Harry styles

For the first time at a gig, I spent much of Harry Styles’s show thinking about the maths. He’s cunningly doing his 68 shows in seven cities, with 12 of them at Wembley Stadium, which means he has transferred a significant amount of the costs of touring to the fans. In other ways fans are rewarded. As is common when stars play stadiums, Styles spent little time on the main stage. Instead he peddled his wares from a series of walkways – around 350 yards of them, apparently – stretching way out into the crowd, along which he remained in near-constant movement. That meant an awful lot of people got to be at the barrier. At an estimate there were maybe 20,000 people who got within a few feet of Styles. That’s as many people as fit in the whole O2. Clever.

Grade: B In which the foppish Davy Jones figure from the manufactured band One Direction (Zayn Malik being Peter Tork; One Direction didn’t have a Mike Nesmith) sheds the soft-rock pop-lite that has served him so well and goes with what he fondly believes is challengingly funky EDM, a genre which I do not believe plays to his strengths. So what you get is lyrics as fabulously inane as on ‘Watermelon Sugar’ but very little of the pleasant tunes which accompanied that and his many other hits. There are some interesting rhythmic textures for sure, and a surfeit of old-skool playground synths. There is also a surfeit of repetition, a necessity for the oeuvre and a polite nod towards rap.

2023 has the summer of unruly concertgoers. So far, bras, phones and a woman’s ashes have been thrown, pelted, and flung at the likes of Bebe Rexha, Drake, Kelsea Ballerini, Kid Cudi, Pink and Harry Styles. Now that Cardi B has become the latest victim, the celebrities are finally fighting back.   On Saturday, Cardi B was performing her 2018 hit “Bodak Yellow” at Drai’s Beach Club in Las Vegas when a concertgoer threw her drink at the rapper. Cardi B immediately hurled her microphone into the audience before unleashing a string of expletives. Cockburn commends Cardi for her excellent aim — she hit the culprit squarely in the chest.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlYU3Lpx9b0&ab_channel=CNN Cardi had warmed up her throwing arm the night before.

The recent downfall and shaming of Kanye West was likely to have been greeted with schadenfreude by at least one 32-year-old pop star. In 2009, West interrupted Taylor Swift's winning best female video at the MTV Video Music Awards to inform her that the gong should have gone to Beyoncé instead. Their relationship ever since has been a gossip-friendly roundabout of fallout, reconciliation, sniping and bitching. West’s current defenestration from public life, owing to antisemitic comments he made, has not been publicly alluded to by Swift yet. But the lyrics from the song "Karma" on her new album Midnights might make tacit reference to their ongoing feud, as Swift castigates an anonymous man for "talking shit/For the hell of it/Addicted to betrayal but you're relevant.

My Policeman is a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and his naked bottom. The bottom is good. Ten out of ten for the bottom, particularly during a scene in Venice when the light from the window casts it in a golden, buttery glow. But otherwise, this is an average, meek and soporific endeavour which hits quite a few bum notes of the kind that aren’t ideal. It is based on the novel by Bethan Roberts, which in turn was inspired by the romantic life of E.M. Forster, who had a long-term relationship with a married policeman who suffers a stroke and is nursed by his wife, May. (Big shout out for May, I think.

Renaissance, Beyoncé's first solo album in six years, dropped at the end of July. Critics raved about the genius of Queen Bey. Pitchfork gave the album a 9/10, calling it "immaculate." The Guardian referred to it as a "breathtaking, maximalist tour de force." "America Has a Problem and Beyoncé Ain’t It," the New York Times declared. Thematically, Renaissance is courageous. It's a departure from the pop-laced R&B songs we typically hear from Beyoncé. It leans heavily on club music; it subverts expectations. However, Beyoncé's clear desire to make a statement means that the entire project comes across as trying way too hard. It's an album a listener is supposed to "get" rather than enjoy.

Cockburn loves a little drama, but it’s proving difficult to work out who the real villain is amid the continued theatrics of the Don’t Worry Darling cast. The film concerns a 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community. Don’t Worry Darling (Cockburn feels compelled to ask why there is no comma) was directed by Olivia Wilde, and started filming what seems like decades ago One thing is certain: the crew saved their best performances for the movie's premiere at the Venice Film Festival instead of the actual thing. The film has been branded a disappointment by critics, who claim that Harry Styles, Wilde's boyfriend who plays a lead role, is "charisma-free.