Harry Styles has been a busy guy the last few years. Now there’s a new tour, album and single, “Aperture,” to show for it.
Important to his process? Widening his friend circle and going out dancing.
The writing process “came at a time when I was starting to, like, go out dancing a lot more,” Styles told BBC Radio 1 on Thursday. “Also, I was just hearing a lot of different types of music and I was … going to parties with friends and stuff.”
His music-related experiences started to influence his creative vibe at the same time that his producer “was working with a lot of modular synth stuff.” Where others might see simply a packed social life, for the former One Direction member it was a perfect, timed-up collision of influences that he found himself “really diving into.” He was going out, but also writing music at home, noodling on the piano.
“Especially if you’re a touring musician … your life slowly becomes more isolated. The corners just start coming in,” Styles told John Mayer on Friday on his SiriusXM show. “Whether it’s the people you trust or you know, your friendship circles get slightly smaller over time, just as people’s do when they grow up.
“I think for me the last couple years … was just about opening back up “
The resulting first single from “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally” — named “Aperture” — was recorded last, he told various interviewers. It is a 5-minute, 11-second track that, like Bad Bunny’s “Baile Inolvidable,” defies current conventions that dictate that four minutes is plenty for a pop song, and three minutes is even better. But Styles seemed unconcerned.
“It was largely about having that reminder of this feeling of being in the audience,” Styles told Mayer of his time spent, um, researching. “What this means to people is so magical and that’s what I wanted. That’s the music that I wanted to make. I wanted it to feel like it was made from the dance floor.”
He described a shift in perception that allowed the new recording to emerge.
“I used to feel like I have to be in the studio for this set amount of time and cranking and doing these things,” the solo artist told Mayer. “And I think like a lot of things, it’s important to go, like, I’m not feeling something.
“I know people who write a song a day and do that thing. And I think I’ve kind of shifted a bit to OK, if I spend two weeks just living my life and then I write a song in a couple weeks and a song happens, I’m like, ‘Oh, this was the last couple weeks of my life.’”
The next year of his life, however, will include a tour that hits major cities around the world, with a 30-date residency at New York City’s Madison Square Garden this fall as his only stop in the United States. (His 15 sold-out shows last time around at MSG set a record and earned Styles a banner at the venue.)
Don’t complain too much, Americans: London got only six dates, albeit at the massive Wembley Stadium, while Amsterdam got six at Johan Cruyff Arena, which holds up to 71,000 people for concerts. Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and Sydney and Melbourne in Australia got two dates apiece.
NBC’s Steve Kornacki helped with the Together Together tour’s “breaking news” announcement Thursday about the New York dates, working the map kind of like an election night as he compared Style’s 30 MSG dates in 2026 to a mere 15 in 2022. The residency will run Aug. 28 through Halloween, with the Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 shows dubbed “Harryween,” Kornacki said. No mention of whether those shows will be any different than the others or if the khaki-pants-wearing data analyst was simply making a funny.
Commenters on Styles’ Instagram post announcing the tour definitely did not think there was anything funny about the tour announcement.
“this has got to be the silliest tour date lineup i’ve ever seen are you joking,” one commenter said.
“Okay I guess we won’t be seeing you then,” said another. “Love, All of Europe.”
A third riffed off the album title: “New York all the time. Other places, occasionally.”
And still another went off on the topic of the hour, affordability.
“with the way the world is going right now, especially in the USA, expecting fans to pay to travel far/to another country, pay hotels etc is unreal. not very ‘together together,’” the person wrote. “if there is a second leg, announce it before people drop mortgage payments for you.”
