Solid gold from Harry Styles at Slane Castle

The first thing you notice when going to a Harry Styles concert is the clientele.Think of a Scooby-Doo convention which has been gate-crashed by a Star Trek fan club and then sprinkle liberally with Mad Max seasoning and some ‘70s glam rock ketchup. It’s bold, it’s brash and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

It was also strangely apt.

Then consider that 79,999 people dressed like this descended on Slane on Saturday for the most highly-anticipated concert of the year. It was a sight to behold – feather boas, platform shoes, cat jumpsuits, fur-trimmed Stetsons, tie-dyed tops, sequins, psychedelic leggings, glittery faces – and that was before the music even started!

There were actually 80,000 people at Slane on Saturday but I was in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Do you feel a little under-dressed?” the bus driver had asked. “I know I do.”

But I didn’t. Bizarrely enough, I felt as if I’d been assimilated into the event, as if the collective consciousness of the Harries had whole-heartedly welcomed into the family, the drab little man in his T-shirt.

Although, apart from the visual aspect of the fashion, the effort to which people had gone was an obvious extension of their commitment. It was all-out, no style holds barred and, to a person, they were gonna make this day count. And boy, did they make it count.

Even before Harry Styles arrived on stage; before Annie Mack or Inhaler (the band with Bono’s lad as the front man) or Wet Leg started the glitterball rolling, that collective consciousness had coalesced and festered and produced a Harry-coded anticipation that you could have cut with a knife – or a feather boa, seeing as how most people had one to hand. No-one who attended Saturday’s gig gave one fig for what the naysayers had previously suggested, that Slane was too big a concert for a former boyband singer to fill. It was grand for Metallica (the last Slane show pre-Covid) and it was OK for previous entrants like U2 or Oasis or the Rolling Stones. But Harry Styles? You’re having a giraffe, ain’t ya?

Alas, the giraffe was on them.

Not a single being who went to Harry Styles at Slane on Saturday came away from that gig thinking the one-time One Directioner was overrated or ill-suited to a stage with such an iconic track record. On the contrary, if you weren’t a fan, you came away a fan, and if you were already a fan, you came away a bigger fan and with a deeper and surer knowledge that this man is at the peak of his powers; that he has somehow transcended pop music and has started a new genre of his own: Epic Mind-blowing Manna for Ears.

From his opener, ‘Daydreaming’ and it’s baa-ya, ba, ba, ba, ba, bahs through ‘Adore You’ and its crescendo of a bridge (“Would you believe it?”); into ‘Watermelon Sugar’, ‘Music for a Sushi Restaurant’, ‘Sign of the Times’, ‘Little Freak’, ‘Fine Line’, and by the time the last strains of ‘Kiwi’ had faded and the fireworks lit up the June dusk, some people were actually in tears.

And for good reason. It had been two solid hours of solid gold show-stoppers, any one of which alone would be enough to base a solid career around. Fact is: Harry Styles already has a canon of classics and it just so happens that a grey Slane gloaming worked as the perfect backdrop for him to anoint himself King of the Castle and slide into the history books as one of the most epic performances – ever!

“Did yous have a good gig,” the bus driver asked, when we returned, a little bedraggled but more than a little inspired.

“Big styles.”

“Next time you’ll have to wear one of those feathery things?

“Next time I’ll be one of those feathery things.”