When Harry met Harry: the rise of Styles’s top tribute act

Sean McNicholas, 35, has been performing as a Harry Styles tribute act for four years. Riding the wave of the star’s world tour and new album, he’s never been so busy. “Harry took some time away and it all went a bit quiet for me,” he says from his home in Benidorm, “but now it’s been absolutely mental.”

As Styles comes to the UK with an unprecedented 12 nights in the same year at Wembley Stadium, McNicholas is performing to packed venues across the UK and Ireland and appearing at fan events. He was even booked to entertain concertgoers aboard a special train carrying fans from Edinburgh to London for Styles’s first night at Wembley. A US tour is in the works. “I would have never in a million years thought I would have been able to do a Harry Styles tribute,” he says. “Now I’m performing for hundreds of screaming people. It’s my dream.”

Styles’s new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, produced the biggest-selling debut week of his career. And the record’s techno sound and lower vocal range have offered McNicholas a chance to “really sound” like Harry: his Watermelon Sugar era was much harder to recreate.

McNicholas’s success has been years in the making. He grew up in Hartlepool and later Billingham, County Durham, where he spent much of his childhood singing and dancing. “My dad was the one who got me singing,” he says. “He encouraged me from the beginning. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t even be doing this.”

McNicholas worked at Tesco and Costa Coffee while performing at weekends. He listened to a bit of One Direction when they were popular, but he wasn’t obsessive. His father pushed him to return to his childhood passion for music and later encouraged him to move to Benidorm, where they had holidayed and there were opportunities to perform every night of the week. McNicholas tried a succession of tribute acts. He performed as Justin Timberlake, Olly Murs, Billy Joel and members of Take That and Westlife. Nothing quite took off. “Then with Harry it clicked,” he says. “I just understood him straight away. I really think we’d get along.”

The project became more serious after McNicholas’s father died from prostate cancer two years ago. Struggling with grief, he threw himself into perfecting the act. He spent hours studying concert footage, learning Styles’s movements and mannerisms. Rather than simply singing the songs, he wanted audiences to believe they were watching a real Harry Styles concert.

“I became obsessed with getting it right,” he says. “I watched every tour video I could find. I wanted people to feel like they were getting the full experience.” The effort paid off. Videos of his performances began attracting hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, leading to an appearance on Lorraine and radio interviews. One clip of him performing American Girls, which is McNicholas’s favourite Styles song, has passed a million views. Soon, larger venues came calling.

Recent highlights have been performances in Dublin and Belfast, a live-band show at London’s Clapham Grand and a performance at Mansfield Palace Theatre, an experience which McNicholas describes as a dream come true. “I remember standing there at the end looking at everyone on their feet,” he says. “I was thinking about my dad. He would have loved it.” Every show, McNicholas dedicates Sign of the Times to his dad. “People get their phone lights out,” he says. “Sometimes they cry.”

His success has required significant investment. McNicholas says he spent more than £7,000 on one costume in his roster: a pair of heart-emblazoned dungarees that mimics Styles’ distinctive look. “It’s worth every penny,” he says. Though he’s too nervous to publish the exact numbers, he’s making more money than he ever thought possible.

There aren’t many male pop tribute acts compared to their female equivalents. Performing last year at Bournemouth University’s Summer Ball, “the best crowd ever” according to McNicholas, he shared the stage with Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae tributes. “I’m used to it. I’m usually the only guy,” he says. One consequence of this disparity is constant online trolling about his looks compared with Styles’s. Under his most popular video, almost 40,000 people have liked the comment “As it was not”. But he says that “if you’re not getting trolls, then you’re not doing enough”.

Tribute acts are a multimillion-pound industry in the UK, with agencies dedicated to managing lookalikes, performers and bands. But McNicholas is in a league of his own, leveraging his social media fame into regular gigs and a growing fanbase. He earns about £4,000 a month; Harry is thought to earn upwards of £3m a month. Styles is an economic force: his 12 days at Wembley is set to inject £1.1bn into London’s economy.

Does he have any rivals? “I just stay in my own lane,” he says. “There’s more Harry acts coming out now that he’s so popular, but I don’t really think about them.”

McNicholas was preparing for another milestone: seeing Harry Styles perform live on his opening night at Wembley on Saturday. Despite spending years studying the singer, he has never attended one of his concerts. He hopes to meet him, if not on Saturday, then one day. Styles’s mum follows McNicholas on Instagram, so he assumes the real Styles is aware and approves of his project. “She promised she’d look out for my moves,” he said, “so we’ll see…” He’ll be holding a sign up that says: “I’m the viral Harry Styles tribute act . Will you cover my shift?”

“I’m excited, but I’m nervous too,” he says. “Part of me wants to just enjoy it, but I know I’ll be watching everything and thinking about the show.” After all, he’ll finally see if he has been getting it As it Was all along.

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Photographs by Getty Images, Sean McNicholas