Harry Styles Dressed as His 16-Year-Old 'X Factor' Self for Harryween

At Madison Square Garden, he sang Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely,' the a cappella song that got him through his 2010 audition.

For the first stretch of Friday's concert at Madison Square Garden, Harry Styles was Elvis Presley. Midway through the show he changed into something smaller: the clothes he wore at 16 to audition for The X Factor.

Then he sang Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely," the song that got him through that 2010 audition, Billboard reported. It was the 29th of 30 nights in his Together, Together residency, and it was Harryween, his Halloween costume-and-cover show. Styles even told the crowd "I work in a bakery," repeating what he'd said to the judges, Rolling Stone reported. Billboard said the line pointed back to his part-time job in Holmes Chapel, his hometown in Cheshire.

Here's the funny part of the full-circle moment. "Isn't She Lovely" wasn't the song he walked in planning to sing. In an extended cut of the audition that The X Factor released in 2022, he starts on Train's "Hey, Soul Sister" over a backing track. Simon Cowell stops him, Rolling Stone reported at the time, and asks to hear him without music, Billboard reported. Only the a cappella Wonder made it to TV.

So the song Styles took back to the Garden was his backup, the one he sang after being cut off. It's the one people remember, because it's the one that aired.

The rest of the stage was a Styles timeline, too. Behind him, every musician and dancer was costumed as an earlier Harry from one era or another, Billboard reported. A fan account that follows the tour, @hsdtogethertour, posted the roster, including one musician as "Met Galarry" and two dancers dressed from the "As It Was" era. Even the Elvis costume pointed back to the beginning: Styles' very first recording, Billboard noted, was his take on Presley's "The Girl of My Best Friend."

The audition also led to One Direction. Styles was later put in the group with Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and the late Liam Payne. On the second anniversary of Payne's death earlier in October, Styles used that same Garden stage to premiere "What Is Enough," a song written for his late bandmate, Billboard reported.

Rolling Stone called Friday's show Harryween's return from the dead. The tradition began at the Garden in 2021, when Styles played Dorothy for "Over the Rainbow" and came back the next night as a clown to cover Britney Spears' "Toxic." In 2022 he moved the party to the Kia Forum in Los Angeles and sang "Hopelessly Devoted to You" dressed as Grease's Danny Zuko. Neither outlet lists a Harryween between that one and this.

Fans had gotten a surprise two nights earlier. On Oct. 28, at the residency's last non-Halloween show, he played "Ever Since New York" for the first time in four years, Rolling Stone reported. The demand showed up early, in presales: Ticketmaster took a record 11.5 million registrations for the Garden dates, according to Billboard. The residency ends Saturday with one more Harryween show.

In that 2022 extended cut, Cowell tells the teenager that "mums normally don't know" whether their kids can sing. Styles answers that he came to ask the people who do: "I think with your help, I could be a lot better than I am," he told the judges, according to Rolling Stone. Sixteen years later, he has 30 nights at the Garden.

Source: Rolling Stone, retrieved October 31, 2026. Other sources: Billboard, Rolling Stone (2).