Harry Styles loses himself to dance

Many of you know I am a professor at USC Thornton School of Music and coming up March 12th to 14th at USC in Los Angeles, California. Is the PopCon 26 conference mayhem pop music and writing in perilous times. PopCon is the annual conference devoted to the heaviest thinkers and the most insightful people writing about music.

“And it's an incredible event and it's completely free. All you have to do is go to popconferent.org and register in addition to panelists including switch on pops very own reanna cruise all through Friday and Saturday.”

There are also some amazing keynotes. John that teased is going to be in conversation with the Dean of USC Thornton School of Music, Jason King, a brilliant pop music analyst himself.

There's also going to be a panel devoted to the legacy of DiAngelo and there's another panel thinking about reanna's album ante 10 years later. So there's a lot of cool stuff happening. And again, all you have to do to register is go to popconferent.org. It's completely free Los Angeles, California March 12th to 14th and maybe I'll see you there. What's that famous quote that's like talking about music is it's like dancing about architecture? Yes. If talking about music is like dancing about architecture, how do you talk about dancing?

I think the the better question is how do you dance about architecture? Because I feel like I've seen some really amazing dances about architecture. I'm the son of a modern dancer. So I've seen a lot of good stuff. All right, let's see where this goes. [Music]

“Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding and I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.”

It's hard to figure out how to talk about dancing.

And yet Harry Styles has given us a dance album that I really want to talk about. It's called Kiss All the Time Disco Occasionally. Let's see how it moves us starting with the opening single aperture that went number one when it debuted on the charts. Right from the beginning, we know what to do. We're supposed to be nodding our head like this, just like that.

And we're nodding our head without any kind of drums or because of element it's true. We get this synth pad and it's ducking every quarter note, side chain compression. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Right, so hoping you're going to illustrate that with your voice, Charlie, and you did not disappoint.

But do it a little more dramatically now. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, yeah, I can now do that. And then we get this trancey synth that's gating in and out. You're like, I got to move my body, at least the part of your body from the neck up. Yeah, appropriate for a video podcast.

No, we're going to move our whole body because we're going to get a kick drum. It's going to tell us how we ought to move. Yep. Started with the head, kind of moved on into the shoulders, down into the hips, now my feet are moving. It's spreading.

We've got that jersey club beat, you know, the beat that was pioneered. And the Baltimore club scene moves a jersey takes off in the 90s and 2000s. And somehow has become the dominant sound of the 2020s. I think about artists like Ice-Bies. Pink Panthers.

Zara Larson. That was Ice-Bies in Hamood. Then Pink Panther says boys a liar, which Ice-Bies did a remix with followed by Zara Larson's midnight sun. Zara Larson also collabed with Pink Panther. So there's a continuity between those artists.

“And it seems like if you want to make a pop hit today, you need to reference that jersey club beat that bump bump bump bump bump bump.”

I think it's important. We name all these references because they all have something in common with this style track aperture. It's all jersey club light, you know. It's like the whipped version of jersey club with all the rhythm and half the calories.

It's a little tame in comparison, but man, it's still as groovy as heck.

And that is what we get the very beginning of aperture by Harry Styles. (Music) A track that could be equally indebted to LCD sound system and the dance punk indie scene of Brooklyn in the 2000s. The bass from dance yourself clean. (Music)

The pumping pad from someone great. (Music) Or this synth sequence from O baby. (Music)

So what is Harry announcing here?

Harry is making a call for a moment of dance for unity. By asking us to let more light into our life, regardless of what we might see. (Music) I mean that's a message I can get behind right now.

“I'm kind of sick of hearing people talk honestly.”

I feel like we've talked a lot and it hasn't gotten anywhere. Maybe we need to embrace the common language of dance and see if we can't make some progress. So I'm here for some some cathartic dancing for sure. I'm not sure that the messages on this album are quite that grandiose. I'm not sure there aren't any messages to be honest.

Kiss all the time. Disco occasionally. And reality it might be the inverse. This album is disco all the time and kiss occasionally. In my opinion, but maybe we'll see if listeners agree as we go through the rest of it.

So let's get a sense of where Harry is at as a reminder. 32-year-old Harry Styles. He was in one direction 2010 to 2016. He's on his fourth album now. In 2017, he put out Harry Styles. 2019, fine line, 2022, Harry's house, personal favorite. And now after a four-year break,

2026 is kiss all the time, disco occasionally. We find Harry in a big period of change in his life. After his last world tour, he took a bunch of time off from making music. He hopped around Europe from Paris to Central Italy to clubbing in Berlin. Gone through a few relationships and breakups.

Tragically his former bandmate, Liam Payne, died in October 2024. Yes. And part of Harry finding himself was out on the dance floor.

“He's giving us what I think is a sort of an existential album.”

He's working with his old collaborators, Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon. And I hear Harry trying to locate himself in the world and in the club. Here in that background makes this opening track, aperture, a very fitting one, right? And aperture is a part of a camera lens that, as Harry sings in the chorus,

literally lets the light in.

Then you have this sense of sort of an opening up as it were on this first track.

And I'll be curious to find out what we see here over the course of the rest of the song. I'd say this is very much a songwriter's album in the language of dance. You still have acoustic elements, piano, nylon guitar, even Marimba. And yet I think that he synthesizes electronic and acoustic elements really well

“because I think Harry understands to a certain degree where the dance floor is today.”

When we were coming up making this podcast in the 2010s, it was progressive house. Huge drops that were like telling you when and how to move. And now we live in a world of dance music that is, I think sort of anti-drop that it's about vibe. It's about creating a mood that can move throughout the entire night, whether it's the ethereal sounds of Fred again.

Glitchy Organic Beats of Fortet. Or the unyielding Berlin techno kick drums of Charlotte Dewitt. Dance music today, I think, has more in common with where dance music came from. You know, it used to be really hard to make synthesized music. You have to get all these drum machines and synthesizers and you have to link them up together.

You couldn't easily move from verse to chorus a big drop.

Instead, you slowly turn knobs to enhance the feeling of a moment.

“And I feel like that's what's going on on this record.”

A lot of long songs, a lot of chord progressions that stretch out and go throughout the entire song. And he's trying to put us in contemporary club music, but through modern pop. This is still very much a Harry Styles songwriter album. So 10 years ago, we were identifying the pop drop as one of the core elements of top 40 pop music. And now, a decade later, we're observing the opposite, the anti-drop.

And some people might be asking like, why is Harry making this sound? And he's explained it that partially it is like he was finding a sense of himself in dance. But I also think it's a very deliberate move. He's working with the same collaborators. It's not like he's gone off to some other producers.

They've really narrowed their sound. And I loved the sounds of Harry's house from 2022.

“I think about that as this very luscious album with if you related it to food,”

it would be like taking a stew with 20 different ingredients that all cook down all day. Just like this flavor bomb of Sonic's. This record, on the other hand, is much more minimal. Every element of this dance music is hand-picked. It's more like a French meal where it's like three simple ingredients done perfectly.

I was wondering, I was wondering where that food analogy was going. Will it be taken out in Paris a bunch of organic cafes? There's a certain refinement to the way that he's approaching these productions and these lyrics. They're very plainly presented. And yet they are buttery and salty and yummy.

I think that's as far as I can search the food analogy. Let's take a listen to a few tracks to get a taste. If you will, of the dance grooves that he's putting together,

“I think there's no better song to listen to than pop.”

How is dance music supposed to make us feel? Like architecture? Yeah, exactly. This is a dark song. It is, especially for a song called pop. Yeah, that conjures images of sort of effervescence. Yeah, yeah. It's got this heavy 128 groove.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 1. It's got these dark minor chords. It has these eerie synthesized textures. It feels like pop in the sense of something's about to explode. The very lowest, he's about to pop. He's about to explode.

I was trying to think about, "What does this mean? Why pop in this form of presentation?" And I think there's a real truth here.

Harry has a way I feel like of always writing lyrics that are a little bit surrealist.

They don't usually have a really clear narrative through line all the way. But then there will be like a killer pair of one line or something that just sticks with you. And here, this idea of pop making you feel like you want to explode. I feel like the dance floor is a place that we go to let loose to let go of all of the terrible things that are going on our lives to feel free.

And I think that pop music is kind of the same. We think of pop stars. I think it's needing to portray the best sense, as you said. Everything is great. Pop sounds upbeat. But pop music is so often about displaying uncomfortable human truths against really upbeat music.

And there's that dissonance between the two is I think generally what really pulls an audience into a song. It isn't about I feel happy that the things are good. It's about sharing what's really going on and at least for Harry. Like it's going to explode on the dance floor.

I remember when we listened to one of Harry Styles first solo releases sign of the times back in 2017.

And I remember being kind of surprised how opaque that song was, how sort of clouded and mysterious it was, lyrically. And I wondered if that was just kind of an experiment of, you know, his first solo debut. And it actually seems to be really a theme through his songwriting. There's a lot of obfuscation and not a lot of like obvious parallels.

I can imagine someone who spent the majority of his young adult life being hounded by fans

and press wanting to escap. Yeah, that makes sense to me. He's escapist. He's also a real student of pop music. Obviously that song sign of the times a real strong nod to David Bowie, space auditing. There's a whole episode about that song out in the archives. Maybe also a little bit of the transition of rocket man.

That great slide guitar. You can hear the same thing in sign of the times.

“And speaking of being a student of pop music, I think we really hear that come through.”

On a song that really does dance and give us more upbeat vibes. The track dance no more. Yeah, all right, we got to stop right there. I mean, off the bat. We'll scat. He loves to scat. He did some scat and Harry's house as I recall.

Oh, scatting. That wasn't what caught my ear. I just was like, oh, you are making a sheep sound alike.

Everyone does. Everyone has to make a good time as baseline. Renard Edwards core. And then, sorry, Harry. I have to interrupt you.

“That guitar line. I believe I read that he is friends with Stevie Nix.”

Uh-huh. That guitar sound is just straight up edge of 17 to me. He's making us move with a little bit of nod to the past, but he's also very much in the present. And here is the chorus. That's one of those great Harry Styles lines. There's no difference between the tears and the sweat. What's happening on the dance floor is the catharsis.

It is letting loose emotionally and physically. And I feel like, I don't know if this is what he means to say. But what I hear in this is like, DJs became so famous, especially in the 2010s. That what happened is the dance floor turned into a concert. And people faced the DJ.

“And they weren't moving with each other. And you know, I think about the famous moment of David Greta just like losing his mind staring out into the empty abyss.”

Not moving while a bunch of people at some major festival are kind of just like in cult like movement to his sort of empty presence. And I feel like we have Harry Styles here saying, "We've got to turn the DJs into dance and be a part of the larger community." That's when the club feels really good. Out of all the songs, I feel like dance no more is closest to the disco promised in the songs title.

And in the disco ball that graces the songs cover artwork with that chic reference you mentioned at the outset with the print style guitars, with that for and the floor drum beat that seems right out of the 1970s. This feels like a throwback to a time when dance music was a part of the story. You say it's a throwback, it fulfills some of the disco promise. And yet also some of his references on this album have nothing to do with the world of dance music.

Check out the pre-chorus. [Music] Move it side to side with your hands up high, keep your customer satisfied and live your life. And in an interview with Apple he said that keep your customer satisfied as a reference to the Simon and Garfunkel track.

[Music]

“And it's not the only Paul Simon reference in the song.”

If you go a little bit further into dance, no more.

There's a really fun little instrumental element that nods to another Paul Simon song. [Music] Any idea? Respect your mother. Is that a line from Mrs. Robinson?

I don't know. This is how deep it goes. He's like listening to a bunch of Paul Simon. No, it's not the article, it's the instrumental little moment. [Music]

That's cool. That's cool.

He said that I guess that came about because when Paul Simon was recording,

you can call me Al for the Grace Lensessions. It was his bass player's birthday. He's like, "Well, it's your birthday. You get your own little special slot." And Harry Styles, keyboardist. Yeah, for I was given the same leeway.

Harry was just like, "Here's some bars. Do whatever you want." But what's his birthday? I don't know if it was his birthday. This is not the end of the Paul Simon references on this record.

The final song on the album is called Carla's Song.

Paul Simon has a song called Kathy's Song. Yes. And Carla's song opens with a Simon and Garfunkel reference in the opening lyric. [Music] Of course, not to bridge over trouble water.

And friends just can't be found. Like a bridge over trouble water. [Music]

“What is Harry Styles doing making all these Simon and Garfunkel references?”

I don't have any other grand theory other than an appreciation. Could we say he's putting the funk back in Garfunkel? Wow, that was kind of a Charlie joke right there. I don't know, I was like channeling her. That is her dad, Jill.

That's really mean. To make fun of yourself by making fun of me. I was honoring you. Nate, are you even listening to me? Who would you say?

We got to move on to the next song. Are you listening yet? [Music] Is working it out on the dance floor? I like it.

It's a little more sardine than we've heard from Harry in the past. Yeah, I mean, he's sort of saying, I'm you're working it out. I've paid my therapist a lot of money. I am looking for fulfillment and romantic relationships that are fundamentally unfaffilling. And this line of you've had your tummy tickled.

“Don't love that. Don't like that at all, honestly.”

I think it's a great example of this Harry Styles surrealist style of the Recriting where it's sort of like non-secretor experiences that all paint a sort of collage of what's going on with Harry Styles. Clearly, there's something a miss in his life. And I think this call of are you listening yet?

To me, it almost sounds like he's talking to himself. Knock to us. I like whatever this genre is. Kind of spoken word lyrics over an insistent beat with a sarcastic kind of dismissive quality.

It actually reminds me of when you interviewed Joe on our show, Joe last year. Yeah, Joe Kerry and he has that song. They sick being basic.

How to be in public, how to be a person. And are both very much pointing the finger at the self of being like, I'm not necessarily being a pleasant person in making the right choices for myself at this moment. Totally. I'm not sure that Harry Styles is fulfilling the thesis of this album.

Are we kissing those?

“Yeah, we're supposed to lose ourselves to dance, right?”

Well, we'll just be discoing occasionally. I guess we are discoing occasionally. And maybe overly concerned with what's going on in our interior life. Let's take a quick break. And come back to see if we might disco a bit more.

This week on version history, our chat show about the most interesting and important products in the history of technology. We're talking about the hottest toy from 1998. That's right, of course. I mean, the Furby, the little thing that sat on your desk and didn't have an off button and didn't speak English and annoyed everyone you knew.

But you loved it to pieces anyway. It turns out there is a fascinating technology and even AI story behind what happened with Furby and why it took off. That's the story this week on version history wherever you do podcasts. All right, Nate, so we're working it out on the dance floor. We are being maybe a little raw and honest sometimes even cynical.

“I think that's a particularly true on the song season two weight loss.”

He's holding out hoping you will love him now. What do you think of this? This might be my favorite track on the album. For one thing, I love when a song's title doesn't appear in the lyrics.

And we never got the lyrics season two weight loss here, but it's a great title.

What is it of oak? The title? Yeah. I think we're back at the idea of fame and its pressures. Yeah.

If I'm understanding your right season two weight loss, that's like you're on a show and it goes really well. And you get renewed. And you're a cast member and you show up for season two. And all of the sudden you've got your like GLP ones and your personal trainer and your nutritionist.

“And you're like half the size and everyone's like, what just happened?”

Chris Pratt in parts and rap, right? Yeah. Maybe that's an example of this. Yeah. So I feel like it's about the scrutiny, the pressure that someone in the limelight experience is definitely.

I think that's super clear in the first verse.

He says, aren't you for sale if you're cashin' and cold? And it's hard to tell when the thoughts are my own. Yeah. It's like, who am I making art for? Like, well, for what purpose am I doing this thing?

Is it my own inclinations? Is it because I got to cash it? The sense of self doubt that we've heard in those lyrics is mirrored in the drums on this track. And that's the other thing that makes it one of my favorites on the out of the drums are so good. I do for sale if you cash it ain't cold.

If you get a sit to self balance on the chart. They are courtesy of Tom Skinner, stoward of the London Jazz scene.

He got his start playing in the incredible group, sons of chemette with Shabaka Hutchings and Theon Cross.

You can hear his characteristic frenetic drumming style on a track like play mass. It's cool, really both contemporary and also very throwback. And he later teamed up with Tom York and Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead to form the trio The Smile. But he's providing drums not only on this track, but on a number of the tracks. Giving them this kind of exciting, unpredictable, propulsive live feel.

Well, this is to my point about the ingredients being so good on this album. Like there's not a lot happening on this song season to weight loss. You have these really great drums and a lot of the disco elements if you will. A lot of them are very organic.

And then the synthetic elements are often these modular synths that kid Harpoon is using.

There's these big brassy synth lines as well. But it really is a mixture of these organic and electronic textures. And they blend so well. I want to just listen closely to those fighting ingredients, if you will, on season to weight loss. Or just synths.

Very basic. That great drumming. A little bit of bass. Some really subtle paths. And Harry.

Just like five ingredients. You have so much pop music is just stacks and stacks and stacks, hundreds of tracks. Totally. This is really plain.

“And I think that is trying to reflect the vulnerability that he's trying to portray even if through”

a collage of non-sequitors that occasionally land a perfect line. He does get vulnerable on this album for sure. There are a couple of slower tracks. One really gorgeous ballad called coming up roses. Really took my heart.

It begins with his lovely orchestra. "Tell me if you've turned back the clocks it's that time of year. If we stay the course we could get it right. But I'm not a void of an appetite." I told you.

This guy's hungry. He's not devoid of an appetite. This song was originally written as a holiday track. He says that I've turned back the clock. It's that time of the year.

“He was trying to write a Christmas song.”

And it didn't turn into a Christmas song. And instead turned into this sort of central ballad on the album. This is a song about dancing or aspiring to go out dancing that is not a dance song. That's true, isn't it? I love that.

How about that line? Just for tonight. Let's go hangover chasing. Yeah, that definitely stood out.

We're going to go out and have one special amazing night dancing together.

It's a really raw song. He's like, I'm going to fumble through this. I'm going to say all the wrong things. I hope that we'll somehow end up at the end of this night. Even if we're not the right couple that you're just going to lay there with your head on my chest.

It's a very beautiful intimate song. The intimacy is compounded by the delicacy of the arrangement. All of those pitsocados strings that we hear throughout. They're like really clashing with some of those lyrics. You know, chasing a hangover.

That sounds like you would have some banging, you know, synth bass and 808 drums. But instead, it's like delicate, light strings. It's for such a beautifully arranged song with all of the expense going into working with a live orchestra. It's a surprisingly raw track. All of the same to the bringing us closer and my back seat in your life.

Judging while you drive. What a curious state of relationship and put a fantastic lyric.

“Does all this seem to be bringing us closer or am I back seating your life judging while you drive?”

Oh, I mean, I know I've been in that position before. I don't know if in a relationship I've been in that position before. But you know it when it's like you're stuck in the back seat. And you're watching this person drive and you're like, what is going on? Am I going to survive this drive?

Totally. And yet he's embracing it and I think it's really beautiful. Except for maybe this little moment at the end that suggests darker turn. [Music] Well, that was a dark moment. Look at that.

I didn't catch that. That's some amazing dualities throughout this record.

You know, we're waffling between songs about kissing. Maybe the wrong person. Songs about disco. If there is one song that perhaps unifies all of this together, I think it's the song American Girl. [Music]

Five drums, synth sequence, mogue bass. And this really beautiful, almost out of tune, upright piano. This combination of dance elements, but also again very much like this is somebody who's just come off of Harry's house, singer-songwriter, stuff. And attract it on the surface seems to be about how beautiful our American girls, Harry Styles likes to date a lot of them.

It seems it may have a nod to LCD sound system tracks like American Scum or drunk girls, but I don't think that it's either of those. This song is actually, he has said about watching his friends all look at married and they've all married American women. And feeling sort of whistle or really wanting to be able to follow on their footsteps of like, I got to figure out how to have an adult relationship.

And settled down a little bit. It's a bit of a double meeting happening here. Yeah. This to me is the as it was of this album for a few reasons.

“One, I think it's poised to be maybe the breakout hit of the album.”

It's not the first single that was aperture, but they did just release a music video today.

We are currently taping within less than 24 hours of the album release. And clearly they're trying to push it. There's also this ambiguity in the lyrics that's kind of supported by the music. Like you said, American girl, that title might sound sort of bright and optimistic. But then when you listen to it, it's more ambivalent.

You know, it's like not really clear that this is something to celebrate. You know, I prefer falling in love with an American girl. There's kind of a whistfulness to it. I feel like as it was had a lot of the same qualities in this world, it's just us, you know it's not the same as it was.

In this world, it's just us. You know, it's not the same as it was. In this world, it's just us. You know, it's not the same as it was.

“They both had these unresolving chord progressions that kind of just cycle and perpetuity.”

This could be a big hit, but it's not necessarily a hit that's going to make you, you know, smile from ear to ear. Like a lot of the album. It's a little more melancholy and up in the air. It makes me think that perhaps that this album is not a dance album. But rather a record about what dancing is for.

It's about the place that we can let go of whatever we're holding on to. And if you go back to great chic hits of the past, those songs, those dance floor songs were very much Poptimistic. They were let's have good times, right? Let's everybody dance.

These songs by Harry Styles on the other hand are about what he is undoing internally with his therapist and letting out on the dance floor and using that as a stage for song rating. Harry Styles is one of those artists that I feel like it's kind of important for us. Charlie, I see him as occupying a role in our story to a degree as someone who forced us to challenge some of the assumptions that we had at the outset of this project.

For sure. We were more like outsiders to the pop world.

I mean, when we did our first episode on one direction, we compared them to modern day.

Custrati. I don't know that we would. I don't know that we would. Well, I'm excavating the past. Yes, it's out there.

You can find it. Yeah.

“I think we probably had some good insights.”

But I think we generally had this attitude of sort of like holding our nose as while we listened to this music. And Harry Styles on one direction sort of forced us to confront that, especially as they grew and matured in their respective solo careers. And Styles in particular was very vocal about the importance of team girls as an audience,

as people who shape the taste of the listening public and platform artists that are important. Oh, yeah.

So I think what he has to say is always interesting because his vantage point is from so deep within

the pop machine that his insights and his self reflection are valuable, not only as like musical statements unto themselves, but sort of as a chance to step back and think about this weird world that we've been studying for the last decade plus. You could say that he helped us widen our aperture. Ooh, you did it, Charlie.

Okay, we've done this whole episode about dance. And we haven't talked about the most dance related news surrounding this album.

Oh, it was good.

I agree, but a lot of people did it.

Really? It was very kind of like can Harry dance. Like this seems to be the question on everyone's mind right now. Oh, I thought it was brilliant. Oh, no, no, no.

He can dance.

“I think what he's doing is it's like just when he's sort of partying the idea of like DJ is not dancing”

anymore.

I think he is showing us how to dance.

Like the whole thing begins as a warm-up. He's stretching his neck. He's going back and forth. He's loosening up his hands. He's finding a way to help people feel comfortable with dance for.

It's about freedom. It's about expression.

It's not about necessarily excellence.

It's about inviting other people in.

“And that whole performance he's surrounded by other dancers.”

And it's all a little loose. It's not that like perfectly instinct perfectly timed kind of choreo. It's permission to dance as much as it is a display of dance. Well, I'm Diana here from everyone listening to this podcast. If you haven't yet, go find that performance of Apertura at the 2026 "Brit Awards" and tell us is this brilliant or hacky.

And that might go for the rest of the album, actually. I'm curious what everyone thinks of these songs. We've been pretty laudatory. Does everyone agree? Let's find out.

Switched on Pop is produced by We're going to Cruz, edited by Lesson Soap, Engineer by Brian McFarlane, Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, Video by Nick Rips, Music by Jossie Adams, and Zack Generiol. Arch Iris, remember the vox media podcast that work a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. Subscribe at mybag.com/pod.

Once you formulated your opinion on the aforementioned "Brit Awards" performance and the album in general, share it with us on social media at Switched on Pop. And also on our Substack chat. You can become a member of Substack by finding a link on our website,

“Switchampop.com or on the show notes as well, right, check?”

Yeah, that's right. I want to hear what you're thinking about. And we're going to catch you again next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.