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MATT BAILEY / JULY 10, 2026 / CONCERT REVIEWS

The beloved pop star took a break from hockey arenas to play one of live touring’s most beloved large clubs

Louis Tomlinson brought his full arena rig to the 6,000-capacity Anthem in DC on Tuesday (July 7th) for an underplay on his How Did We Get Here? World Tour. The former One Direction star played most of the tracks from his new album, How Did I Get Here? He opened with the record’s two starting tracks, “Lemonade” and “On Fire.”

Only one One Direction song made the setlist, 2014’s “Night Changes.” The rest of the night focused on Tomlinson’s three-album solo discography. With his full-length debut coming just six years ago, Tomlinson is the last of the One Direction crew to jump into a solo career with both feet.

Tomlinson’s pop music is equal parts rave-inducing (“Lemonade” features a bursting surprise right at the top of the show) and genuinely pensive. “Dark To Light” comes off as substantively emotive, with a driving beat anchoring the lyrics. The acoustic “Defenceless” showed off the underappreciated rawness of Tomlinson’s voice.

The pop star spent most of the night awash in a kaleidoscope of lights and lasers. His massive band riders doubled as techno-club light boxes, pulsating light downstage toward Tomlinson.

I love when artists post up at the Anthem with their full arena rig. It makes you feel like you’re at Rock Lititz watching bands run through at the iconic stage-rehearsal base camp. Everything just hits ten times harder in a box one-fourth the size of the Garden—where Tomlinson interrupted Bon Jovi’s return to the stage with a one-off gig on July 8th. (JBJ and company return on the 9th. My thoughts are with those rigging crews. I digress.)

Lasers and screens combined to make his feel like some sort of pop music laboratory in the middle of outer space. It’s a stage you just don’t want to peel your eyes from for a single second. His runway ended in a question mark-emblazoned b-stage where he belted songs “Sunflowers” and “Lucid.” And singing right along with him were his fans—mostly female—screaming every word to the new songs like they had been out for years.

For his third album, Louis pushed himself as a lyricist, songwriter, and performer, holding nothing back on these tracks. Though he certainly doesn’t have to prove himself, it’s clear that he still writes music, plays shows, and sings as if everything is on the line. In the studio, restless creativity and a hunger for artistic exploration drive his process. Live, he leaves everything on the stage as sold-out crowds meet him head-on with the same amount of enthusiasm and energy. As a writer, he’s diving deeper into who he is than ever before.

And I’m just wondering why that is? Like are my ears deceiving me? Or does every video I’ve ever watched of him (including the videos I took myself last night) misrepresent how his voice actually sounds? Is that even possible?

Now I’ve never had the opportunity to meet him face to face so I can’t account for how his voice sounds without a microphone projecting it. But maybe that sounds slightly different in person vs videos too, I don’t know.

I’m not sure if you’ll know the answer but maybe someone who reads this might know? Thanks!!

Hi darling. I'm so glad you had such a good time. It looked like it was a great show!

So, a couple of things. Louis pitches all of his songs down just a hair. Not a lot! Just a little bit. He does this to save his voice - performing night after night is grueling, even on seasoned vocal cords like his.

Second- the sound from his mic is being mixed by the audio engineer, and often they will pitch it down because it’s a bit more pleasant on our ears AND easier to hear in larger, more crowded spaces.

Third- there is something called “the proximity effect.” This is something that happens to everyone, when you are super close to a microphone, it picks up the lower timbre/pitch of your voice because the amplifying device inside a microphone inherently boosts bass/lower frequencies. It is doing something called “muddying” his voice, it’s often why he pulls the mic down when he has to belt high, he’s worried he might be flat and the mic will amplify that.

In person he gets to use his natural voice, and he’s often doing interviews in radio studios. In those situations, “podcast” mics/studio mics/lav mics are CRAZY sensitive to any and all sound, but especially higher frequencies, because there isn’t much distance for the sound waves to reverberate (bounce around) in the studio.

In true person, though I’ve never met him, I think his voice is pitched up because he’s excited (and sometimes a little nervous) to be so close to fans. We all tend to go into a little higher pitch when presented with something that makes us happy. There’s a reason they call it “squealing with delight.”