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As 2026’s first big pop moment, everything around Harry Styles’ new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally feels suitably blockbuster. At last weekend’s Brit awards, Styles premiered the record’s lead single, Aperture, alongside a troupe of dancers and an expensive-sounding choir, while Friday’s “one night only” de facto album launch party takes place in a 20,000 capacity arena.
This is “intimate” for Styles, who switches to stadiums this summer – and the show is being recorded for posterity by Netflix. The streaming Goliath’s presence means all phones are to be placed in a recyclable bag that prevents the use of recording equipment; it’s a nice way to stay inside the moment, sure, but chiefly a fail-safe against spoiling the forthcoming TV special.
Worryingly, perhaps the least blockbuster-y part of the whole campaign is the music itself. Lyrically vague, melodically hazy and strangely devoid of inescapable hooks à la Adore You or As It Was, the new album, which fans have nicknamed “Kissco”, sounds too weak to carry the blockbuster tag. In a live scenario, however, shorn of the album’s hermetically sealed gloss, Styles wrestles the songs into more interesting shapes. Dressed down (relatively) in a cropped blue sweater and billowing bright yellow trousers, Styles spends most of the intro to Aperture hunched over a rack of vintage synths. Played in the round, with huge screens dangling above, it’s an intriguing start, with Styles teasing out electronic textures like a pin-up Thom Yorke after one too many Autechre binges. Once the song opens up – its heart-burst chorus one of the album’s genuine big pop moments – Styles welcomes the feverish audience in, leading them through a roared “we belong together”.
From there, Styles and his band, which variously includes a flautist, a string section and a choir, launch into the loping, LCD Soundsystem-esque American Girls, which despite only being available about nine hours ago, is roared back by the audience like a standard. Ready, Steady Go! and Are You Listening Yet? both feel beefier, the former seeing the band strut around like a better-dressed the Rapture, while the latter’s elastic groove brings out some crab-like moves from Styles, who seems to be relishing a return to the stage after a three-year absence. “You have one simple job: to have as much fun as you absolutely can,” he says in between songs, his face beaming. “If you can’t have fun, fake it and you might end up on Netflix.”
The mid-paced Taste Back brings out more smiles, its pretty simplicity creating the perfect palate cleanser as Styles skips around the stage and its two short runways. Not everything works: Season 2 Weight Loss is essentially an intriguing polyrhythmic drum pattern in search of a song, while the appropriately titled Paint By Numbers, buffeted by syrupy string arrangements, lacks emotional heft. Those emotional moments arrive via Styles’ interactions with the crowd; he’s close to tears as he thanks his fans for changing his life, and his impassioned plea to “lead with love” in a world “that feels chaotic” manages to leapfrog cynicism and land somewhere near genuinely moving. That feeling is underpinned by the twinkling Carla’s Song, which closes the main set.
That song’s repeated mantra – “I know what you’ll really like” – bleeds into the encore, Styles finally giving the audience what they really like: the hits. A pogoing Golden is followed by effervescent bop Watermelon Sugar, before a galloping As It Was threatens to blow the roof off. Its needly keyboard riff, melodic oomph and ironclad chorus highlights what’s missing from “Kissco”, while also underlining why Styles is such an engaging performer. Arms open wide, absorbing the crowd’s energy, he creates a communal love-in that’s impossible to deny, even if the songs are average, occasionally.
