Harry Styles opens Wembley residency with One Direction nod

Harry Styles opened the first night of his Wembley Stadium residency by recalling his audition for The X Factor 16 years ago.

"Just outside of this building, just next door in Wembley Arena, my sister brought me to London for the very first time," said the star, who was born in Redditch and raised in Cheshire.

"It was… in that building that I was put in a band. We were called One Direction," he recalled, prompting screams from a sold-out crowd of 80,000 fans.

"My sister is here tonight," he added. "I want to thank her. I love you and I appreciate you."

Later, Styles also thanked his mother, Anne, who secretly signed him up for The X Factor when he was 16.

"I wouldn't be here today if she hadn't done that," he said. "I thank you so, so much."

Back in 2010, Styles' audition consisted of two songs: Train's Hey Soul Sister and Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely, earning him a place in One Direction.

Prior to that, the first song he ever recorded was Elvis Presley's The Girl of My Best Friend. His walk-on music at Wembley was also an Elvis track, a cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

At Wembley, his performance of armour-plated pop songs like As It Was and Watermelon Sugar held the audience. Fans arrived in sequins and feather boas, or waistcoats and ties. They held paper hearts aloft during Fine Line and painted red lips on their necks in reference to his latest album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.

Hand-painted signs declared "Welcome home" and "Can I be your intern this summer?"

A sign from Ella, who had come from Sunderland, caught Styles' attention.

"Ella's sign says, 'What's your favourite type of egg?'" he said. "Um... I like a fried egg. Followed closely with a scramble."

Such moments of connection are central to Styles' show. There is a focus on community and the euphoria of, in his own words, "dancing together, sweating together and singing together."

On stage, the musicians interact playfully with their frontman, twirling him around or parting ways to let him play a vintage synthesiser. Styles can elicit screams just by adjusting the collar of his shirt. Three interconnected catwalks stretch into the audience, carving the space into small compartments. The standing areas feel intimate, more like a club show than a stadium concert, with Styles zipping around the borders, blowing kisses and posing for cameras.

The set-up has been tweaked since the tour launched in Amsterdam last month, removing some of the 10-foot-high bridges that obscured some fans' views.

The set drew on all four of Styles' solo albums, from the blissed-out pop of Adore You to the windswept balladry of Sign of the Times. His new album, Kiss All The Time, was promoted as a dance record inspired by Berlin's club scene. Critics called it unremarkable, obtuse and lacking in depth. On stage, however, the songs came alive, anchored by a band that swelled to 18 musicians at points.

Opening track Are You Listening Yet rumbled along on an irresistible soca rhythm, while a sample of Underworld's Born Slippy gave Taste Back a turbo boost. The recent single American Girls gained a long, trippy intro, with Styles messing around on an old analogue keyboard. Large sections of the crowd were unsure what to make of it.

They were more enthused by Golden, leaping up and down until Wembley's foundations shook. Later, the ebullient Treat People With Kindness saw a giant conga line snaking around the stadium.

Styles matched their enthusiasm despite a nagging cough that sometimes left his voice with a new raspiness. His recent marathon training has paid off, allowing him to sprint circuits around the stage without losing his breath.

Friday night's concert was the first of 12 at Wembley Stadium, breaking a record previously held by Coldplay, who played 10 shows last summer, and Taylor Swift, who played eight in 2024. It is a pattern he will adopt in all seven cities on the Together Together tour this year: Amsterdam, London, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York, Melbourne and Sydney.

Styles says anchoring the tour in this way allows him to put on more elaborate shows while protecting his and his band's health.

"It's not like I'm saying I'll never travel again, but I want to see what it looks like if you do it a different way," he told Apple Music's Zane Lowe. "People in my band have families now and kids and it's really important to me that they're on the road. I don't want to make it near impossible for them to be able to come do that with me."

"Thank you for choosing to spend your evening with us," he said halfway through the show. "Seeing what you all created together, this energy, this community, I've never felt more hopeful about the future."

Harry Styles' Wembley setlist: Are You Listening Yet?, Golden, Adore You, Watermelon Sugar, Music for a Sushi Restaurant, Taste Back / Born Slippy, Coming Up Roses, Fine Line, String interlude: Night Changes / Falling / History, Italian Girls, American Girls, Keep Driving, Ready, Steady, Go!, Dance No More (including elements of Gorillaz' Clint Eastwood), Treat People With Kindness (including elements of Talking Heads' This Must Be the Place and Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al), Pop, Season 2 Weight Loss, Carla's Song (including elements of Satellite), Aperture. Encore: Little Freak, Sign of the Times, As It Was.