The ITV censors had their work cut out in a protest-filled, relatively edgy ceremony that hosted ultra-expressive performances from Rosalía, Wolf Alice and more
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Styles opened the show with his return single, Aperture, a UK No 1 in release week which is fairly swiftly dropping down the charts, perhaps because it is a real stylistic outlier in pop right now. Euphoric yet faintly distant, it conjures the feeling when you’re on a dancefloor, slightly out of it, and gazing at the human melee around you. And so it proves here, with a performance where Styles is in the moment, jiving with his considerable band and backing singers, and twitching in time with dancers in snail T-shirts and sunglasses – and yet also one level above the moment, not letting himself become too giddy beyond a couple of grins. His vocal lines are reminiscent of that master of airy yet warm observation, Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive singer Erlend Oye, and I even detected a touch of David Bowie here too: an echo of his tailoring and particular handsomeness as Styles ages, and also the way Bowie would perform, with a thousand-yard stare that also takes in the foreground.
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