Harry Styles at Wembley Stadium review: running through the grief
Harry Styles at Wembley Stadium review and star rating: ★★★★
Harry Styles is running in laps around an elevated rectangular walkway at Wembley Stadium.
Barely stopping for sips of water, it’s exhausting to watch, especially in this heat. He’s wearing what looks like a thick cotton shirt and has sweated through most of it – at one point, he falls to the ground gasping for air. Despite fan fear, I don’t think he needed help – it was a dramatic display of exhaustion – but I do hope he’s received some when he isn’t at work.
For Styles, running has become a lifeline. He has done marathons and has been jogging to the Wembley shows to provide “mental space”. Concurrently he has spoken about slowing down: how at 30 he finally learned how to sit and just have a coffee without doing something else at the same time.
Running came in a time of great need: in October 2024, his bandmate Liam Payne passed away after falling off a balcony in Argentina. Payne and Styles and the rest of OneDirection spent ten years together from age 16.
What sticks throughout his two-hour show is how much he’s been through it: heartfelt emotional sermons about how challenging life has been feel so raw they’re hard to listen to. “I’ve had a lot of life happen, a lot of things land on me,” he says. “This is a beautiful reminder of how beautiful and difficult and fragile life can be.” Styles has always worn his emotions, but as he ages, he does even moreso – I felt desperately like I wanted to give him a hug.
Harry Styles: Wembley show sees star gyrating like Elvis
That intimacy isn’t something you can fake – time and time again, Styles shows off his sparkling personality. “Where are my hayfever girlies at!” is one of his opening gambits, eliciting a carnal scream from the soaked, sneezy midsummer mob of 70,000. There are vanishingly few men who can refer to the Wembley Stadium audience as “girlies” and not sound contrived, but Styles is one of that exclusive group.
The set blends tracks from his four-album discography, opening with a heavy tilt towards nostalgia with singles Watermelon Sugar and Adore You within the opening act, although he begins the show with Are You Listening Yet?, the punk-disco earworm from his latest album.
When he’s not running he’s jirating his pelvis towards the audience in homage to Elvis, whose version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water opens the show. It’s all sexy as hell, and doesn’t he know it. “It’s fine if you wanna go slow, but scream if you wanna go faster,” he teases, big broad smile, acknowledging a slower moment in the set — and being the world’s biggest flirt.
Harry Styles grimaces as he does impressions of guitar and drum playing, and at other times he’s pointing his arms in the air, as if he’s mouthing “let’s ‘ave it!”. This hedonistic streak is explored in the rave culture theme of the latest album. Twiddling nobs on synthesisers on stage and presumably operating them, a Gorillaz tune is one of the classic dance hits he samples, alongside trance bangers from the ‘90s; a nod to the parents, perhaps, though it feels unclear whether this is truly his music. During these segments, heavily distorted shout-outs to his band mates on the mic, thundering beats behind him, come across as slightly try-hard.
Lots from the new album is showcased in the second act, including Ready, Steady, Go!, Dance No More, and Pop, and his wonderfully woke 2019 single Treat People With Kindness (it’s a theme of the night, with thousands of women in their Respect Your Mother t-shirts, a reference from new album track Dance No More). It’s wonderful watching tens of thousands of teenagers dancing with their mothers wearing that shirt.
One Direction gets shunted almost fully, save for a stylish orchestral rendition of two of their strongest tracks, Night Changes and History (see Louis Tomlinson’s version of the former at Radio 1’s Big Weekend earlier this summer for a real tear-jerker). Sign of the Times, his stadium rock debut solo single from 2017, is the penultimate closer before the upbeat electro-pop of As It Was.
A word for the fabulous Shania Twain, who sounds as she always has when she rattles through That Don’t Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like A Woman. It must feel confronting having once played headline sets to crowds this size, but covering his track Falling, she shows she’s a worthy Styles stan too.
“This thing is so much bigger than me,” says Styles, gesturing toward his loyal mob, who are estimated to have generated a £1b spending frenzy for the economy. There aren’t a million artists that recognise that, but truly humble Styles is all the greater because he does.
Harry Styles plays Wembley Stadium Friday 3 and Saturday 4 July; go to the official website