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Pop

Harry Styles has entered his imperial phase – but his music still has no distinct identity

4 June 2022

9:00 AM

4 June 2022

9:00 AM

Harry Styles

O2 Academy Brixton, and touring, until 19 June

Pet Shop Boys

O2 Arena

At the turn of this century, looking back on the late 1980s when the Pet Shop Boys could do no wrong and everything they touched turned to platinum, Neil Tennant coined the concept of a musician’s ‘imperial phase’. You can be hugely popular at other times in your career – you can sell just as many records – but the imperial phase is something different.

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