Harry Styles’ Pop: Going Through the Looking Glass and Loving It

It’s been roughly 4 years since Harry’s House release, which was solid…but a bit safe. It seemed that Harry found the pop formula…smooth vocals about love…funk music without too much of an edge…a couple acoustic numbers…rinse and repeat. His original release Harry Styles is by far his best with an out of left field homage to 70s rock with personal lyrics full of heart. So, does his new release surpass his debut record?

In short, no…but it’s damn close and just as daring. The first record was brave in how a boy band pop icon fully leaned into 70s rock in the face of club hits. This record is equally as daring in how it finds Harry throwing out genre altogether and making some truly weird and inspired musical choices. Some tracks are your comfy acoustic ballad type, others are clubby, others are sharp and industrial…and others are kind of Björk meets The Beatles…I’m not kidding. I think nothing will surpass his debut record for me because it was a real time and place record, but there is some top 5 of 2026 material in this truly masterful release.

We are going to focus on one of my favourite tracks, Pop. This is a psyched out acid trip of a song where Harry sounds more like some audio hallucination than a pop star. Before we get into the vocal, let’s look at the music. Gone are the guitar and sweet chords to make room for sharp synth and clubby 4/4 bass beats. Having said that, mixed in with this acid trip/black light special of a club track is some traditional bass and the occasional guitar riff. Peppering in more traditional instruments within the mix grounds the song enough to avoid totally floating into space. This is a sonic landscape we haven’t seen Harry dabble in, so it’s cool to see him try some new things.

Ultimately the song is about love and the speaker living in this alternate dreamscape fantasising about the woman he’s in love with…but that’s where we leave the rational world. Drug references, illusions to losing control and going “pop” as you are reduced to nothing are run through a fuzzy electro voice effect. The effect itself is not so much that it destroys his natural vocal, but it more of an other worldly accent to his vocal. I think it works well and the central hook “pop” hits every time and shows how Harry is still a pop star.

At times Pop and Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. feels like you’re Alice and have fallen into Wonderland. Nothing is as it seems. Tracks melt and change as Harry acts as the Cheshire Cat…vanishing in and out of tracks with a mischievous smile. It’s a bold move to abandon a pop formula that has brought him so much success, but the move gives his music a freshness and modern urgency that it was lacking on the previous record. It is great having Harry back.

Listen to Pop