“Good evening, my name is Harry.” Wembley roars as the world’s most famous man by that name pauses from one of his laps around the stadium. It’s the grandest of homecomings for Harry Styles, taking up residency here for a record-breaking 12 nights in support of his fourth album, the divisively titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.
There’s nothing divisive about this show, though. The 32-year-old’s latest music was heavily inspired by the community he found on dancefloors around the world, having decided he wanted to stop saying “no” and start saying “yes”. There’s certainly a relaxed air about the whole evening – what little choreography there is from Styles and his two dancers is simple, playful. For the most part he jives from one of three linked catwalks to the other, loose-limbed but on the beat.
He’s the consummate entertainer, a charisma factory who lights the place up better than any pyrotechnics. Opening with “Are You Listening Yet?” feels tongue-in-cheek given his fans’ laser-beam focus on his every eyebrow twitch, but it also sets the tone for a heady, sweaty dance session. The reception to “Golden”, from his 2019 album Fine Line, is tremendous; the earth quakes under foot as 80,000 pairs of feet leap up and down. Styles doesn’t shy away from his pop hits, whether the summer thirst-quencher “Watermelon Sugar” or the exuberant “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” from his Grammy-winning third album, Harry’s House.
But the emphasis remains heavily on his newest music, its understated tone on record shifting into something more euphoric and vital in the live sphere. “Dance No More” is terrific, all squelchy synths and blasts of brass that precede Styles’s now-iconic yelp: “Respect your mother!” His mum is here tonight – Styles pays tribute to the woman who signed him up to the X Factor without him knowing, and to his sister (also present), who drove him to his audition a stone’s throw from this very stadium.
Styles also doesn’t baulk from references to his boyband past, but there’s a firm unspoken agreement between him and his fans to let him evolve. A string section tastefully covers One Direction favourites “Night Changes” and “History” but that’s it. Then it’s on to a soaring rendition of “American Girls” and a frenzied, buzzing “Ready, Steady, Go”. He grins to himself during “Pop”, a double entendre of a track that could be about the pressure he feels to satisfy his fans… or something else (“First time tasting it/ It’s nice to mix two flavours”).
There are lulls. Going from the Bridgerton-esque strings interlude into a segment where he fiddles around on a synth deck from the main stage feels a tad indulgent. It’s better when he and his band relocate to the round, and a live airing of 2019’s “Treat People with Kindness” gets a remix acknowledging its lineage from Talking Heads and Paul Simon. Buzzy dance track “Aperture” is euphoric, the whole stadium joined in his chant of “we belong together”. It’s no mean feat to turn a cold concrete stadium into a warm, communal space, but Styles does it. That’s just how good he is.
