Dull All The Time. Existential, Occasionally (The Harry Styles Review)

The praise which Harry's new album has been lauded with by critics astounds me. From the jump, 'Aperture' is an overlong and unconvincing foray into LCD Soundsystem indebted dance-pop, an influence I would be on board with if Harry was able to offer anything compelling lyrically or within the song structure. Instead we're treated to 5 minutes with little build up and even less pay off, and the whole experiment falls resoundingly flat. The question emerged - would the album persist in its dance-oriented direction or retreat into more insular indie ballads? The answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is both.

Across the remaining tracks, Harry appears to be aiming for Lorde's Melodrama in that album's rightfully celebrated pacing and balance between the hits and the ballads, moments built for the dancefloor and those built for headphones and sobbing. However, where the emotional highs and lows of Melodrama were imbued with Lorde's exceptional songwriting and late-teenaged self-awareness, Harry Styles seems incapable of real reflection. On the album's "mission statement" and intended centrepiece 'Season 2 Weight Loss', Styles draws a confused comparison between TV show stars and his touring cycles, attempting to explore the similar expectations from fans. There's something in that comparison, but the verses skip over the metaphor, the title implies a more specific exploration of body image which the song ignores and Styles has refuted, and he wastes the chorus on repetitive cliches he poses as questions to his fans. Beyond the underwhelming lyrics, the instrumental is just boring, borrowing from the sound palette of LCD Soundsystem without any of the existential fun nor the glorious builds which give that band their character. Of course, I am not looking for Styles to be LCD Soundsystem, but his stated inspiration proves to be shallow in his adoption of retro dance minimalism whilst erasing any of the punk edge of their earlier sounds, and barely engaging in the existentialism which penetrated all their releases.

For all Harry's talk of bold reinvention, he splits the difference between Lorde and LCD whilst reducing both influences to their purely aesthetic qualities. The result is an album which sounds and feels hollow and oddly devoid of joy or fun, despite what others critics seem to say. I'll pass thanks.

Harry Styles - Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. - 6 Mar 2026 - Columbia