The first thing you notice at a Harry Styles gig is the colour. Similar to when thousands of football fans stream down the iconic Wembley Way in their home colours before a match, the exuberant flood of fans who skipped their way along the path to the stadium on Tuesday night were a dazzling sea of bright hues and fancy dress. Stocks of pink cowboy hats and feather boas in the vicinity were critically low.
The former One Direction member’s first gig of four at the venue this week – totalling six nights there across last summer and this – was more of an event than just a concert. Styles played an exquisite and seamless two-hour show, but everything happening around it in the stadium was just as important and gripping. Costumes were made, online friends met for the first time, fans held up signs asking Styles to help them come out as gay, and a heartwarming community came together to celebrate.
In recent weeks, stadium tours from Beyoncé and The Weeknd have rolled through the UK, both full to the brim with maximalist stage productions, choreographed routines and thematic throughlines. Styles’ Love On Tour show, meanwhile, is gimmick-free. The singer was wise to realise that the people in the crowd here were the real show as much as he himself.
“Feel free to be who you’ve always wanted to be in this room tonight,” he told the crowd half way through the set, with the request emphatically heeded. Before the chorus of Satellite kicked in, a hundred or so fans rushed in formation to the spacious back of the standing area in an organised routine. Forming a circle, they all then ran into the middle for the world’s kindest mosh pit. Later, a massive conga line formed, before fans lay on their backs en masse and stared at the night sky during Fine Line. To foster such a safe space for people to be so unashamedly themselves was Styles’ greatest feat.
In a setlist only lightly shuffled around from his shows at the venue last summer, Styles travelled from the classic rock leanings of his 2017 debut to last year’s tropical, groovy Harry’s House. Alongside an ecstatically received rendition of One Direction’s What Makes You Beautiful and the still-potent pop smash Watermelon Sugar, the show’s most affecting moment came on Matilda, with the heart-tugging acoustic number showing Styles’ vocals at their best as they ducked and weaved between harmonies from his excellent bandmates.
Rolling out largely the same show in the same venue for the second summer in a row also felt unimportant when such a hungry and unrelenting appetite for a spectacle this uncomplicated, joyful and life-affirming still exists. Running through As It Was, a song as glued to the top of the charts as last time he played Wembley, Styles barely sang a word. Instead, he let the crowd yell it for him, ending a show that felt like it was theirs all along.
