PartnersDecember 4, 2017

‘That’s my baby!’: A superfan goes to Harry Styles

Contributing writer

Globe-trotting superfan Sacha Judd reviews her third Harry Styles show in less than three months. And she might already have tickets to two more.

A friend texts me: “Wait. This is your third Harry Styles concert?” I try to explain that, actually, I had only ever intended to see him in Auckland. And then New York happened. And then I just happened to be in London when he was performing there. “Who are you trying to convince?” she replies. To be honest, I’m not even sure any more.

Harry’s Auckland concert comes at the end of the first leg of his debut solo tour, characterised by small iconic venues and loud iconic suits. Auckland turns out to be neither. Though the promoters originally sold only half of the Spark Arena, demand won out and the full stadium was opened up. The change left early ticket holders complaining about their seats, real challenges with accessibility for fans who’d planned around the smaller concert, and flustered venue staff. But in the end, there’s something incredibly powerful about seeing Harry in his first full arena show.

Even if he is dressed all in black.

For fans, seeing Harry live is like seeing your favourite movie, the one you know almost by heart. Even if you haven’t been lucky enough to attend multiple shows, chances are you’ve agonised over livestreams and YouTube clips. You know every word of every song. You know what he’s going to say; the banter is interchangeable. “I only have ten songs,” he demurs, as he thanks the crowd again for coming. Everyone is delighted all the same.

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At a time when the general mood of 2017 is one of complete exhaustion, there’s something so energising about being in a giant crowd of people having a genuinely good time with an idol who hasn’t let them down yet.

“I didn’t realise he was going to be so likeable,” confides my concert companion, as Harry leads the arena in singing Happy Birthday to a fan in the front row. And that’s at the heart of it, really. He’s ridiculously charming.

Playing guitar for the first half of the set, Harry comes into his own when he puts down the instrument and struts his baby Mick Jagger moves. He teases the build-up to his most recent single: “I don’t know if you know this, but I have a song called ‘Kiwi’.” The crowd loses its collective mind.

It doesn’t matter that no-one knows why it’s called ‘Kiwi’. Harry’s certainly not giving anything away, sweeping aside widespread speculation at the lyrics by releasing an extraordinary music video involving a foodfight, puppies, and children in tiny Gucci suits.

On tour, it’s become a running gag that the audience is never giving it their all during ‘Kiwi’ quite as much as Harry wants them to. In Auckland we get through two attempts before he stops us. “I find myself in a predicament. Here I am, about to sing my song ‘Kiwi’. In a room full of kiwis. And you weren’t loud enough.”

The third, glorious attempt nearly lifts the roof.

Critics have generally received Harry’s solo efforts favourably, with Rolling Stone naming anthemic ‘Sign of the Times’ its song of the year, praising its “reckless ambition”, but there still seems to be an undertone in most concert reviews that Harry’s doing well for a boy bander.

He asks the Auckland crowd how many people came to see him perform with his ‘wonderful friends’ the last time he was here, and the deafening screams reveal the overwhelming number of loyal Directioners supporting this first solo foray. In a Behind the Album documentary earlier this year, Harry talked about his refusal to renounce his boy band past. “I loved it. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that band. And I don’t feel like I have to apologise for that. I never felt like I was faking it.” Harry takes the fan loyalty in the Spark Arena and just doubles down, performing rocked-up versions of 1D hits ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ and ‘What Makes You Beautiful’.

You get the sense, watching his stripped-down staging and listening to his seventies inspired pop-rock, that Harry is genuinely just making and performing the music that he loves. And having a bloody good time doing it.

In every encore, Harry plays a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’. It’s a cracking performance made all the more remarkable when you learn that years ago Harry baked a carrot cake to give to his idol Stevie Nicks at a concert, and this week in Sydney she was photographed at his show filming his version like a proud mum. Anyone still dismissing his efforts at this point is just missing out.

“They don’t let me do this, if you don’t come out,” he says, thanking the crowd for what seems like the hundredth time. The pact between Harry and his fans is explicit. They love him, they hold him to account, and they couldn’t be more proud. “That’s my baby!” They reply to my tweeted picture of the crowd. “A whole fucking stadium!” “Oh my god.”

Harry bows, blows kisses to every corner of the arena, and leaves his band on stage to really shred through the closing bars of ‘Sign of the Times’. Spilling out into the summer night surrounded by hundreds of fans in floral jumpsuits and wide-legged pants, pink concert sweatshirts and Treat People With Kindness tees, everyone is still on a high, smiling and laughing and enthusing over their favourite moments.

Likely, this is the last time we will get to see Harry in anything resembling an intimate venue. Next year’s tour dates are all full arenas, like the O2 in London and Madison Square Garden in New York. It’s possible I already have tickets to both.

Read One Direction scholar Millie Lovelock’s reviews of Harry Styles here.

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PartnersDecember 4, 2017

Treating people with kindness: Harry Styles shares the love in Auckland

Millie Lovelock

Guest writer

Preeminent One Direction scholar Millie Lovelock reviews the Harry Styles concert at Spark Arena.

I’ll start at the beginning because concerts like this don’t just start when the band take the stage. For at least a thousand Harry Styles fans, the show started long before I was even conscious on Saturday morning. Fans were camping overnight, showing up at eight o’clock in the morning to wait in line for ten hours in the blistering heat for the chance to be close to Styles, to show their absolute devotion. To many people, this kind of adulation seems obscene, but as the girl next to me in the crowd kept saying to herself over and over, for many people a Harry Styles concert is the best night of their lives. The pressure of that in a city is tangible. I spent much of Saturday in a state of nervous agitation. As someone with a vested interest in Styles’ career and a genuine love for his music, how would I respond to seeing him in the flesh and being among the people that I spent so many hours researching and writing about?

Every anxiety I had, however, melted away when I arrived at the arena. I have been to a lot of shows but I have never seen such joyous, welcoming anticipation. Stepping into a crowd of Harry Styles fans is disarming. Everyone is there because they love Styles and they love the music. The point of the exercise is to have as nice a time as humanly possible. Waiting in line and waiting inside the arena for the show to start, no one shoves you, no one gropes you. Everyone knows how much it means to everyone else to be there. The experience of being a part of the crowd is so overwhelmingly positive that it almost wouldn’t matter if Styles put on a good show or not.

Fortunately, the show itself was technically flawless. Styles is an earnest and charismatic performer, and he unabashedly shares with his audience the love he feels for his craft. He plays his songs with zeal and an infectious sense of delight. It is clear from his double-breasted suit and Eagles-esque lighting rig that he loves dad rock possibly more than any 23-year-old should love dad rock, but he clearly sees no reason why his millions of young and overwhelmingly female fans shouldn’t have the opportunity to love it too.

His band are exceptionally talented and experienced musicians but there is no air of condescension when they take the stage, no sense that Styles’ love of 1970s guitar jams is any more serious than any of One Direction’s back catalogue. In fact, they performed two One Direction songs– ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ and ‘What Makes You Beautiful’. I never imagined that I would hear a prog rock version of ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ and enjoy it, but enjoy it I did. Such is the infectiousness of Styles’ passion and sincerity. He didn’t make it prog because he thought the original wasn’t cool enough, he made it prog because he loves prog and he loves One Direction. For Styles, the two things don’t have to be separate, and judging by the song’s rapturous reception, the fans agree.

But it all comes back to the audience and the way Styles treats them. It is impossible to describe the intensity of the love and ecstasy that ran through the crowd when he stepped on stage; it was seismic. At first, Styles appeared behind a pink, floral curtain, his silhouette outlined by a spotlight. When that curtain dropped away the screams were unlike anything I had ever heard or felt. Almost instantly someone tossed a rainbow pride flag up onstage and Styles fixed it to his mic stand, announcing (as he has done at many of the shows on this tour) that, in this room, everyone should feel free to be whoever they want to be. It was a delicate but powerful statement, as is much of what Styles has been doing on this tour.

Harry Styles, as I have written before, makes Rock Music. He has media outlets falling over themselves to label him a sex god, Mick Jagger’s second coming. And yet Styles’ merch is millennial pink and most items bear the slogan “treat people with kindness”. Half of his band are women, his support acts are women, pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs are a prominent feature at his shows and on his social media. There are no soapboxes, just tacit assertions that rock music doesn’t have to lean into toxic masculinity. That, in fact, women and girls have a place in rock, queer folk have a place in rock, and that joy, kindness and acceptance are integral to any musical experience.

“I love you,” Styles said at the end of the show, voice wavering slightly, “I love every single one of you, I want you to know that.” At that moment we were at the apex of joy, Styles reaffirming the love that flows between him and his crowd, reminding us that there’s no him without us. Afterwards, I sat on the grass with my friends and watched streams of young people pouring past, beaming and holding hands, wearing shirts that insist you treat people with kindness. I felt the way I felt as soon as I stepped into the crowd to line up for the show, that we were all a part of something truly lovely, and truly special.

Read globe-trotting super fan Sacha Judd’s review of Saturday’s show here.