Harry Styles’ ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’: All 12 Tracks Ranked

Taken as a whole, the animating idea behind Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally is that the music is Harry Styles ’ gift to himself — a celebration of liberation and following one’s instinct. Its charm is in how it lifts the rest of us, too. In the liner notes for his fourth studio album — which arrives Friday — Styles takes to thanking “those who inspire me to make anything” and “those who helped me know when to say yes.

” It reads as a love letter to the voices and impulses that shape the cross-generational superstar’s inner world, a reminder that freedom is sweeter when shared. Its contents follow suit, with songs that move through romantic grief, restlessness and self-actualisation, but all come back to a recurring mantra: Sometimes, nightclubs can hold the power to transform a person forever.

These moments have revealed Styles living far outside the glare of the camera. As such, rather than locking in on the pristine, highly stylised pop arrangements of Harry’s House , on Kis s All the Time , Styles fleshes out his introspection more inventively, weaving in acoustic instrumentation, jagged beats and bursts of feedback that thrive on the push and pull of delayed gratification.

There is a fresh immediacy, even a hint of intensity, to some of these songs, if not necessarily the sense of release that the Billboard Hot 100 -topping lead single “Aperture” foreshadowed.