Harry Styles has released a work of pleasantly breezy, mildly rakish pop, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally., a collection of songs that consider sensuous entanglements and doomed relationships, often with beats and bass lines that beckon the listener to the dance floor.
Its lived-in maturity suggests how far he has come since his days in boy band One Direction.
Leaving a group to fly solo can be risky, especially when the artiste is trying to establish himself as an adult who has moved beyond his teen-pop past.
In honour of Styles’ album, I’ve compiled a collection of tunes by former boy band members who found success on their own.
One of my favourite songs on Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. is its wistful, lightly melancholic second single, on which Styles opines with a mixture of admiration and envy, “My friends are in love with American girls.” It will most likely go over big with the titular demographic.
The youngest and most successful brother to break out of the Jackson 5 came into his own as a solo star in 1979, with his album Off The Wall. Co-produced by Quincy Jones, the LP could have been called Disco All The Time.
When he was 21, ramen-haired Justin Timberlake stepped out of formation with ’N Sync and embarked on a solo career that began with the hit-filled 2002 R&B album Justified. The first single was this fleet-footed, Neptunes-produced blast of Spanish guitar and crooned charisma, which garnered major grown-up cred for featuring a verse from one of the hottest rap duos of the time, Clipse.
Former New Edition member Bobby Brown was only 19 when he released his second solo album, the wildly successful Don’t Be Cruel, in 1988.
That LP spawned five Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, helped popularise the sound of new jack swing and, in this effervescent hit’s quintessentially 1989 music video, introduced the world to the dance known as the Roger Rabbit.
Ricky Martin, a onetime member of Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, set the entire world en fuego with this Spanglish smash. If you were alive in 1999, you may never need to hear it again. And if you weren’t, well, kids, you know that guy who sang about Hawaii during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance? Check out this song from him. – Lindsay Zoladz/©2026 The New York Times Company
