Harry Styles was listening to Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool when he spotted Thom Yorke on a street in Rome. He paused the album to introduce himself. That meeting, recalled in Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians conversation, gives the exchange an unusually clear starting point. Styles knows what it is to be the artist in someone else’s headphones, and what it feels like to take them off and say hello.
What happens after a record works
In the conversation, the two return to the pressure to repeat a success. Styles’s Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. gives club rhythms more room than his earlier work. Yorke has spent decades working through a similar problem at a different scale, moving between Radiohead, his solo records and the Smile. Each change alters the habits the musician brings into a room, from what a rhythm can carry to how long a song can sit in an unresolved place.
Harry Styles looks toward the camera while embracing Thom Yorke. Photograph by Anthony Pham for Rolling Stone. 
Thom Yorke smiles toward the camera while embracing Harry Styles. Photograph by Anthony Pham for Rolling Stone.
Time away from the song
Walking comes up as part of making music. Away from a studio, there is space to let an idea sit without immediately arranging or judging it. That sounds modest alongside a discussion about stadium shows, but it puts both musicians on familiar ground. A song may end up in a room full of people, even if the first useful decision happened alone, on a walk.
Watch the conversation
What the audience can hear
They also talk about doubt and the experience of becoming emotional onstage. Those moments are especially telling coming from two performers whose audiences are accustomed to seeing them in control. A performance can be rehearsed down to the cue and still leave room for a feeling the singer did not expect. The conversation is most revealing when it stays with that uncertainty for a moment.
Harry Styles and Thom Yorke in a close portrait against a warm backdrop. Photograph by Anthony Pham for Rolling Stone. 
Thom Yorke and Harry Styles reach toward one another from their chairs. Photograph by Anthony Pham for Rolling Stone.
Sources and media credits
Original reporting and interview: Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, October 8, 2026. Photography: Anthony Pham for Rolling Stone. Interview video: Rolling Stone’s official YouTube upload, also embedded by Rolling Stone Australia. Video direction, editing and colour: Mitch Saavedra. Video cinematography: Nick Carter. Executive producer: Christopher Hwisu Kim. Talent: Harry Styles and Thom Yorke.