Warpaint opened harry styles meltdown on Thursday June 11 at London’s Southbank Centre, and the set doubled as their first performance in nearly two years. The opening night started an 11-night takeover that runs through Sunday June 21.
Harry Styles had called Warpaint “a band I love so much” ahead of the show, a neat match for a festival he is curating after being announced in April. Styles followed David Bowie, Robert Smith, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Grace Jones, Christine And the Queens, Nile Rodgers, David Byrne, Yoko Ono, Little Simz and Jarvis Cocker on the Meltdown list.
Southbank Centre opening night
Theresa ‘TT’ Wayman led Warpaint through a set that began with “Burgundy” from 2010’s The Fool. The band also had support from Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor before taking the stage, and Johnny Marr was in the audience.
Warpaint’s first gig before this one had been in November 2024, so the Southbank Centre appearance was a reset as much as an opening slot. They leaned heavily on their debut EP Exquisite Corpse, slipped in a short version of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” and did not air any new material.
Meltdown’s 11-night bill
The festival’s bill spreads across the venue through June 21, with Stephen Fretwell, Nilüfer Yanya, Orlando Weeks, Bar Italia, Dev Hynes, Jon Hopkins, Getdown Services, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Soulwax all on the lineup. Styles is also scheduled to perform during the run, keeping the curator’s role tied to the stage rather than just the booking office.
For Warpaint, the practical value of the night was simple: a return after a long gap, on a bill built to trade in musical range rather than genre loyalty. That is the useful signal in Styles’ Meltdown curation too — he opened with a band that still has a catalog anchored in The Fool and Exquisite Corpse, not a nostalgia act trying to pretend it has one more record on the way.
Warpaint and Styles
Wayman had said of the 2018 South-east Asia tour with Styles, “It was so much fun,” adding, “He was just really nice and such a great guy.” That history helps explain why Warpaint fit the launch night, but the sharper point is commercial: a curator with Styles’ reach can pull a nearly two-year-returning band into the first slot and make the festival feel deliberate from the start.
June 21 closes the takeover with Soulwax, but the opening night already set the working tone. Styles gave the series a recognizable face; Warpaint gave it the first live argument for why the booking matters.
