Harry Styles lights up Mt Smart opening with his sounds "Music For a Sushi Restaurant" Video / Yasmin Robertson
Harry Styles stole the hearts of Aotearoa last night with a touching rendition of the iconic anthem Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi.
Midway through his concert - which saw nearly 40,000 people attend – the pop superstar grabbed his mic off its stand and began chanting, Tūtira Mai NgāIwi before pointing the mic at the audience.
The crowd immediately started chanting the song back to the hit singer. Later in the show, he did it again with many pleasantly surprised the star had taken time to learn part of the Māori song.
Hundreds of videos of the moment were captured and uploaded to social media causing a flurry of impressed fans to share their thoughts on the moment.
New Zealand-run social media site, Sh*t You Should Care About posted a clip of Styles singing the first four lyrics on their TikTok account with the caption “we love our culturally sensitive king”.
Meanwhile, another fan posted a clip to their account on the video-sharing platform earning hundreds of comments in return.
One person said, “love Harry for this,” while another person commented, “he didn’t know what he did but he did it.”
Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi is a Māori folk song – or waiata – that was written in the 1950s by Canon Wiremu Te Tau Huata and is often sung at primary schools around the country after it was selected by the Ministry of Education for schoolbook inclusion.
The song has often been used by Kiwis to signal unity and was sung to show support to members of the New Zealand Muslim community after the Christchurch mosque shootings.
Styles concert earned rave reviews last night with the former One Direction member making multiple Kiwiana gestures and hilarious gags with concertgoers.
Harry Styles danced with the Tino Rangatiratanga flag. Photo / TikTok @nicholaeve
Other moments saw the Watermelon Sugar singer joke about filling out the Census - which the country was legally required to fill out last night. Standing comfortably on stage the singer asked, “Did everyone do the census thing?”
“I’ve done it! I think,” He said grinning cheekily, “No,I have done it. I’ve been told we all have to be accounted for. We’ll have to stop the show if you haven’t done it.”
He later danced around the crowd with the Tino Rangatiratanga flag draped around his shoulders for a moment before replacing it with a rainbow pride flag.
And finally, he closed off his Auckland show by fittingly playing Kiwi. Heintroduced the popular song from his first solo album, Harry Styles, by saying “you should know this next one! It’s named after you.” The song was met with rapturous applause.
