Four years is enough time to get a bachelor’s degree. Or if you spent time on Tumblr as a kid, it’s as long as it takes for your favorite, or least favorite, One Direction member Harry Styles to release his highly anticipated fourth studio album.

On March 6, Styles released “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” after releasing “Aperture”, the lead and only single on Jan. 23. This release strategy of only one hopefully hit single was incredibly successful for Styles back in 2022, with the release of “As It Was”. That helped not only build but maintain hype for his 2022 album release “Harry’s House”.

This release strategy is perhaps the only similarity that exists between his two most recent albums. With a four-year gap, it feels like Styles got a degree in TikTokification with an emphasis in anti-authenticity. “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.” sounds vaguely like a Harry Styles album, but in almost no way feels like it.

With a 42-minute runtime, and five of those minutes being taken up by the already heard “Aperture”, only 88% of the album is new. I won’t say too much about “Aperture” as most people have heard it already, but I can see why it was released first. It’s maybe the most fun and hype-potential track on the album.

But this album isn’t new in sonic style or vibe. With a few expectations, most of the album feels like Styles’ team told him, “Trust us, we’re experts” and advised him to make music that sounds like it’s meant for TikToks, trends and Target. All while Styles’ singer-songwriter roots peak through like he’s treading water with weights on his ankles.

“American Girls” starts off with a Taylor Swift “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”-esque intro and Olivia Rodrigo sounding keys, but it has a groovy baseline and a vocal tone we’d expect from the tone established in “Aperture”. It sounds new and different, but it doesn’t feel like Styles. It doesn’t feel like it connects to anything, or that the lyrics are saying anything that hits home. Sure, it sounds fun, but as a lyrics-based listener, I already feel like the vibes here are what matter for this album.

“Ready, Steady, Go” has the same groovy, bouncy baseline that makes me want to move. It sounds reminiscent of “Come On Eileen” in a good way. The vocals feel like what I want out of Styles, and the lyrics return to the vaguely suggestive type that are littered throughout Style’s discography.

The vocal effects on the post-chorus feel right out of an old school The Wrecks song. The compressed effect he throws onto his voice throughout the song makes me want to spend more time with the song, and the xylophone on the outro feels like a nice addition.

It’s at this point that I felt like I knew the direction of the album. It felt like it was going to be a vibes based, sonically driven album but I had yet to be convinced that anything was going to be said in the music. “Are You Listening Yet” further convinced me of that.

The verses on this song feel like they’re meant to be edited to a TikTok trend. I don’t even use TikTok, but I feel like I can see and hear it. The vocals don’t feel authentic, and neither do the sonic elements of the song.

“Taste Back” follows this path. With Action Action like synth progressions and the shiny layering, this song doesn’t feel like it knows what it wants to me. Because on “Taste Back”, we get our first glimpse of the singer/songwriter we know Styles to be, but I can’t hear or feel him in the song.

Even when we get what feel like small references to One Direction acoustics on “The Waiting Game”, with Styles actually saying something on this track, it still feels like it doesn’t go anywhere. As a lover of shiny music, the Owl City-esque backing effects do a lot of good for me. But even here, when I finally feel like we’re getting somewhere, it still feels more disconnected than I want but now expect.

“Season 2 Weight Loss” is maybe one of the funniest titles for a song I’ve heard in a while. makes me want to think Styles is aware of the shortcomings of the album. But reading that he views this track as the mission statement for this body of work, everything feels like it makes sense. This track is all over the place sonically, and the vocal effects he tries don’t feel like they feel or sound like Styles.

I keep coming back to the idea of sounding and or feeling like Styles, but there are times in which one or both of those things are true. Sometimes, I hear Styles come through in the lyrics or production, and it feels authentic. Other times, I feel the essence of what I know him to be in his music. But it’s almost never that both of these things are true on the same track.

Directly after “Season 2 Weight Loss” comes perhaps my favorite track on the album “Coming Up Roses”. Not only does this sound AND feel like the Harry Styles I know and mostly love, but we get a sonic departure from what we’d expect, while his singer-songwriter tendencies come through in the best way. The highs and lows of the strings make me want to slowdance (any takers?) to this song, and the “we’re both riiiiiight” he delivers in the first verse helps me believe Styles still has it.

That sentiment of Styles still having it perseveres, because I want to hate “Pop” the same way everyone wanted to hate “Watermelon Sugar”, but man do I love it. “Pop” feels very TikTok and his vocals don’t sound interested at all, but I want to mainline the post-chourus so I can’t even pretend to be mad. This whole song feels like a nod to “Cinema” and “Keep Driving” from “Harry’s House”.

Maybe the worst track on the album is “Dance No More”, since not only is it a poor attempt at a Bruno Mars song, but you can tell that Styles doesn’t have a gambling debt to pay back since this track really has no soul. At least Mars has a control and finesse over this kind of sound that gets it plays. The “respect your mother!” part feels like Mars should be able to sue Styles to get some more money for those debts as well.

“Paint By Numbers” again reminds me that Styles has what it takes to make a good song, and this track feels like what he actually wanted to make. The Ed Sheeran singer-songwriter tendencies are present and the lyrics aren’t bad, but the lack of exciting musicality really causes it to fall flat. It feels like his production was fighting him.

Closing out the album with “Carla’s Song” feels like a decent ending to a mediocre performance, as this feels like a proper marriage between the two things he wanted in this album; singer-songwriter prowess, and sonic exploration. And the minute there is build up toward the end of this track and it feels like we’re going somewhere, the track and the album end on a flat note.

And that brings me to my main issue with “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.” as an album. It never feels like it’s going anywhere. Styles constantly presents different voices, vibes and styles but he never hits any of the notes perfectly. Or even all that well to be honest. The frequent switching of sounds, mixed with lackluster but interesting vocal performances makes this album feel like it doesn’t know what it wants to be, and it isn’t even aware of that fact.

The entire album feels like a lame attempt to capture a lot of casual music listeners with what label folks think is “trendy” and will do well on TikTok, forgetting that most Harry Style fans have never been normal about him a day in their lives (myself included). This album doesn’t feel so inauthentic that it’s offensive, but it doesn’t feel like Styles is being true to himself either.

Closing Notes

After four years away, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” wants to promise reinvention but almost never gets there. Styles experiments with sound, chasing disco grooves and TikTok sounds, but the album never makes a claim and finds its own identity.

The legacy of artistry that defined his songwriting still appears, but they’re buried beneath trend-chasing production and aimless stylistic shifts.

Harry Styles may still have the instincts and reputation of a pop star at the top of his game.

But this time, the music doesn’t prove that. 

Rating: 5.5/10 disco balls