Harry Styles is the only young male rockstar working in the UK, if we think of a rockstar as someone mysterious and charismatic who can usher in a whole new style of trousers. But the reason he has broken through as a serious, adult concern lies in his music: he is prepared to take the risk of being subtle, and in 2022 made a whisper of a song (“As It Was”) into an anthem. His performance at the Brits last week, in an eddy of cool dancers and bolstered by a gospel choir, reminded me of recent work by Self Esteem, who was herself inspired by Peter Gabriel. A theatrical setting, and the presence of many other bodies on stage, she told me, was far less exposing: it says this is collaboration, a work of art.
Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is almost anti-pop. What I hear, in that first single “Aperture” and in songs such as “Ready, Steady, Go!” is the same attitude you heard in the intelligent alt-pop of the late aughts: Hot Chip or Hercules and Love Affair – music made when Styles wasn’t even in One Direction, but 14 and living in Cheshire. It is hard to pin down his exact formula, created alongside his long term collaborators Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, but the quality is in all the component parts. The drums are a high point, courtesy of Tom Skinner, once a member of Sons of Kemet – that precise little snare-storm building up on “Season 2 Weight Loss” is pure modern jazz. There is synth, on “Carla’s Song”, in a voice I’ve only ever heard in that genre too, though I have no idea what it’s called: stately tone with a churchy sustain, half way between an organ and an electric violin. Why bother with details like these if you’re just trying to write pop hits? It feels like a record used to feel, in the days when you couldn’t skip tracks – alien at first, slowly getting its fingers into you over time. “Dance No More” is disco, but the kind of vocoder-studded disco collected in 12-inch form by nerds. Not the glossy pastiche of Bruno Mars, who has a new album out and sounds a bit lost without Mark Ronson.
I couldn’t pick Harry Styles’ voice out of a lineup – he doesn’t really project, never promises anything – but it doesn’t matter. His lyrics are arcane, though “We belong together / it finally appears / it’s only love” is a great line. “Oh what a gift it is to be noticed, but it’s nothing to do with me,” he sings on Paint By Numbers; then there’s a reference to dying before you were 33, and you wonder if it’s about Liam Payne. Kiss All The Time… is the first album Styles has made since Payne’s death in 2024, and earlier this week he admitted he struggled at that time, with other people thinking they shared in the grief (fans camped under the balcony from which Payne fell). This feeling might explain the way his lyrics turn away from you. The biggest thing Styles can do to protect his phenomenal success, and himself, is to preserve his mystique – and that seems to be what he’s doing.
[Further reading: Patrick Bateman, Clavicular and the age of psycho masculinity]
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