four years ago, it felt like barely a day went by without a blind post sharing supposed details of his relationships, now you’re far more likely to see posts about his marathon running.
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That change is something that’s reflected in ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’. Styles’ previous albums could – and were – easily linked back to the hearsay surrounding him at the time, but here, it feels like he’s nailed writing songs driven by his personal experiences without centring them around the details and facts. Sure, you can speculate what he’s talking about when he admits “I wanted to behave / But I know I’ll do it again” on the zigzagging ‘Pop’, but the conclusion feels far less concrete than before.
The results are an album that feels liberated and full of light, even in its more melancholy moments. Styles has spoken about spending 2025 “saying yes to everything” and ‘Kiss All The Time…’ welcomes in everything – apprehensively reconnecting with an old lover on the dreamy beauty of ‘Taste Back’ (one of three songs on the album to feature backing vocals from Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell), thinking you’ve found a companion only to be proved wrong on ‘The Waiting Game’ and losing yourself on the dancefloor (the record’s real disco moment, ‘Dance No More’). It subtly makes the case for allowing yourself to let go and feel everything; an acknowledgement that to really live isn’t just to only experience the good.
Musically, the pop star’s attitude to accepting every invitation and challenge bleeds into the record, too. It’s the most exploratory album of his career so far, trying out new things and steering his ship in new directions. Lead single ‘Aperture’ set the tone with its LCD Soundsystem-inspired electronic build, and the rest of the album largely follows suit – with some surprise deviations along the way.
‘Are You Listening Yet?’ matches marching drums (played by Sons Of Kemet and The Smile’s Tom Skinner) and trumpets with Styles delivering verses of Sprechgesang vocals that, as well as LCD, nod to post-punk or his former support act Wet Leg. ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’’s elastic bass feels like it could be from an early Metronomy song, while the waltzing ‘Coming Up Roses’ – premiered last week at one of Fred Again..’s London gigs – drops the electronics in favour of sweeping strings.
Largely, Styles taking a new approach to things really works – ‘Kiss All The Time…’ feels like an album that you’ll really want to spend a lot of time with, letting all its layers envelope you. But, very occasionally, there are things that don’t quite hit the target. ‘American Girls’ is fun but easily forgettable when held up against the rest of the tracklist, and the acoustic moment of penultimate song ‘Paint By Numbers’ is a little jarring between ‘Dance No More’ and the gorgeous synth soar of ‘Carla’s Song’. As Styles has shown us, though, even life’s blips have value, and these instances can’t stop his fourth album from feeling like a triumph.
Details
Record label: Erskine Records/Columbia Records
Release date: March 6, 2026
The post Harry Styles – ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ review: pop superstar lets the light in appeared first on NME.