Harry Styles’ highly anticipated album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.” released March 6 and showcases some of the best work the singer has produced to date.
It has been four years since the release of Styles’ last album, “Harry’s House,” which contained chart-topping songs such as “As It Was” and “Late Night Talking,” the latter being one of my favorites of his songs. The last album’s notoriety and reach, having reached over 25 billion Spotify streams, has definitely led to the public’s high expectations of what would be coming next for Styles.
Whereas previous albums such as “Harry Styles” and “Fine Line” integrated rock influences on the pop genre, “Harry’s House” added more synth-pop fusion inspired songs to Styles’ discography. This synth-pop fusion continues with “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.,” an aspect I found way more refreshing than his past songs like the often overplayed “Watermelon Sugar” from “Fine Line.”
What Styles does best within this new album is find a style that suits him better, one that is both somber and upbeat. Styles successfully implements the album’s “disco” vibes, conveying his inner dilemmas and thoughts within an array of electronic modular synths and distortions.
Within the first track, “Aperture,” a single released just over a month before the album, Styles introduces a synth influence.
The beating, electronic rhythm guides the song into Styles’ first verse and becomes increasingly prevalent within the chorus, “It’s best you know what you don’t / Aperture lets the light in.” To me, the song felt like Styles’ way of talking about how transformation is needed to come to terms with what he does not know or understand.
The title “Aperture,” which references the light-admitting device on a camera lens, provides a metaphor for this journey. Seemingly, Styles finds he must open his understanding to what is not visible to him, such as opening the aperture up on a camera.
In the music video for “Aperture”, Styles is followed by a mysterious man walking from his hotel room when he gets into a cinematically chaotic fight. The dynamics change however, when Styles grabs a drink from a vending machine and the two start dancing together in surprisingly odd ways.
The odd dance moves combined with the vibrant synth-pop instrumentals and Styles’ warm vocals drew similarities to that of singer Troye Sivan. Styles’ “Aperture” is a taste to the heightened intensity of the electronic pop within Sivan’s “Rush” and “Got Me Started.”
One of my favorite tracks, “American Girls,” explores Styles own realization that many of his friends have settled down with American girls. While he deals with the loneliness many who are single may feel, he reflects on his desire for a similar life. These aspects of longing for real love made this album feel deeply emotional and overwhelmingly more mature than Styles’ previous work.
The “disco” in this album is best presented in “Dance No More” where Styles deals with the battle between maintaining his own desires and following what the public wants. I felt like the lyrics “Keep your customer satisfied and live your life” encapsulate the tight rope Styles feels he must walk on to keep the public entertained.
In a recent interview, Styles even claims that he was forced to give much of himself away to the public being the head member of One Direction. These early life experiences with fame have caused him to shut himself out from the rest of the world.
“Dance No More” becomes an album standout for its groovy electric guitar and energetic backup calls interlaced within a rocky beat. This masterfully juxtaposes the song’s vibes with its grueling content, displaying the reality of how celebrities are often expected to maintain a cheerful appearance the majority of the time.
These increasingly stylistic funk songs, however, are wrapped into the many songs that follow Styles’ characteristic pop-rock style. Despite holding true to the part of the title that says “Disco, Occasionally,” I would have preferred “Disco All The Time” instead.
While Styles does offer something new and refreshing, it’s a track list of songs that, although decently produced and written, models much of his previous catalog.
What was interesting though was how Styles explored deep themes of self-reflection, particularly with regard to his own love life and longing for a sense of human connection.
This narrative shed a raw light on what life is like for the singer, one I felt drawn to because of similarities to my own self-discovery, and this album could cause others to feel the same.
While most of the tracks on “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.” are likely to excite fans who already enjoy what Styles has released, as somewhat of an outsider, I felt there were only a few tracks that really emphasized the type of “disco” I was expecting.
Needless to say, the tracks on this album, which runs a total of 42 minutes, were especially great and allowed me to dive further into the Styles’ discography, opening me up to other songs I have come to enjoy, including “Lights Up” and “Cinema”.
