Harry Styles arrives back on the music scene with new album
Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally album cover (2026, Columbia Records)
By Lauren Chavez, Features Editor
After a nearly three year long hiatus from the spotlight, Harry Styles has returned. He wrapped up his record-breaking, extensive Love On Tour in July 2023, promising fans that when the time was right, he would return. While many fans expected him to lay low on his break, and while he may have stepped away from the studio for a while (so fans thought), Styles was anything but dormant. He was seen almost weekly around Europe, riding LimeBikes, getting haircuts, trying (and failing) to parallel park a fan's car, and even running the Berlin and Tokyo marathons.
However, Styles’ break from the stoplight has officially come to an end with the announcement of his fourth studio album Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally. The album is expected to feature primarily disco sounds, and many fans are hoping it sounds similar to ABBA, as them and other similar bands have been heavily featured as preshow tunes before Styles’ shows.
Styles’ Love On Tour, which ran from September 2021 to July 2023, broke enough records to cement his place in music history forever, including highest-grossing tour, highest monthly attendance, and venue-specific attendance records. His 15-show run at Madison Square Garden earned him a commemorative banner reading “Harry Styles: 15 Consecutive Nights at the Garden,” and continues to hang in the rafters of the iconic venue. Love On Tour was a place where fans could come from all over the world and just be, attending with their friends and making new ones the whole time, celebrating music they loved that connected them with people they loved. It was a tour of colorful boas, balloon hearts, sequins, bedazzled boots, and love. The shows went through many transitions, introducing new songs, unreleased ones (“Medicine” continues to be a favorite) and even an emotional piano ballad Styles wrote for the closing night in Reggio Emilia, Italy, titled “Forever Forever.”
This song title held the inspiration for the YouTube video of the song that appeared on his channel in late December titled “Forever, Forever.” This was the first clue that the singer might be making his reappearance. Billboards began appearing around the world on January 12, featuring small sayings in the corner like “Let the light in,” and “We belong together,” the latter of which appeared on his website and led to a Community text message link with HSHQ, Styles’ social media team. The album was announced on January 15 and is set to be released on March 6, 2026.
The album’s first single “Aperture” was released on Thursday, January 22 alongside its music video and combines elements of synth pop with sounds that others have compared to Lorde’s style of music. Listening parties were held in various record shops in cities around the world, giving fans a chance to listen to the song before it was released to the rest of the public. Styles shared in an interview on Friday that the song was the last one created for the album, and he feels that it represents a lot of the themes that present throughout the album. With its repetition of the phrase “We belong together,” as well as its constant reminder of aperture (meaning a small space or hole as well as the adjustable opening in a camera lens that controls how much light reaches the sensor), it's clear that the song represents new beginnings and a happy perspective. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the album connects with that.