★★★★☆
A little more than halfway through this delightfully strange, often lovely, and consistently fascinating album, things get downright freaky, at least musically speaking. Having deployed epic amounts of bass, a gospel choir, a valiant drummer who — whether it’s a thumper or a ballad — continually gets wicked, a wide array of rhythm tricks and tracks, guitars both acoustic and electric, and all sorts of pulses, washes, and rinses, Harry Styles shrugs and says: Why not everything at once?
“Season 2 Weight Loss” begins with some electric noise — something buzzing to life, plugging in, booting up, or feeding back — before keyboards that would be at home on a Kraftwerk record echo across a few seconds of stillness. What kicks in next sounds like the chopped-up breakbeats of drum-and-bass, except the beats keep hitting in odd places, like they’re trying to hide from the tempo instead of drive it. And when the bass thumps to life, it’s slightly out of sync, as if there were three tabs open on your computer, each playing a different song. Styles is addressing someone who could have been in his arms but who keeps holding out — “Do you love me now?” he asks, not for the first or last time on Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. in search of something just out of reach. The music builds and builds — calliope keys chasing a chorus of voices off in the distance, the drums banging like someone trying to break down a door — until, as if a mediation bell has rung to clear the space, things pause so Styles can sing, “You’ve got to sit yourself down sometimes.” And then, precept delivered, it all starts up again.
If that sounds a little weird, well, it is. It’s also typical of the ways this album subverts expectations. Styles was on tour for 22 months behind his second and third albums, 2019’s Fine Line and 2022’s Harry’s House, wrapping the last of 169 shows in July 2023. He’s said that afterward he wanted to spend time on the audience side of music, reconnecting to what it feels like to be in the dark, lost in the crowd, dancing and singing with strangers. The music he and producer Kid Harpoon — a key collaborator on both Fine Line and Harry’s House — have come up here reflects that desire. Like the work they’ve done in the past, it pays no attention to definitions, erasing all sorts of boundaries: rock-pop, organic-synthesized, written-jammed, authentic-contrived. And it’s based around freedom of all sorts — sexual, sure, but also a browser’s delight that raids the past without caring about history.
But Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. is more sensory, less star-driven than the music they’ve made before. Styles’ voice is sometimes secondary to the tracks, filtered or submerged in the mix. And though there are hooks — plenty of them — they too sometimes take a back seat to low-frequency thumps, grooves, shimmies, and shakes that are dirty in ways both sonic and erotic. This is music more invested in being than meaning, experience rather than ego.
Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. opens with four true bangers: the trancy “Aperture”; “American Girls,” with chomping low end that sounds lifted from an 8-bit video game; “Ready, Steady, Go!,” which matches a Chic bass line with an airplane-woosh effect like a DJ spinning the same track on two turntables slightly out of phase; and “Are You Listening Yet?,” where heavy 2010 vibes nod to both LCD Soundsystem and Stargate’s synth-bounce productions for Rihanna. There’s also “Dance No More,” a no-parking-on-the-dance-floor Eighties synth fest with chorus shouts of “Respect your mother!” invoking drag-ball culture.
Yet glitter-ball album cover notwithstanding, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. isn’t exactly Styles’ dance album. Tracks like “The Waiting Game” and “Carla’s Song” are pop songs dressed up in disco clothes. “Coming Up Roses” leaves the dance floor behind for a ballad about a night on the town spent “hangover chasing” played by a 39-piece orchestra functioning less as a string section than a band. And Styles hasn’t given up his taste for Sixties melodic classicism. “Paint by Numbers” finds him sifting the pleasures and perils of his pop-idol persona while strumming an acoustic guitar as French horns and a mellotron-like keyboard offer support. “Oh what a gift it is to be noticed, but it’s nothing to do with me,” he sings. “It’s a little bit complicated when they put an image in your head and now you’re stuck with it.” The subject seems to be on his mind again in “Pop,” which rides along on an electro bounce and a chilly rococo synth melody and may be about music, orgasm, drugs, or all of the above. Styles mentions daytime mainlining and a lack of rolling papers before this: “It’s just me/On my knees/Squeaky clean fantasy/It’s meant to be pop.”
But on most of Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., Harry Styles is a seeker, looking to find or provide enlightenment, ecstasy, love, or light. The album opens with Styles singing about letting in the light in “Aperture” and ends with “Carla’s Song,” where he finds the light not in someone else’s eyes, but in the gold those eyes see, as if his own capacity for empathy and understanding — not sex and love — is what he’s been after the whole time. In between those two moments there are bellies butterflying, friends flirting “with the bad ones” and finding ease in each other, un-intimate sex, a forgotten mantra, a desire to know what safe is, and an almost psychedelic sense of adventure. “If you know, then you know,” Styles sings in the closing track, sounding like he’s coming down from a trip or maybe exiting the world’s most exclusive club after a three-day party. “If you don’t, then you don’t.” The melody rolls like the tide, the beats rise skyward, and he shares one final benediction: “It’s all waiting there for you.”
Tupac Shakur at the Club USA in New York City, New York, 1994.
Prosecutors Put Rap Lyrics on Trial. Maryland Is About to Shut It Down
“I’m Gucci. It’s a rap. F**k [can they do] about a rap?”
Those are the words of Lawrence Montague on a jail phone call, words that now sit at the center of a broader legal reckoning unfolding in Maryland over the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings.
Maryland prosecutors introduced Montague’s rap verse, recorded using a jailhouse telephone and later posted to Instagram as evidence of his guilt for the killing of George Forrester. In December 2020, Maryland’s highest Court ruled in Montague vs. Maryland that rap lyrics can be admitted in court as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. The Court’s treatment of the genre as inherently violent reflects a deeply flawed and biased assumption, and Montague was ultimately convicted and sentenced to fifty years.
On appeal, the state’s highest court affirmed Montague’s conviction, finding that Montague’s lyrics made it more probable that he shot and killed Forrester. In doing so, the Court embraced the very kind of bias the legal system is supposed to guard against.
That ruling set a dangerous precedent, particularly for rap and hip-hop artists in America, and prompted Variety to publish our January 2021 opinion piece. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the article would help spark a national movement — now a united front of influential academics, defense and civil rights attorneys, and prominent music industry advocacy organizations including Songwriters of North America, the Black Music Action Coalition, The Recording Academy, and more. Together, we’ve partnered under a coalition known as Free Our Art, led by high-profile music executive Kevin Liles and co-chaired by me and Prophet. Over the past few years, the coalition has built a diverse and bipartisan group of allies, urging lawmakers to act. This week, in a full circle moment, Maryland became only the third state to pass a bill reconsidering how creative works are used in criminal trials. The bill now heads to the desk of Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who is widely expected to sign it into law.
When signed, Maryland’s Protecting Artists’ Creative Expression (PACE) Act will join California and Louisiana, which enacted similar laws in 2022 and 2023 following advocacy by BMAC, SONA and later Free Our Art. Critically, the legislation establishes clear standards for when creative works may be admitted as evidence in criminal proceedings.
This law addresses a growing concern among the music industry, legal scholars, and civil rights advocates, as rap lyrics have almost exclusively been used against Black and Brown artists in more than 820 cases since the 1980s. The PACE Act seeks to limit bias in the courtroom, reinforcing First Amendment protections that are frequently overlooked today. When signed into law, the legislation would limit the use of artistic expression as evidence to narrowly defined legal circumstances. Any creative expressions the government is looking to present as evidence must be presented to the judge before a jury trial even begins. These include instances where a defendant clearly intended the work to be taken literally, where it contains specific factual details tied to an alleged offense, where it is directly relevant to a disputed issue, and where its probative value outweighs any unfair prejudice.
Race has long shaped how rap lyrics are interpreted in the legal system. Courts have often misunderstood the history, purpose, and cultural significance of rap music in America, which emerged in the 1970s in the South Bronx as a response to poverty, unemployment, gang violence, isolation from mainstream America, and unfair treatment by government institutions. Courts are starting to correct the problem — overturning convictions where rap lyrics were wrongly used — but that’s not justice, that’s damage control. We need real protection on the front end. That’s why the PACE Act matters.
And the momentum is building: New York, Georgia, and Missouri legislatures are in discussions to pass laws to defend artistic freedom and draw the line.
Black artistry deserves the same legal protection as any other form of creative expression. Yet past rulings, including the Montague case in Maryland, have left Black artists exposed to bias rooted in misunderstanding — and too often, a refusal to engage with the culture itself. Research shows that rap, a predominantly Black genre, is more likely to be seen by jurors as more threatening, more dangerous, and grounded in reality. The result: Black expression is treated as evidence of criminality, while white artists in other genres such as country music exploring similar themes are afforded creative freedom. In court, slang, generic references, and race can unfairly prejudice juries far beyond their actual probative value.
Artists such as Tupac Shakur, Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Kendrick Lamar have long used hip-hop to tell stories and challenge injustice. That tradition is central to the genre and should not be mistaken for confession. Black artists deserve the opportunity to express fear and anger and process trauma and lived experiences without that expression being used against them in court. That distinction is exactly what this legislation seeks to protect.
With the PACE Act now moving through the final stages of approval, Maryland has an opportunity to correct a longstanding imbalance in the legal system. If signed into law, it will set a clear standard — one that other states should follow.
Dina LaPolt is an entertainment attorney, activist, and co-founder of the Songwriters of North America; and Willie “Prophet” Stiggers is the chairman and CEO of the Black Music Action Coalition. Special thanks to Loyola Law School student Kayla Ruff.