At a time when “pop” insistently goes out of its way to accommodate the middle (even when its so-called edginess talks a big game, rhetorically, otherwise), Harry Styles remains fluid and outside the norm. Not solely because he has toyed with gender-open sexuality and androgynous (silly, yet brave) sartorialism and defines himself by the kindness and respect of accepting all and everyone’s anything-ness. Since the start of his solo musical career with his Bowie Lite, self-titled 2017 debut, Styles has refused to stay still, maintain or find the easy out while still reaching his extended hands into the mainstream.
The self-acknowledged female-orgasm anthem that is “Watermelon Sugar.” The Haruomi Hosono-inspired Japanese city pop of Harry’s House. The minimalist, minor-key electronic music of “Aperture” that John Foxx would die for. Surely, there are easier ways to make a buck post 1D than creating tiny-desk electro, and yet, no matter how niche he gets or how outré his sound becomes, Harry Styles can’t help but find rhapsodic contagion in the least obvious of sonic languages and draw sell-out live audiences by the boatload. Including his 30-night Madison Square Garden residency that started this last week of August.
Shouting out MSG as the home of the championship-winning Knicks—“and they also do weddings,” he said quickly, teasing the nuptials of his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift to a Kelce bro earlier this summer—Styles commenced this show spinning, trotting and cat-walking along his oval, Garden-centered staging. He was together with his large-scale, longtime ensemble, and he never slowed for one moment, insistently and intimately communing deeply with this crowd.
Transitioning from an hypnotic DJ set with Jamie xx into his own show, Styles contradicted himself by prancing around flightily to “Dance No More,” removing the space-hop qualities from its Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. origin story and turning it into something more focused than album-version hazy. And Styles proved why he’s the toast of every parental unit in the five boroughs with the lyric, “Respect your mother”—a sentiment pasted onto more than a few shirts throughout the evening.
From that vantage point, Styles moved swashingly backward—“Carolina” (a horny, crusty, raspy-voiced rarity from his first solo album), an ornery, ornately soulful “Music For A Sushi Restaurant,” a slowed and surprisingly slinkier take on “Watermelon Sugar,” an unusually seductive, pulsating “Kiwi”—before re-lurching into the soft-sculptural electro of his new album with torrid tracks such as an extended, overtly squelchy remixed intro of “Are You Listening, Yet?” and a sizzling “Taste Back,” which I can almost swear interpolated Underworld’s classic “Born Slippery.”
As if to kitchen sink the whole swinging MSG affair beyond his 12-inch-worthy remixes (complete with twiddling his own synthesizer knobs!), Styles and Co. brought out a string section for a winged version of “Coming Up Roses” for the night’s most passionate set of vocals, along with his saintly special piano take on “Carla’s Song.” And if you were thinking that Styles would close out his evening big with his grandly anthemic “Sign Of The Times” (a song I’m only starting to like, let alone believe is the “Hey Jude” of the 21st century), the Styles I love—pop’s left-of-center soul child—closed out the night with my favorite selection from his new album, the small and quirk-tronic “Aperture,” by broadening its shoulders. And shimmying its hips ever so slightly.
How great was Harry Styles in New York City? It’s a good thing he’s doing 30 of these. More chances to be engulfed and amazed.
—A.D. Amorosi
