Harry Styles performed his first show in three years last night in Manchester.
The singer, 32, took to the Co-Op Live the same day his fourth album, Kiss All The Time, Disco, Occasionally was released.
Over 20,000 fans descended on the venue, which is the UK’s largest indoor venue, and only a stones’ throw from where Styles is from in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire.
Styles played the whole of his new album from the top, along with an encore where he sang From The Dining Table, Golden, As It Was and Watermelon Sugar – then finishing the show to play Aperture again, to rapturous applause.
He joked: “If by some miracle you know the words, please sing along.” He also made several references to being out of the spotlight for the last three years.
And Styles thanked fans for the “warmth and generosity” they’ve showed him over the past “10, 15 years of [his] life” , since he started out in X Factor’s One Direction.
He also praised them for creating communities with hope in a world “that feels so chaotic it is so easy to become hopeless”.
“The world could do with a little extra peace right now so please do all you can,” he added.
For fans who missed out, the show will be available to stream on Netflix on Sunday.
And because it was recorded for the streaming service, there was a ban on phones recording during the concert.
Instead, every pair of fans was given a disposable camera to capture memories of the concert.
Though that didn’t deter many gig-goers who took their phones out of the recyclable bags they were placed in – much to the dismay of security trying to police those filming.
Unlike tickets for his residency-style tour, which kicks off in May, tickets to the gig were £20 and allocated through a Ticketmaster Request ballot.
The show has had positive reviews, with The Telegraph awarding it five stars, and Rolling Stone, The Independent and The Guardian giving it four stars.
In a four-star review of the album for The Standard, Maddy Mussen wrote: “Far from divisive, the album is distinctly “’Harry’, deliberately current, and undoubtedly Styles’s best album yet.”
