The playbook for this advertising campaign is transparent, but it seems to be working very well: Harry Styles reportedly lives part-time in Berlin, even ran a half-marathon there pretty quickly, as pretty much everyone now knows, but still hasn’t announced any concerts in the city, while he’s doing a few in Amsterdam and London soon. In Germany, especially in Berlin, this causes many fans to go crazy.
So they clutch at any straw. Then they suddenly find out: He played there in the radio house, in the winter. Do the fans have to be sad now? No, it was closed to the public, but chamber music-like recordings of songs from the new album “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally” were created.
Lost in the music
The video doesn’t look like fidgeting and making out at all, on the contrary: Styles stands with headphones between the string players, keyboard player and drummer, sings very concentratedly, immersed in the music. Only his sweatshirt says “kiss” and “disco.” And the breakbeat drumming in “Season 2” is so intricate, especially for mainstream pop, that dancing to it wouldn’t be easy.
Styles has already proven that he can impress not only on stadium stages, but also in confined spaces when he was still less well-known, for example at a “Tiny Desk Concert” by the “New York Times” six years ago. But even as a superstar he doesn’t seem to have forgotten it: his voice comes into its own very well in this setting, you might hear influences from Rufus Wainwright or Andrew Bird here and there.
The acoustic version of the new hit “Paint By Numbers” is particularly successful. “Holding the weight of the American children whose hearts you break”: The weight must be pretty heavy.
