RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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“How about them Knicks, huh?” a mid-strut Harry Styles asked the packed Madison Square Garden crowd on Wednesday night (Aug. 26), midway through opening song “Dance No More,” to a predictably roaring response. “ How about them Knicks, huh? ”
Forget about the Knicks. Great championship run and all — first in 53 years, good job by them — but their parade was two months ago at this point, and they ain’t been back to MSG since. For the next two months, the World’s Most Famous Arena is officially Harry’s House.
Styles appeared on stage in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday for the first of his 30 — yes, that’s a 3 and then a 0 — consecutive gigs at MSG, as part of his current Together, Together tour, taking him all the way up through Halloween (and well into the start of next NBA season). And he may have been anxious to be there, as he and his band couldn’t even wait till the end of opener Jamie xx’s DJ set to join them, flowing right from the producer’s set into their own.
Playing in the round — really, in the oval, as the light-up stage Styles and his band performed on was more oblong to match the dimensions of the floor — allowed the pop-rock superstar to really harness the energy of the sold-out, packed-out crowd. And he gave it back to them, with the help of a totally reordered setlist from the 31 dates he’d previously played on Together, Together, including a handful of fan favorites making their first appearance.
A couple of those songs got completely new arrangements, too. Perhaps drawing extra inspiration from being in the city of Studio 54, Styles amped up the disco not just for the songs from his clubbier new album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally ., but also for a couple less-dancefloor-obvious older tracks. (Styles’ 2017 self-titled first album was the biggest beneficiary of the new set ordering — now tied with 2023’s Grammy-winning Harry’s House for the second-most-played album with four tracks — though fans who came to Styles from his first group might have left slightly disappointed by the total lack of One Direction representation.)
Even with an updated sound and wardrobe, Styles is hardly the most natural or obvious of disco dons — he comes to the genre through more left-field NYC dance-rock greats like Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem, drawing physical inspiration their herky-jerky energy, while largely bypassing the manic anxiety that fuels those bands’ signature jams as much as any four-on-the-flour thumping. He also seems to currently have precious little interest in the decadence that drove the scene in its heyday, with his performance as PG-rated as you might expect from a show where the most common merch item found in the audience was a RESPECT YOUR MOTHER T-shirt.
Nonetheless, Styles does understand dance’s power to galvanize and unify, which was on full display throughout Wednesday’s show. The set’s most cathartic and satisfying moments came Styles at the center of his band mid-full disco freakout, summoning a storm of lightning and glitter and fully zapping their gleefully electrified frontman. Whether the kids in the audience got the cleverly laid nods to indie-dance anthems like “Born Slippy (Nuxx)” or “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” probably doesn’t matter as much as them potentially feeling the sensation of their entire essence being bass-bombed along with 20,000 of their new closest friends, and leaving the building vibrating on a totally new frequency. For some in the building on Wednesday, it will undoubtedly be the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of discoing as often as possible.
Or at least until the Knicks’ next playoff run. Here were the six best moments from Harry Styles’ first visit to MSG since 2022 — one down, 29 to go. (And yes, they do include a Dolly Parton tribute.)
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