Harry Styles highly anticipated new album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally, dropped on March 6, and fans are already obsessed. It’s a roller coaster of emotions, from beautiful ballads to electric pop hits. The album truly has everything — and it also has fans speculating about lyrics and reminiscing on Styles’s One Direction days. Two songs on the KATTDO album in particular have fans looking back on Styles’s days in One Direction: “American Girls” and “Paint By Numbers.”
Fans have deduced that the 11th track on the album, “Paint By Numbers,” is about the passing of One Direction member and close friend of Styles, Liam Payne. In the laid-back track, Styles sings, “You’re the luckiest, oh, the irony / Holdin’ the weight of the American children whose hearts you break / Was it a tragedy when you told her, ‘I’m not even 33?’”
In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Styles spoke about grappling with the loss of Payne. “I think there’s a period when he passed away where I really struggled with, kind of like, acknowledging how strange it is to have people be a part of your grief,” Styles said. “I have such strong feelings about my friend passing away, and then suddenly aware of a desire of other people to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
In contrast, fans think “American Girls” is a celebration of what One Direction built together — especially their loyal fanbase of American girls. Fans say Styles brought back 2015 Harry for an upbeat song that lives up to the “disco” in the album title. Even though, for Styles, the playful track is “quite a lonely song in a lot of ways.”
“I watched my three closest friends get married, and actually seeing them trust in something and risk something to find something truly fulfilling in a way that isn’t as shiny or on paper as exciting,” Styles told Lowe. “Watching them get married, I was like ‘I’m single, so I’m having all the fun,’ and ‘American Girls’ is actually about watching them get married, and there just is a magic when you find the person that you want to be with. I think watching them do that and seeing that it doesn’t come without any uncertainty.”
While fans cherish a moment to relive their One Direction phase, these references mean something deeper for Styles. His callbacks to his early career are reflections of how long he’s been in the business. Styles told Lowe how this album was about rediscovering if he truly loves creating music or if he’s just been in the game for a long time. Luckily, he does still enjoy it, and fans can tell with the playfulness of his latest album.