Together Triumphant: A Review of Harry Styles’s Tour Opener in Amsterdam
New faves and old classics, cowboy hats, and American girls in abundance: a review of the “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally” singer’s opening weekend.
It’s early morning in the Eurostar terminal of London’s St. Pancras International Station, where Harry Styles fever is already in evidence: a crew of iced-matcha-wielding young women are wearing feather-trimmed chapeaux studded with lyrics from Styles’s latest album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally. Cloistered in the lounge, I can hear “Watermelon Sugar” trilling on repeat from earbuds close by, and Pleasing merch (Styles’s lifestyle brand) parades past in primary colors. Once onboard and speeding toward Amsterdam Centraal, I pick up on more women strategizing for the night ahead via a WhatsApp group chat titled “Harry’s Housewives.”
This month, the British pop phenom sets off on a mammoth, multi-city residency tour titled Together, Together. After 10 dates at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam, he’ll head to London, New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Melbourne, and Sydney, playing 67 shows in all. Styles’s 30-date takeover of Madison Square Garden has already proven history-making; according to Ticketmaster, the pre-sale period racked up 11.5 million registrations for tickets—the highest volume ever recorded for any artist. Some 585,000 of them—about 5%—got lucky.
And I’m part of the roughly 56,000 people in attendance on night one of Together, Together, three years after Styles’s last tour. In February, his Brit Awards performance of “Aperture” was a jazz-handed human melee, a euphoric first taste. In March, Styles gave British fans in Manchester a one-night-only preview of what was to come. There’s been some time since to luxuriate in the megahits of Kiss All The Time…, refine the fan favorites, and build the live show’s visual world. And with longtime stylist Harry Lambert and creative director Molly Hawkins on board, Styles has all the right components to craft an electric modern pop experience. And, fittingly for an album that Styles says was inspired by dancing with strangers (and, probably, a few jaunts to Berlin superclub Berghain), it’s all kicking off in one of Europe’s best party cities.
In Amsterdam, the “Harries” make themselves known. The PleasingLand pop-up in the center of the city has queues trailing down the block, and every time the door swings open to reveal another frenzied fan, a so-called “scent arcade” sings out with vanilla and citrus. At my hotel—the sleek Pulitzer Amsterdam—“Aperture” is on rotation in the main bar, and fans gather in the lobby to dust on more layers of face glitter.
I get to the Johan Cruijff Arena in the mid-afternoon, around the time Styles is doing soundcheck. Fan fashion runs the gamut of flamboyant outfits, with a Harry Styles-in-Alessandro Michele feel: feathers! Sequins! Ties! Groovy jumpsuits!
Robyn, Styles’s opening act for this first run, had her fans out in force too. Beginning her set shortly after the doors opened, the Swedish pop legend glides from “With Every Heartbeat” to the summery “Ever Again” and dopamine-spiking “Dancing On My Own.” The arena floor and seats fill quickly as Robyn—dressed in shimmering Dries Van Noten—very likely inspires a few more ticket sales for her Euro and stateside Sexistential tour later this year.
Afterward, Styles clocks in very promptly for his two-hour set. As he does a quick loop of the gargantuan ramped stage, each quickstep and hip swirl amps up the volume of the screams. An almost 20-person live band—replete with strings, horns, and other vocalists—and a dance crew backs him up. Wearing custom Celine (a quickly discarded cherry-red bomber, blue shirt, and floral tie, plus voluminous pants and flat boxing sneakers), he cuts a David Byrne-esque figure. New songs—from the drummy “Are You Listening Yet” to “Aperture” and “American Girls”—are met with the same fervor as older favorites like “Golden,” “Fine Line,” and “Music For a Sushi Restaurant.” At other points, tracks that may have languished a little on the latest record become potent and resplendent onstage with all the whorling visuals, syncopated lights, and seemingly many-limbed dancers. The previously dormant “Treat People With Kindness” is charmingly interpolated with Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place,” and “Taste Back” is mashed up with Underworld’s “Born Slippy.” The unreleased song “Italian Girls” is a sun-splashed instrumental, and the celestial “Matilda” conjoins thickets of swaying, interlinking arms. Tears flow. Throughout the staccato dance breakdowns and lush ballads, whether throwing his own limbs with abandon or cradling that star-spangled guitar, Styles is nothing but charismatic.
“The whole reason we’re on this tour,” Styles tells the crowd, “the whole reason I made this last album, is about being together, sharing moments together, having fun together. And that’s what we want to do here tonight. I challenge you to have as much fun as I’m going to have.” Needless to say, they oblige. At one point, he asks who in the crowd is actually an Amsterdam resident and who had come from elsewhere; the cheers indicate it is a very international crowd.
It’s high-octane from start to finish—the laps Styles does could only be manageable with a marathon time like the one he holds—and the night closes with “As It Was.” By that point, the sun has gone down and the glow sticks have gone up, powering Styles through his last stage run. And when the house lights brighten, it’s a struggle to get anyone to leave. Every train carriage back to Centraal leads its own sing-song, but one repeated lyric, like a mantra, rises up the station escalators to propel the crowd into the night: “We belong together! We belong together!”
The Harry Styles’ Together, Together tour runs through December, 13 2026
