On Friday, big-deal pop star Harry Styles released his long-awaited new album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. The world was really hoping that record would be more interesting than it is. Nevertheless! Styles is in full promo-blitz mode right now. He performed at the BRITs. He played a Manchester show that streamed live on Netflix. He dropped in on Ryan Gosling’s SNL monologue ahead of this weekend, when he’ll be the show’s host and musical guest. And now he’s covering a Tears For Fears classic in the BBC Live Lounge.
Harry Styles is no stranger to the Live Lounge, and he loves using that cover-song convention to display his tastes. In the past, Styles has used that format to cover Fleetwood Mac, Wet Leg, and both Lizzo and Paul McCartney. In his most recent session, Styles took on Tears For Fears’ 1985 megahit “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” a song that’s been everywhere lately. That song continues to show up on one billion soundtracks, and it just got a very prominent needledrop in Marty Supreme. So many people have already performed or recorded that song that we ran a Gotcha Covered column on it back in 2017.
Harry Styles doesn’t really have any new ideas about what to do with “Everybody Wants To Rule The World,” but he sings it just fine. His version has a bunch of horn action at the end. In the Live Lounge, Styles and his band also performed the Kiss All The Time tracks “Aperture,” “American Girls,” “Dance No More,” and “Carla’s Song.” Below, watch his “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” cover and the video for the Tears For Fears original, and then I guess stick around for the other Styles performances if you feel like it.
Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally is out now on Erskine/Columbia.
