Concert review: Niall Horan seems like a nice enough guy, but he’s no Harry Styles | CPT PPP Coverage

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When an artist starts their career singing primarily to a young audience, it can be exceptionally difficult to ever graduate to playing to adults.

Michael Jackson, George Michael and Justin Timberlake managed to make the transition — as did Paul McCartney and John Lennon, although boomers hate it when people call the Beatles a boy band — but they’re all very much the exception to the rule.

The English-Irish boy band One Direction, which was assembled from wannabe solo acts from “The X Factor” in 2010 and enjoyed six years of success before splitting, has already spawned Harry Styles, who has quickly ascended to the top of global pop stardom. So, from the start, Styles’ former bandmate Niall Horan has faced an even higher barrier than most in establishing himself as a solo act.

Yet Sunday night, the 30-year-old Horan filled St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center with an appreciative, well-mannered crowd full of women in their late teens and 20s. Without many little kids in attendance, the mood was celebratory but not as chaotic as it can get when there are screaming 14-year-olds in every other row.

The size of the audience speaks volumes about the devotion One Direction inspired, as Horan hasn’t really had any breakthrough singles that made a greater cultural impact beyond the fans. Horan’s performance hinted at the reasons why. He’s a handsome guy with a decent voice, an unobtrusive stage presence and a handful of pleasant enough pop songs that aim for, but never achieve, greatness.

Like Styles, Horan is a Fleetwood Mac fan. He took the stage to “The Chain” blasting over the loudspeakers and incorporated a snippet of Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” into his own “Small Talk.” (It is worth noting that while Horan covers Nicks, Styles is actually her good friend.)

In addition to hints of the Mac, much of Horan’s music dabbles in ’70s-style soft rock and more modern and tasteful mid-tempo pop and balladry. The set list drew from all three of Horan’s solo albums, the second of which he was set to tour in 2020, but never actually did due to the pandemic.

So Sunday was Horan’s first local concert since he drew just under 10,000 fans to the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand in 2018. He acknowledged that between songs, and while introducing the crowd favorite “Black and White,” Horan thanked his fans for being patient as tickets for the show went on sale a year ago and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Over the course of 90 minutes, Horan offered a series of mildly enjoyable songs more focused on atmosphere and vibes than indelible hooks. And it seems his record company applied some pressure for more Styles-esque material, as “Save My Life” from his latest album “The Show” sounded like an obvious (and failed) attempt to recreate the pop perfection of Styles’ megahit “As It Was.” And the record’s title track wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Styles’ own debut album.

The crowd loved it all but perked up noticeably when Horan broke out the mirror ball for a run through One Direction’s “Night Changes,” which turned into a massive audience singalong. The group singing also returned for a trio of semi-acoustic numbers, the tender ballads “Flicker” and “This Town” from his debut and “You Could Start a Cult” from his new one. The latter’s title suggested some potentially sexy and/or edgy lyrics, but like everything else in his repertoire, it was yet another perfectly fine, if somewhat dull, song.

Again, Horan seems like a nice enough guy, and comparing him to Styles probably isn’t fair. But, then again, Horan is no Harry Styles.