“Concerts bring people together like nothing else in the world – particularly a Harry concert,” Jessica says as she waits for the doors to open at Wembley Stadium, in London.
It’s the first weekend of Harry Styles’ record-breaking 12-night run at the mammoth venue, and Jessica is here with her friends Alyssa and Sara. “It’s all about celebrating this moment and coming together,” she says. “It’s happy, it’s joyful.”
With up to 80,000 fans descending on the stadium for each concert, the logistics of it all may feel a bit daunting. If you’re going to one of the 10 Wembley shows still to come on Styles’ Together, Together tour, here’s how the day goes for me.
The journey to Wembley
For Saturday’s concert I’m staying near London Bridge underground station. I leave at 4.50pm and at 5.05pm hop on the Jubilee line with two friends, heading west towards Stanmore or Wembley Park.
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The contactless payment for the tube is £3.60 (about €4.20). If you’re in London for a short stay, this is one of the most cost-effective and convenient ways to navigate the underground.
The tube is relatively busy, with some obvious concertgoers along the platforms, but plenty of other people are also travelling around the city. (The Bond Street stop has the biggest number of Styles fans decked out in their best disco attire.)
Reaching Wembley Park
The train pulls into Wembley Park station at 5.35pm. Among the mass exodus of passengers is Rebecca, who few from Belfast to Gatwick the day before. She has been to lots of Harry Styles concerts; she doesn’t want to speak too soon, she says, but her journey to this one has been smooth sailing so far.
Hordes of fans line the main walkway to the stadium. Lots of groups pose for photographs in a range of flamboyant outfits. Feather boas were the trademark look of Styles’ last tour; this time around it’s sequins and ties.
But one of the signature elements of a Styles concert is the sheer variety of outfits. He’s “such a fashion icon, and he wears whatever he wants, so everyone else feels like they should be doing the same – which is really cool to see”, as Sara puts it.
Into the stadium
At 6.50pm, after an extortionately priced hot dog and bottle of water (yours for £16, which is about €18.50) and an obligatory Harry Styles T-shirt purchase (£40, or about €46, for official merch), we start to head for our seats, which is easy despite the number of fans entering the stadium.
Shania Twain, Styles’ support act, hits the stage just before 7pm. The Canadian singer has fans on their feet with hits such as That Don’t Impress Me Much and Man! I Feel Like A Woman! The audience is practically vibrating by the time she leaves the stage, at 7.50pm.
Harry Styles comes onstage
Styles appears at 8.20pm, to an eruption of cheers. Over the next two hours he sings almost two dozen songs, from older emotional numbers such as Sign of the Times to new up-tempo songs such as Ready, Steady, Go! – not to mention a brief One Direction medley.
He speaks to several fans holding signs near the stage, generating plenty of laughter when he tells a recently divorced mother, “Congratulations on your divorce. Freedom to the sisters – am I right?”
There’s a particular sense of community during Keep Driving, when fans around the stadium lower and raise their phone torches in synchronisation. It makes me think of something Alyssa said earlier: she has never felt so connected to a group of strangers.
After the show
After the show wraps up, at 10.20pm, tens of thousands of people pour out of the stadium – and the most demoralising part of the evening has begun. Throngs of us are at a standstill on the walkway back to the Tube station.
The energy among fans remains high, however: our wait is soundtracked by a selection of Styles classics sung a capella.
One singalong and several games of I Spy later, we’ve made it to the entrance of the station. It’s 11.15pm – but a slog through the turnstiles means we just miss the 11.20pm tube.
The next train is – of course – out of service. As it zooms by, one waiting passenger remarks, “That’s teasing, that is. It’s like Christmas Eve.”
The train from Wembley
We finally board a Jubilee line tube back to London Bridge at 11.30pm, disembarking just after midnight, not much more than an hour and a half after Styles left the stage. Not bad, all 80,000 people considered.
Passenger standstills and eye-watering food prices aside, Harry Styles at Wembley is an exuberant, enthralling experience. As Alyssa puts it, “There’s just a lot of hate sometimes in the world, but right now I don’t feel that.”
Harry Styles plays Wembley Stadium, in London, on June 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, 26th, 27th and 29th and July 1st, 3rd and 4th
