Harry Styles and 8 more boy band stars who went solo9 songs, 38 min 17 sec
Dear listeners,On Friday, Harry Styles released his latest album of pleasantly breezy, mildly rakish pop, under the cheeky name “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” The LP is, more or less, what it says on the tin: a collection of electro-pop songs that consider sensuous entanglements and doomed relationships, often with beats and bass lines that beckon the listener to the dance floor. It’s the fourth album Styles has released as a solo artist, and its lived-in maturity suggests how far he has come since his days in the exuberantly youthful boy band One Direction. In honor of Styles’s new album — and as a very belated sequel to an Amplifier playlist I once made of girl group artists who later went solo — I’ve compiled a collection of tunes by former boy band members who found success on their own. Leaving a beloved group to fly solo can be risky, especially when the artist is trying to establish himself as an adult who has moved beyond his teen-pop past. It’s a delicate balance: You want to assert your maturity without alienating your core audience or resorting to inauthentic shock. But Styles has handled the transition well, and this playlist puts him in a lineage of others who have done something similar in the past, whether that’s Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake or a slightly edgier English pop rogue, Robbie Williams. It also contains a solo hit from another member of One Direction, but you’ll have to listen to find out which one. Warning: This playlist contains vast quantities of “T.R.L.”-era nostalgia. Listener discretion is advised. Woke up in New York City, Lindsay
Listen along while you read.1. Harry Styles: “American Girls”One of my favorite songs on “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.” is its wistful, lightly melancholic second single, on which Harry Styles opines with a mixture of admiration and envy, “My friends are in love with American girls.” It’s likely to go over big with the titular demographic. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
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“Harry Styles and 8 More Boy Band Stars Who Went Solo” track list
Track 1: Harry Styles, “American Girls”
Track 2: Michael Jackson, “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough”
Track 3: Justin Timberlake featuring Clipse, “Like I Love You”
Track 4: Bobby Brown, “Every Little Step”
Track 5: Ricky Martin, “Livin’ La Vida Loca”
Track 6: Robbie Williams, “Millennium”
Track 7: Jordan Knight, “Give It to You”
Track 8: Niall Horan, “Slow Hands”
Track 9: Paul McCartney, “Maybe I’m Amazed”
Editor Caryn here! I just wanted to point you to two more great stories about Harry Styles’s return: Grayson Haver Currin’s profile of Kid Harpoon, the songwriter and producer who’s become one of the pop star’s closest collaborators; and Shaad D’Souza’s notebook looking at the landscape Styles left behind four years ago — and the inheritors now coming up from behind.
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