Superstars don’t stay relevant by doing what people expect, or even what their fans necessarily want. Crowd-pleasing is a fast track to becoming a nostalgia act, where an artist is trapped in a loop of playing to type (i.e. the hits and only the hits) year after year. It’s not a bad life — Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and countless others are making millions playing their decades-old hits to adoring, affluent, increasingly older crowds, with new songs being an indulgence for them and a bathroom break for the fans.
But staying culturally relevant is a totally different game, one that requires a constant element of surprise, or at least the unexpected — a sense that the artist knows exactly what they’re doing, even if they’re not obvious about it. That combination of engagement and elusiveness, of knowing how much to say and how much to hold back, creates a tantalizing sense of mystery that keeps people curious, not only wanting more but wanting to know more.
That elusiveness is a big part of what keeps us engaged with the Beyoncés, Arianas, Lanas, Taylors and Kendricks of the world — not knowing what’s coming next, the anticipation of getting something unexpected and exciting, because what’s more exciting than getting something awesome that you didn’t even know you wanted? Of course, countless artists have tried to lead their audience into places the fans knew they didn’t want to go, and faceplanted accordingly. But the risk is also a big part of the reward — even if it can lead to some ambivalent reactions to one’s dancing ability.
Without putting Harry Styles in the same league as some of the above innovators, he has shown an unusually strong self-awareness in terms of his career, his audience and simply keeping people interested. After six years with One Direction, one of the biggest boy bands in history, his 2017 self-titled solo debut sounded like absolutely nothing he’d done before — not to mention nothing else on the charts — and gave him a clean slate from which he could go anywhere, yet “Fine Line” two years later found him shifting into the upbeat pop that fans probably expected from his debut. And although 2022’s “Harry’s House” continued in that musical vein, it arrived surprisingly quickly after the pandemic-delayed “Fine Line” tour, and basically made for a multi-year — and multimillion-dollar-spinning — extended album cycle.
So what’s the move with the fascinatingly punctuated “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.,” which comes out on Friday? Not what the title, or Styles’ stated inspirations from Berlin nightclubs, would lead people to expect, because there’s very little here that anyone would consider disco (albeit with one glorious exception we’ll get to in a moment).
There are a lot of upbeat songs, big drums, heavy bass and loud electronic noises to go with Styles’ alternately cheery or melancholy melodies, but the beats on this album tend to pound rather than groove; even the upbeat and promisingly titled “Ready Steady Go” stomps more than it swings. Throughout most of the album, there’s a sense of restraint, of holding back — even the songs with the heaviest beats would be almost impossible to dance to. There are lots of electronics, few guitars, and one song, “Coming Up Roses,” is a lovely ballad with Styles accompanied only by a piano and orchestra.
But in line with the sense of mystery and elusiveness mentioned above, it’s an album that reveals itself gradually, and there’s plenty for fans to grab onto. The shimmering pop songs “Taste Back” and “The Waiting Game” have the album’s sweetest melodies; “Pop” is driven by a Daft Punk-esque arpeggiated synthesizer hook; the closing “Carla’s Song” is the kind of track that could be an exuberant, set-closing, confetti-dropping finale in a more concert-friendly arrangement. Oddly, the memorably titled “Season 2 Weight Loss” is one of the least memorable songs.
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Even more oddly, the one true banger — “Dance No More” — is the outlier in the batch. With a funky groove, ‘80s synthesizer stabs, party noises and a put-your-hands-in-the-air-wooo! chorus of “DJs don’t dance no more!,” it has a loose, fun, carefree vibe found nowhere else on the album. It’s a prime early candidate for Song of the Summer 2026 — and, perfectly on brand for this album, it’s sequenced way toward the end, the tenth of 12 songs (maybe to manage expectations?), and is followed by the slow, acoustic-guitar-led ballad “Paint by Numbers,” squelching the party vibe just as it was getting a late start.
Initially, fans may greet this album with confusion or hesitant enthusiasm, because it may not be what they were dreaming of or expecting. But do we really want the same birthday present every year? “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” is actually the opposite of its opponent in pop’s 2026 heated rivalry: the new Bruno Mars album, which delivers — immediately, and on a silver platter — exactly what a majority of his fans presumably wanted. Styles could have done that easily — you can almost feel him not doing it, with the restrained vibe of many of the songs on this album — but artistically, he might be trying to play a longer game with songs that take some time to sink in.
However, his concerts are a different story — a musical group hug, filled with hits and sparkle and laughs and unselfconscious joyful dancing, and many of his songs often take on a different life onstage, where the heat and grit of a live band let them loosen up and swing. That will probably happen with a lot of the tracks here too — witness (in the unlikely event that anyone reading this hasn’t already) his performance of “Aperture” at the Brit Awards last weekend, which saw the low-key song transformed into an anthem.
So even if a lot of the songs on “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” are a bit on the chill side, they almost definitely won’t be when he hits the stage. We’ll get to find out on Friday, when a one-off concert in England will be livestreamed in advance of the tour starting in earnest in May.
From Variety US