On a blistering summer evening in Perth, the air is not only thick with humidity but the simmering anticipation of almost 30,000 ecstatic young Harry Styles fans.
“It’s a bit hot down here, innit? A scorcher!” Styles says in his best Australian accent, before checking in with the crowd: “Is everyone feeling OK? Are you drinking enough water? Does anyone have hydration tablets?”
For Styles’ diehard supporters, it’s been quite the journey to get here. Some have queued since 2am to nab a prime spot, ignoring the venue’s 8am curfew and enduring a stampede as a rush of delirious, tearful fans were forced to move to a different gate. Others spent months scouring TikTok for DIY costume ideas, filling the stadium with feathers, sequins, cowboy hats and glitter, while some reportedly fainted due to heatstroke while in line to buy merchandise.
But as soon as Styles ripples on to the stage, raising his svelte tattooed arms in the air and launching full steam into the shimmering pop anthem Music for a Sushi Restaurant, it’s clear that the throng of Harry faithfuls are doing just fine. They are beside themselves with joy.
With his 2020 Love on Tour shows postponed during Covid, it’s been a long five years since Styles toured Australia. “The world is not the same as it was,” says the artist on the final track of his third studio album, Harry’s House. And the 29-year-old singer has undergone a transformation of his own since he was last on Australian soil: born of pandemic-era isolation, his strikingly assured 2022 record has attracted a slew of accolades, including album of the year at the Grammys. This long-awaited reunion with Australian audiences feels like a victory lap for an artist who has well and truly eclipsed his boyband past.
Between ear-splitting teenage squeals, Styles charges through a setlist that oscillates from laid-back indie-pop to party-starting anthems and confessional ballads. In the breezy yacht-rock track Cinema, Styles shows us just how much of a natural performer he is, strutting down the runway stage into the thick of the crowd, swivelling his hips and picking up a fan’s blue feather boa along the way. And Keep Driving is a languid delight, with Styles’ flawless vocal floating over projected vision of an endless road trip through a car windscreen.
About halfway through his set, Styles announces that it is time for people bearing signs to show them off. He sidles up to a lady whose sign reads: “I dragged my husband here from Sydney.” The unsuspecting husband, Scott, is co-opted into what might be one of the most surprising moments of the night: both Scott, and later Styles, partake in that most Aussie of concert traditions, downing a beer from a shoe (colloquially known as a “shoey”).
Harry Styles does Australian tradition Shoey, drinking out of his shoe at his concert in Perth. pic.twitter.com/zmtPh28ZQ3
— Pop Base (@PopBase) February 20, 2023
The “disco medley” portion of the evening, as it is dubbed by the artist himself, features upbeat tracks from his sizeable back catalogue, from Watermelon Sugar, the bright pop anthem from his second studio album, Fine Line, to the massive One Direction hit You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful and the catchy pop riffs of Late Night Talking.
The performance is as visually pleasing as it is sonically. Styles cavorts around the stage in powder-blue high waisted slacks and a white T-shirt featuring a sparkly ice-cream sundae with cherries on top – a nod to his 2019 hit Cherry and his ongoing obsession with fruity innuendo.
His powerful and ultra-slick six-piece band, mostly women, stand beneath a dazzling wall of disco-style coloured lights and three gigantic video panels that animate the 90-minute show. The set and lighting are noticeably pared back for such a grand stadium tour, with no flashy gimmicks or pyrotechnics, so Styles’ genre-bending tracks are given room to shine in their own right, and that they do.
In the pointy end of the show, Styles chooses to shoehorn in a classic Australian pub rock ballad: the Daryl Braithwaite hit The Horses . Unsurprisingly, it’s greeted with rapture. Styles, grinning from ear to ear, exclaims: “I can feel the Aussie coursing through my veins!”
The spectacle closes with the bouncy, disco-infused viral sensation As It Was, a track that gets to the heart of Styles’ new body of work – a song about metamorphosis, and losing and finding yourself in a changed world. The singer gives his everything to the performance till its last moments, taking one last opportunity to thank his fans for “changing his life over and over again”. He’s the flamboyant, gracious showman he always was, except now his musicianship has finally caught up to his stardom.
Harry Styles is touring Australia until 4 March
