It’s All Waiting There for You
How do you explain the magic of live music to someone who doesn’t speak the language? I’m not sure that you do.
On the evening of March 8, my friends and I gathered together in a dim home theater room for a viewing of Harry Styles. One Night in Manchester. We shared girl dinner (a spread of French fries, Caesar salad dip, gluten-free cookies, and dessert wine), screamed, cried, and sang along to an album we had the privilege of memorizing for the last 48 hours—something concert goers did not get to do.
To celebrate the release of his fourth studio album, Harry Styles invited over 20,000 fans to join him at Co-op Live in Manchester, England, on March 6 for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a chance to hear Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally performed top to bottom. While it’s become somewhat of a tradition for Styles to host a “one-night only” concert for each of his solo LPs, this show carried a unique significance: It would be professionally filmed by Netflix and released to the world only two days later. Although iPhone videos still surfaced on social media before the release of the Netflix exclusive, attendees were given camera-blocking pouches for their phones and supplied with disposable cameras in an effort to maintain the show’s authenticity.
Despite setlist spoilers and an Instagram reel of the most heart-wrenching encore song, my friends and I sat in awe as we watched Styles’ perfectly-matured face and vocals test out his new music before a crowd that beamed with anticipation. We giggled each time he crouched to the stage floor in his mustard yellow trousers, blushed whenever he threw his head back and listened to the cheers of his audience, and screamed at the distorted utterance of “Be a good girl, go get it, Fox” in “Dance No More.”
As I watched dedicated fans bop around to music they had heard for the first time less than 24 hours earlier, I couldn’t help but wonder what the energy in that room must have felt like—love, hope, passion, glitter? Whatever that feeling was, “Carla’s Song” was its capstone. A pure celebration of music and sharing it together, that performance granted me a generous moment of clarity.
Live music isn’t just something to do on a Friday night. It’s not an isolated event where you listen to 12 of your favorite songs and then leave unchanged. It’s something beautifully communal, connecting you to an intimate part of yourself and others. It’s an invitation to feel deeply, dance freely, live boldly, and dream without limit. It’s an experience so sacred that a group of girls in East Tennessee can watch a recording of a live show two days later and be brought to real tears.
Photo by Anthony Pham
When Styles began the encore of his One Night in Manchester show with “From the Dining Table,” my friends and I let out a violent shriek of disbelief and then hushed to a deadly silence, which was periodically broken by a few sniffles. Styles hadn’t performed the final track of his self-titled album for a live audience since 2018. Though all four of us had our own memory of hearing that song for the first time, each of them felt intertwined in that moment. Music is the language that brought me to these people, and it’s been an unspeakable joy to understand.
In between gentle guitar strums and the melancholic echo of the lyric “Even my phone misses your call, by the way,” I realized that I didn’t need to wonder what that Manchester arena felt like. Found amongst friends and sweet wine, the feeling is right there, waiting for you.