TD Garden buzzed like no other crowd I’ve been in on October 25. The anticipation of two years of wishing and waiting finally came to a head: Harry Styles was back in Boston. After Styles’ second album Fine Line was released in 2019, the tour had been set for 2020 and was rescheduled for a year later due to COVID, meaning many concert goers had been clutching tickets for well over a year. 

I attended his 2018 show at TD Garden for the self titled album tour and I thought that performance was amazing. It was, of course, but the growth from 2018 to 2021 is absolutely stunning. Between the enthusiasm of the crowd and the blooming Styles, it’s like a whole new Harry. 

The set design alone screamed inclusivity, with six mic stands spread around the open stage so Styles could face each section of the crowd multiple times. My nosebleed seats were made so much more enjoyable because of the ingenious design.    

While an experience like this is amazing and once-in-a-lifetime, it is still extremely inaccessible. Checking ticket prices less than an hour before the concert showed nosebleed tickets marked up to nearly $1,000. While I think that the nosebleed seats still give viewers a spectacular show, $1,000 is steep for any ticket.  

Following an underwhelming opener, Harry Styles dazzled at The Garden Monday night, winning all of our hearts ten times over. Jenny Lewis, 45-year-old folk rock singer, was the set opener who made the crowd more antsy. Unfortunately, Lewis’s setlist consisted of around nine songs that sounded very similar and by the end of her set we were all chomping at the bit, ready for Styles. But the pre-show tracklist was carefully curated, leaving us with “Bohemian Rhapsody” to scream from the tops of our lungs. 

At long last the concert started, null of a countdown, and the track “Golden” set the bright, ethereal tone of the next 90 minutes. 

Styles added a flair of specificity in his performance, talking about how many colleges, and subsequently ramen shops, there are in Boston. He then went on to say how much he loves the city, making us all feel somehow special in his mega-famous eyes. 

While this was ultimately Styles’ own show, he gave each of his band’s musicians their own solo, respectfully giving them their moment in the limelight. This gave the show a feeling like it wasn’t a stadium tour for one of the most popular people in the world, but just a concert for a really good band. 

The first encore was “Sign of the Times,” a song that hasn’t been included in many concerts on this tour thus far. Styles sang with conviction, the massive disco ball speckling the teary crowd with twinkling light. 

The last two encores were an extended version of  “Watermelon Sugar,” fit with a call and response portion at the beginning of the track, and finally “Kiwi,” the same song he closed with when I saw him in 2018. Ending with this song reminded me how well-rounded the performance had been; a beautiful mix of old and new, Styles’s setlist carefully satisfied every concert goer’s wishes. 

Ears ringing, makeup running, throats raw, we made our way back home in a dazed state of exhausted nirvana. 

Reflecting back, this concert meant so much more than the mere notion of seeing Harry Styles live. It meant togetherness and beauty, art and expression. At the start of the show Styles remarked, “please feel free to be whoever it is you’ve always wanted to be” and that is truly what I saw: people dressed in outfits they had been planning for months, singing, dancing, screaming, crying, being themselves.