Dance all the time, including in a heatwave – Harry Styles

Many from warmer climes will mock the British public when it comes to hot weather and heat waves. The perception of weak Brits struggling in anything above 20 degrees Celsius is widespread. However, a heatwave in Britain is a strange phenomenon. Our houses are built to retain heat due to our obsession with insulation, revolving around a focus on cost and energy saving. Much of our public transport (particularly in London) does not have air conditioning. Nice, Mediterranean breezes do not exist in Birmingham. Our winters are biting and can often last for a staggeringly long time, meaning that when a warm burst arrives, it can be a shock. All in all, we are not built for it genetically nor in terms of civil engineering.

So, what better thing to do in the midst of one of these aforementioned heatwaves than flock to a public place with 90,000 other people to dance, drink rehydrating alcohol and expose ourselves to the elements? That is just what I did during this most recent heatwave, attending one of Harry Styles (many – in fact, as many as 12) summer Wembley Stadium shows for his Together Together tour.  

The venue

I have already reviewed Wembley Stadium (link here), as part of my review of my second trip to see Oasis in the summer of 2025 and I hold largely the same position. Wembley works on some levels but ultimately it is virtually impossible to create an easy experience for 90,000 people. Even if you try and leave cheekily during the last song to avoid the rush, there’s a good chance tens of thousands of others have also had the same thought. Ultimately, 90,000 is a lot of people. It reminds me of when I attended Twickenham to watch England v Tonga in November 2021, which was the first largescale event I had attended after the Covid-19 pandemic and various lockdowns. Despite the stadium making all the best preparations, it was as though they had forgotten just how many people 82,000c was – long queues for the bars, terrible crowd congestion and a lengthy wait for the train. A sea of people is a sea of people, no matter how you look at it. As ever, therefore, the journey back down Wembley Way was chaotic, with lots of running and panicked shrieking when racing for the tube.

Pre-gig, I grabbed a portion of ‘shawarma loaded chips’ from a food stall on Wembley Way. Despite the fact that might sound like a bout of explosive diarrhoea in a polystyrene container, it was actually very good and at £10 was pretty reasonable. Any reasonable prices disappear as soon as you set foot in the stadium, with small, single measure cocktails flying in at over £12.50 and pints sitting at over £8.50 – one stall boasted an offer of four pints for £30, which says a lot considering most people thought that was quite a good deal. Wembley is expensive, concerts are expensive, everything is expensive – something for Mr Burnham to try and sort methinks.

Our seats were in the lower tier, with the stage on the left. As with these large stadium shows, the stage design was not a simple rectangle in the distance. Mr Styles and his team had designed a grid system, so there were four standing pits with a rectangle with two walkways running parallel through the middle. The photo will explain this better than I just have, but it was a good stage design. We had a good view of virtually the whole thing, except the centre of the rear stage which was masked by a large speaker stack.

The support

Harry Styles was supported by none other than pop/country icon and former Glastonbury ‘Legends Slot’ appearance maker, Shania Twain. To many, she needs no introduction. Her smash hit album, Come on Over broke many records upon its release and is still on heavy rotation for me.

This was somehow my third time seeing Shania Twain, having caught her during that Glastonbury slot and then a few weeks later at Hyde Park as part of the British Summertime series. On both occasions she had been truly fantastic. Glastonbury was the perfect vibe for her mix of straight up country, emotive power ballads and corny pop. Her Hyde Park set was more bombastic, with her full stage show in full swing. I was also pleasantly surprised by how funny and weird she was. Her audience interactions were odd, with her going down strange avenues of conversation and offering anecdotes which seemingly had nothing to do with the show. It was oddly charming.

Unfortunately, I was not taken by Ms Twain’s charms as I was on either previous occasion. The sound quality was pretty poor for her set (which you can sometimes expect for a support act), meaning that not only the music didn’t sound great, but we did not get to sample her full array of kookiness between songs as you could not hear what she was saying (at least where we were sat). In terms of her actual performance, her voice is naturally not what it once was, after a health condition and many years of punishment via performance. Her band were good, as I had thought previously – who doesn’t love an electric fiddle? The setlist was strange – limited numbers from Come on Over and an interesting/unusual song about driving a truck. I was not the only bewildered person the crowd. Unfortunately, Shania Twain might sit outside the age demographic for a Harry Styles show. She has one or two songs everyone in the western world knows,  but I feel as though most of Harry Styles’ audience are too young, or into too different music, to truly appreciate her or be aware of her. That’s not to say no young people like her, but she probably does not have the universal, or even just similar appeal, that someone else would. I saw Ed Sheeran at Wembley a few years ago, and he was supported by Maisie Peters. I have no interest in Maisie Peters whatsoever, but people were loving it as she fit(s) a similar demographic to that of Ed Sheeran. Maybe Shania Twain was one for the mums and dads who had been dragged along – they were on their feet long before anyone else.

However, any disappointment disappeared when she fired her two megahits into the crowd. That Don’t Impress Me Much, her witty anthem questioning the coital qualities of some otherwise seemingly high calibre men is the first of the two. It kicked me and most of the crowd into gear. Replacing the lyrics ‘So, you think you’re Brad Pitt?’ with ‘So, you think you’re Harry Styles?’ got a big cheer and was an easy win for Shania. Man! I Feel Like a Woman was the closer. It is hard to quantify just how good this song is. This covered all demographics in the stadium – man, woman, gay, straight, young, old. It is one of the all time great feelgood pop songs, with a great riff and surprisingly good solo nestled in there. Despite only being aimed at and applicable to around 51% of the population, it seems to resonate with everyone on some level. The crowd loved it, the stadium bopped and moved and people screamed the lyrics. Shania left the stage to an ovation and everyone was appropriately pumped.

Harry Styles

Some brief history on Mr Styles. A member of the X-Factor created group, One Direction, Harry Styles has been in the public consciousness for 16 years, when he burst onto the scene at 16 years old. As a rock obsessed teenager, I viewed Styles and One Direction as nothing more than a rubbish boy band, with nothing interesting about them. Styles was particularly the subject of teenage male ire, and the tabloids loved fuelling that nonsense with rumours and hit pieces. This illusion was totally shattered when in 2017, he released his single, Sign of the Times. The first time I heard it, it was on the radio and I had no idea who I was listening to but loved the sound of it. When I heard it was Styles, I must confess I was furious. How could someone I so resented (for no reason, I may add, other than being idiotic) create a song I would love so much? It’s a bombastic epic, with a wonderful vocal, uplifting strings and an ending fitting of any great conclusion. His ensuing debut solo album, titled Harry Styles, is a fantastic album I regularly return to. With an indie rock feel, the influences ooze out of every song. Kiwi, Carolina, Woman and Sweet Creature are particular highlights.

Fine Line followed, which moved into more pop territory, but retained some of the sensibilities which had drawn me into the debut album. Harry’s House was next, which I must admit had some good moments (Late Night Talking is one of my favourite Harry Styles songs everywhere. Hollywood to Bishopsgate is a great image) but was not on the same level for me.

And now to this tour, which is in support of his latest album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. Unfortunately, this album did not resonate with me at all. But fear not, I was still committed to seeing Mr Styles. As aforementioned, I love his older music and was excited to see these classics live. These all delivered, but I just wish there had been more of them. One song in the set from the debut album is simply not enough – I am not alone, even the most fervent Styles fans have called for more from that album.

The production value was impressive, but I’m not sure there was enough here for a stadium show. Stadium shows often require more bells and whistles, which I do not feel was on offer here. Styles isn’t a great dancer in the vein of a Beyonce, meaning any hopes of enlengthened choreographed numbers are non-existent. This show and album are also predicated on Styles’ new interest in house and dance music. The set is interspersed with brief moments of dance classics, like Underworld’s Born Slippy. However, they stick out slightly as not being in keeping with the happy go lucky pop vibe which most of the crowd is used to. There is a moment halfway through where the band met in the middle of the set to undertake what is effectively a mock club scene, but it felt unnatural when compared to the rest of the set and the vibe we are used to from Styles. Artists branch out and experiment, but in this case it does not feel very natural. It is not up to me to tell Harry Styles which musical direction he should go in, I can only speak for personal preference, but ultimately this transition does not feel true to who Harry Styles is, nor where his strengths lie. Here’s hoping the next album is more of a return to form.