Harry Styles has been a busy guy the last few years. Now there's a new tour, album and single, “Aperture,” to prove it.
Important for your process? Expand your circle of friends and go dancing.
The writing process “came at a time when I was starting to go out dancing a lot more,” Styles told BBC Radio 1 on Thursday. “Plus, I was listening to a lot of different types of music and I was…going to parties with friends and stuff.”
His music-related experiences began to influence his creative vibe at the same time his producer “was working with a lot of modular synths.” While others might simply see a packed social life, for the former One Direction member it was a perfect, synchronized collision of influences that he found himself “really diving into.” I went out, but I also wrote music at home, playing the piano.
“Especially if you're a touring musician… your life slowly becomes more isolated. The corners start coming,” Styles told John Mayer on Friday on his SiriusXM show. “Whether it's people you trust or people you know, your friendship circles get a little smaller over time, just like people do when they grow up.
“I think for me the last two years… were just about opening myself up again.”
The first single resulting from “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” called “Aperture,” was recorded last, he told several interviewers. It's a 5-minute, 11-second track that, like Bad Bunny's “Baile Inolvidable,” challenges current conventions that dictate that four minutes is enough for a pop song, and three minutes is even better. But Styles seemed unconcerned.
“It was very much about having that reminder of this feeling of being in the audience,” Styles told Mayer about the time he spent, uh, researching. “What this means to people is so magical and that's what I wanted. That's the music I wanted to make. I wanted it to feel like it was made on the dance floor.”
He described a shift in perception that allowed the new recording to emerge.
“I used to feel like I had to be in the studio for a certain amount of time and doing these things,” the soloist told Mayer. “And I think that in many things it is important to stop feeling something.
“I know people who write a song a day and do that. And I think I've shifted a little bit to OK, if I spend two weeks just living my life and then I write a song in a couple of weeks and a song comes out, I'm like, 'Oh, this was the last two weeks of my life.'”
The next year of his life, however, will include a tour hitting major cities around the world, with a 30-date residency at New York City's Madison Square Garden this fall as his only US stop. (His 15 sold-out shows last time at MSG set a record and earned Styles a bill at the venue.)
Don't complain too much, Americans: London only got six dates, albeit at the huge Wembley Stadium, while Amsterdam got six at the 71,000-capacity Johan Cruyff Arena for concerts. Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Sydney and Melbourne in Australia got two dates each.
NBC's Steve Kornacki helped with the Together Together tour's “breaking news” announcement Thursday about the New York dates, working the map like an election night as he compared Style's 30 MSG dates in 2026 to just 15 in 2022. The residency will run from Aug. 28 through Halloween, with the Oct. 30 and 31 shows dubbed “Harryween,” Kornacki said. There's no mention of whether those shows will be different from the others or if the khaki-pants-wearing data analyst was simply making a joke.
Commenters on Styles' Instagram post announcing the tour definitely didn't think there was anything funny about the tour announcement.
“This has to be the dumbest tour date schedule I've ever seen, are you kidding me?” one commenter said.
“Okay, I guess we won't see you then,” said another. “With love, all of Europe.”
A third took up the album's title: “New York all the time. Other places, from time to time.”
And another spoke about the topic of the moment: affordability.
“With the way the world is going now, especially in the US, expecting fans to pay to travel far away/to another country, pay for hotels, etc. is unrealistic. Not very 'together,'” the person wrote. “If there is a second tranche, announce it before people abandon mortgage payments for you.”
