Item: Harry Styles - KISS ALL THE TIME. DISCO, OCCASIONALLY.
Rating: 4.5

Harry Styles - KISS ALL THE TIME. DISCO, OCCASIONALLY.

Reviewer: Emma Swann

Released: 6th March 2026

Label: Erskine / Columbia

In certain corners of the internet, the enduring image from St Peter’s Square in Rome on the announcement of Pope Leo’s election last spring was not of the white smoke billowing into the sky, but of a pop star’s attempt to remain incognito in the middle of the gathered throng, sunglasses and a baseball cap failing to disguise his A-list status, even within the most highbrow of ceremony. Crowned ‘side quest king’ as a consequence, it appeared that Harry Styles would do just about anything except be seen heading into the studio to follow up 2022’s ‘Harry’s House’.

In reality, it had not even been two full years since Harry had wrapped Love on Tour - a live run which had not only begun way back in 2021, taking in both ‘Harry’s House’ and 2019’s ‘Fine Line’, but had also found itself selling out Wembley shows in two consecutive years (almost to the day). ‘Harry’s House’ was recorded in 2020 and 2021 – that internationally enforced break be damned. As far as we can tell, the recording of ‘Fine Line’ also coincided with the end of his previous tour, which itself began only months after the release of his 2017 self-titled debut solo record. (If that sounds exhausting, then consider that One Direction released five albums in consecutive Novembers, all the while on a near-constant world touring schedule).

Songwriters will often speak of the need to ‘live life’ to garner the imaginatory fuel to create: here is a man who’s been playing pop star since he’d barely entered puberty. It may not even be hyperbole to suggest he didn’t yet know how to ‘live life’; there’s a sad poignance to an almost throwaway quip in a recent interview he gave: “I don’t remember… if I’ve ever sat down and just had a coffee.”

Thankfully – for both Harry and all – the cap he failed to hide behind on that particular day in Rome revealed that he’d at least found the dancefloor, bearing the slogan: ‘Techno Is My Boyfriend’. And not just any dancefloor, oh no, but arguably the world’s most famous: cult Berlin club Berghain. The one place (probably) where his level of fame would be irrelevant; an audience for whom seeing an international pop star throwing shapes wouldn’t even register on the list of standout things they’d seen that hour (not to mention its strict rules on camera usage).

So, as ‘KISS ALL THE TIME. DISCO, OCCASIONALLY.’ is a strange mouthful of a title, it does in fact fit both its context and sound: be an autonomous, living, breathing human being - and sometimes dance. Where previous records’ variations in sound and style appeared as if Harry was trying them on for size to find out who he is artistically – a delayed musical coming-of-age of sorts – here that’s almost flipped, the thread of his own songwriting - in collaboration with longtime producer Kid Harpoon – augmented by the sounds he’s spent time with while away from the pop grind.

The most obviously dancefloor number here - alongside single ‘Aperture’- is the on-the-nose ‘Dance No More’, where an all-but-Chic-indebted bassline is eventually paired with a one that similarly digs at disco’s core tragedy-tempo axis (“There’s no difference in between the tears and the sweat”), before Harry adopts a proto-white boy rap delivery that echoes Blondie’s ‘Rapture’. Its use of call-and-response gang vocals - “DJs don’t dance no more they said” – also brings another Rapture to mind: see the New York band’s 2006 single ‘Whoo! Alright - Yeah…Uh Huh’.

The bassline of ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ drips with indie sleaze, while the LCD-a-like synth squelch that powers ‘American Girls’ sits at pleasant contrast to the song’s otherwise pure early ‘80s feel, from the warm and infectious cadence of the chorus refrain (“My friends are in love / With American girls”) to its markedly ‘Sound and Vision’-esque bassline. It’s perhaps notable here that both these tracks list Berlin’s Hansa as a recording location – a space with a storied discography that most famously includes Bowie’s ‘Low’ and ‘Heroes’.

‘Taste Back’ - which structurally speaking is wholesale classic pop - is here met with ghostly backing vocals (courtesy of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, who pops up on multiple songs across the record) and a synth pattern that brings to mind The Postal Service. Closer ‘Carla’s Song’, meanwhile, could otherwise fit in with anything on ‘Harry’s House’, save for an insistent beat before its refrain “I know what you like / I know what you’ll really like”, which is repeated as if already halfway to a remix: essentially, it’s ‘Satellite’ on disco biscuits.

The heart of the record, though, sits within a one-two of which the first is in almost direct contrast to everything else. The point at which a trumpet joins ‘Paint By Numbers’ takes it from being ‘quite Beatlesy indeed’ towards confirmation of the famous quote Pablo Picasso almost definitely never uttered: “…great artists steal”. For while, yes, there are multiple Gallaghers ahead of Harry in the queue for that particular magpie stash, here he evokes the world’s first boyband to deliver his own gut-wrenching and entirely related musings (“They put an image in your head and now you’re stuck with it”; “Holding the weight of the American children whose heart you break”).

And then there’s ‘Pop’, a song which by rights should become one of the year’s biggest singles, more than living up to its name. Impossibly catchy, here a disco bassline meets Robyn-esque synths, while its rhythm section amps up the oomph to ‘Kiwi’ levels, taking that same ‘reflections of a poster-boy’ premise but drenching it in double entendre. “It’s just me / On my knees / Squeaky clean fantasy,” he sings, “First time tasting it / It’s nice to mix two flavours together”. It’s like George Michael’s ‘Freedom ‘90’ updated, just with a hand barely stifling its giggles - as if to say “oops!”, but not mean it for one single second.

There’s a strange paradox in play where the artists with the most resources to fund time off don’t appear to take it. The combination of an industry machine that fears inaction causing irrelevancy, the pressure to repeat huge commercial successes, and simply not knowing how to press pause all leads to expectations of a constant conveyor belt of new.

But everything here - the confidence of often leftfield sonic choices (including a five-plus minute lead single); of not falling into repeating his own writing patterns; of not being afraid to give a wholly knowing wink in various ways - not only make ‘KISS ALL THE TIME. DISCO, OCCASIONALLY.’ an excellent record that is at points raw but more often joyful, but is also proof of the importance of taking time out.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, Columbia, Erskine, Harry Styles