I want to say something that might be controversial in some corners of the internet: Harry Styles’ self-titled debut is still his best album. Or at least it was, until about three weeks ago when I sat down with Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. and didn’t move for 42 minutes. That hasn’t happened to me with a Harry Styles record since 2017, and I wasn’t expecting it to happen now.
Let me back up. Fine Line had its moments with Watermelon Sugar, Adore You, the genuine ache of Cherry, but I skipped around it. Harry’s House was pleasant in the way a really nice candle is pleasant. It smelled good, it won Grammys, and I never quite felt the need to put it on again. Something about it stayed at arm’s length. Kiss All the Time. does not stay at arm’s length. It gets in the room with you.
The album opens with Aperture, which, when it dropped as a single in January, I’ll admit confused me a little. It’s slow and pulsing and builds without ever quite exploding, more trance than pop song. But in the context of the full record, it makes perfect sense as an entry point: a door being gently opened. By the time American Girls comes in with that rolling bass line, I was already gone. There’s something about the way these first four tracks flow; Aperture into American Girls into the gritty charge of Ready, Steady, Go! into the almost feverish Are You Listening Yet? that made me feel like I was somewhere else entirely.
That’s the thing about this record that I keep coming back to. It’s the most experimental thing he’s made; post-punk, synth-pop, funk, dance-punk, a genuinely bewildering drum-and-bass detour on Season 2 Weight Loss, but none of it feels like showing off. It feels like a person who spent three years actually living, and then came back and wrote about it. There’s a looseness to it, a confidence that doesn’t need to announce itself. Something about this album feels like being let in on something and I love it.
Coming Up Roses made me sit very still. It’s an orchestral ballad, quieter than almost everything else on the record, and it has this quality of feeling like something you’ve always known but are only now remembering. Dance No More made me want to immediately text three people and tell them to listen to it, it’s a full-on disco funk banger, glittery and euphoric, hidden at track ten like a secret. Pop is the one I’ve had on repeat while I cook, clean, run errands etc. Paint by Numbers caught me off guard every time, in a way that felt almost accidental, like stumbling into a room with good light.
What I keep coming back to is how beautifully the whole thing flows. At 42 minutes it’s over before you’ve processed it and leaves you wanting more like the end of a really good night out when you’re not ready to go home but you know the timing was perfect. For the first time in a long time with his music, I didn’t feel like a passive listener, I felt like the album was happening to me. The way the debut did, back when Sign of the Times came on and everyone sort of held their breath because none of us knew he could do that.
He can still do that. He just needed a few years, a Berlin dance floor, and apparently one very good no-skip record to remind us.