Rock Connections in Harry Styles’ New ‘Disco, Occasionally’ Album

At 32 years old, Harry Styles has already been working in music for half of his entire life.

He was 16 when he first appeared on the British singing competition show The X Factor, alongside some fellow teens. Together they made up One Direction, a five-piece group that wound up one of the best-selling boy bands of all time and whose popularity was so intense it drew consistent comparisons to Beatlemania.

Styles embarked on a solo career a few years later, releasing his debut, self-titled album in 2017. Three more albums have followed, the most recent of which, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, arrived on March 6. According to Styles, this newest album was heavily inspired by the sounds and sensations he experienced at clubs in Berlin, as well as various other international places he’s traveled to in the last few years.

“I wanted to recreate [what] I had on the dance floor, being lost in instrumentation and the musicality. It was so immersive, like, this is how I want to feel when I’m on stage too,” he told Runner’s World earlier this month. (Styles is an avid runner and has completed two marathons.) “I don’t want it to feel like a sermon I’m delivering. I wanted it to feel like, oh, we’re in this music together. Like I’m in it with you.”

But one thing to know about Styles is that he is a student of those before him. He has cited artists like Prince, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Queen as inspirations, and has also befriended the likes of Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell and Elton John. And we couldn’t help but notice there are some threads of rock ‘n’ roll running through the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. We’ve listed them below…

1. He Used Studios Made Famous by the Beatles and David Bowie

As is often the case with large-scale albums like Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, it was recorded in several different places. But the primary locations were two of rock’s most important: Abbey Road Studios in London and Hansa Studios in Berlin. The former, of course, was the Beatles‘ playground in the ’60s, and continues to be used by rock musicians today. And the latter is where David Bowie and Iggy Pop famously came in the ’70s to record Low, The Idiot, “Heroes,” Lust for Life and more.

2. Tom Skinner on Drums

At one point last year, Styles attended a concert that made him want to resume touring. “I went to see Radiohead in Berlin, and felt so part of the audience,” he recently told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I’m watching this and feeling everything that’s happening around me in the crowd. There’s people picking up each other’s things and people are bringing each other things. It’s this sense of strangers looking at each other and massaging each other’s shoulders when someone’s emotional and looking into the eyes of a stranger and screaming out a chorus together.”

That was in December of 2025 when Radiohead performed a residency at the Uber Arena in Berlin. Even more interestingly though, is that one of Radiohead’s own friends was a part of making Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. That was Tom Skinner, who plays drums for the Radiohead offshoot the Smile. Skinner plays drums on six of the album’s 12 tracks, and also sings backing vocals on the song “Dance No More.”

3. The Duke Quartet

For this album, Styles hired a few members of the Duke Quartet, a string group based in Europe. Louisa Fuller played violin and John Metcalfe played viola on a lush song called “Coming Up Roses.”

As it turns out, members of this group have been called up by rock bands on a number of occasions, including but not limited to the Pretenders, Blur, Simple Minds, the Cranberries and Pete Doherty. Below is Morrissey‘s “Everyday Is Like Sunday,” a single from his Viva Hate album that featured members of the Duke Quartet.

4. Brian Rajaratnam as Engineer

At the time of this writing, engineer Brian Rajaratnam is only 34 years old, but he’s already worked with several famous rock names. In 2022, he was an assistant engineer on Slipknot‘s seventh album, The End, So Far. Then came work on rock albums by Avenged Sevenfold (Life Is But a Dream…), Kings of Leon (Can We Please Have Fun) and David Byrne (Who Is the Sky?).

5. Mark “Spike” Stent as Mixer

Mark “Spike” Stent was literally a teenager when he first started working in studios. Over the years, he has worked with dozens of international artists, including but not limited to: U2, the Beatles, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Peter Gabriel, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Oasis, Madonna and so many more.

6. Emily Lazar as Masterer

The better question here is: who hasn’t Emily Lazar worked with? Allow us to list a few names from Lazar’s extensive resume of mastering: David Bowie, the Killers, Morrissey, Donald Fagen, Alanis Morissette, Lou Reed, Paul McCartney, Sinead O’Connor, John Mayer, etc.