Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. is finally here, and it sounds like Styles has rediscovered his soul at the club. After staying up for a midnight first listen and having the album on repeat since, I was amazed at the amount KATTDO gives the listener to dissect.
The album starts incredibly strong with “Aperture,” which Styles has described as the mission statement of the album. After listening, I understand why this was our first look into his new era. “Aperture” combines the major themes of renewal, healing, vulnerability, and the joy of dance in one masterful single.
After “Aperture” is “American Girls.” “American Girls” seems to be the next single from the album, with a music video premiering live on the day of the album’s release, following in “Aperture’s” footsteps. “American Girls” is very One-Direction-esque, with the larger-than-life pop touches, and less of the dancey introspection of the rest of the album. In the Zane Lowe interview, Styles describes the feeling of watching his closest friends get married and realizing the personal fulfillment that can come from that kind of commitment, and how it inspired the track.
“Taste Back” is easy to pass over upon the first listen, sandwiched between standout track “Are You Listening Yet?” and “The Waiting Game.” However, the more you listen to “Taste Back,” the better it gets, smooth and perfectly matching the more obvious star songs on the album.
My personal favorite from the album, “Are You Listening Yet?” is the perfect combination of the dancey beats of “Ready, Steady, Go” and “Dance No More” with the deep introspection of songs like “The Waiting Game” and “Season 2 Weight Loss.”
Both “Are You Listening Yet” and “The Waiting Game” have some of the best and most brutally honest lyrics on KATTDO. In “The Waiting Game,” Styles seems to critique his past work with the lines “You can romanticize your shortcomings / Ignore your agency to stop / Write a ballad with the details while skimming off the top.” Personally, these were some of the lyrics of the entire album that stopped me in my tracks. In the past, I have written about how Styles won me over with his honesty about himself and his flaws on tracks like “To Be So Lonely” and “Cherry” from 2019’s Fine Line. One of the things I appreciate the most about Styles and his music is this frankness about himself and how he feels he’s fallen short. For Styles to then acknowledge that perhaps some of these lyrics weren’t as deep as he thought really makes the lyrics on this album stand out.
On “Are You Listening Yet?” Styles seems to describe reaching a breaking point with himself and the way he was living his life. The chorus “Now you’re all out of choices / are you listening yet?” and “Oh, can you hear the voice, the one inside your head? / Oh, are you listening yet?” is an incredibly straightforward callout of when you find yourself sabotaging your own life. The opening line, “God knows your life is on the brink and your therapist’s well-fed,” is the perfect starter for this kind of self-reflection. You can’t always “gentle parent” yourself out of a hole, especially if you are the one who got you there. It’s this implicit message, plus the outrageously catchy choral tones and downbeats that make this song my favorite on the album.
Despite the unfortunate title, “Season 2 Weight Loss” is another favorite example of Styles’ vulnerability on this album, but with a different focus. The chorus of this song feels like Styles is describing the uncertainty of how he will be welcomed back by fans after his nearly four-year break. In the chorus, “Do you love me now? / Do I let you down? / Holding, holding out / Hoping love will come around,” its clear that Styles knows he cannot keep acting out of a desire to appease his listeners, but that realization comes with a sad hope of acceptance as he is now, and coming back into music to find there’s a space waiting there for him. I think it’s safe to say that there will always be a place for Harry Styles in the music industry, and there will always be love from the fans who have stood by his side all these years.
Fans are saying the transition between “Coming Up Roses” and “Pop” is reminiscent of the side B transition from “Matilda” to “Cinema” on Harry’s House. While I’m not sure “Coming Up Roses” can fill “Matilda’s” shoes, I understand why it’s a favorite track. Styles is soft and intimate with the listener on this song, and it’s the closest the audience gets to Harry sonically. The strings are an unexpected change from the heavy disco beats of the rest of the album, but the track feels oddly like a coming-home song, reminding the listener that he’s the same man who made “Little Freak” and “Fine Line.”
Through the transition of “Pop” comes one of the most fun tracks on Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. ” Where “Pop” is an almost in-your-face dance track, “Dance No More” is pure, smooth disco fun, and one of the most enjoyable tracks to listen to. This track is everything we expected from Styles making dance music, and he didn’t fail to deliver.
“Paint By Numbers” finds Styles returning to a more familiar style, with his soft backing track and lyrics that tie into the intersection between Styles as a person and Styles as an artist that permeates the album. This is never clearer than in the line “Holding the weight of the American children whose hearts you break,” which calls to mind the sense of responsibility an artist can feel towards their fans. Artists such as David Bowie and T Rex reference their fans as “children” or “kids” in a similar fashion. I find the parallels between the word choice incredibly interesting, and I find it hard to believe that it wasn’t done intentionally.
In fact, a lot of this album was done with painstaking intentionality and is littered with musical references. In the interview with Zane Lowe, Styles explains the musical references behind the album closer, “Carla’s Song.” He explains that the idea of the song came from watching a friend of his, Carla, listen to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” for the first time. The song describes the feeling you get when you listen to a song for the first time and know it “will be in your life forever,” a sentiment I especially resonate with as a music journalist. Songs like “This Charming Man” by the Smiths and “Daydreaming” by Styles himself are a few of my very own moments, where I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard them for the first time.
This album is a wonderful mix of brutal honesty, genuine self-reflection, and disco-dancing fun, and I couldn’t be happier with it. One of my favorite parts of the album, though, is the knowledge that even if fans didn’t like it, Styles could sit in the knowledge that he created a piece of art that perfectly represents himself and the healing journey he has been on. That steadiness and belief in himself is inspiring, and it seems like once again, Styles has given me a reason to respect him as an artist and a person.
To find out more about the songs, or just to stay up to date on all things KATTDO, stream the album, watch the Zane Lowe interview on YouTube, and stay tuned for the Netflix live stream of Harry Styles. One Night in Manchester concert on March 8.