When Harry Styles began releasing cryptic billboard messages and videos on YouTube with the theme “We Belong Together” and keywords such as “kiss” and “disco” early this year, fans were thrilled at the possibility of a new musical work.
Before he was a solo artist, Styles was a member of One Direction, a popular 2010s boy band. Arguably, his solo career has gained the most traction.
After releasing “Harry Styles,” a ten track work focused on soft production and powerful lyrics, in 2017, Styles dropped “Fine Line,” one of his most popular albums that boasts popular singles “Watermelon Sugar” and “Adore You.”
In 2022, after a three year hiatus from music, Styles released “Harry’s House,” which won the 2023 Grammy award for Album of the Year, and contains “As It Was,” a lead single streamed over a billion times in the first year after its release.
After ending the “Love On Tour” in 2023, Styles has remained largely out of the public eye. Though he has been seen competing at the Tokyo and Berlin Marathons, Styles has been absent from major award shows and events.
However, after releasing a YouTube video of a playing a piano ballad at the last night of his tour captioned “We Belong Together” and a website with a clock graphic filled with the words “kiss” and “disco” instead of numbers, speculation about a new album reached a fever pitch.
Finally, on Jan. 15, Styles announced his new album, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” The 12-track work will be released on March 6.
A week after the announcement, Styles dropped the lead single of the new album, “Aperture.”
Featuring dance elements, the track focuses on highly edited vocals and synth-focused production. The chorus, which repeats “we belong together / it finally appears it’s only love,” has received both significant praise and skepticism.
Styles has also announced a tour after the release of the album, and presale ticket prices have gained significant backlash. Ticketmaster, a platform for buying tickets to popular concerts, is infamous for high resale and presale ticket prices.
Thus far, Styles has declined to comment on the high prices for his shows, with ticket costs ranging from $150 to thousands of dollars. Whether prices will go down before he launches the tour in May remains to be seen.
The announcement of an album from one of pop’s biggest stars, though, makes for an exciting start to 2026.
