The O2 heard the moment first.
The rest of the world received it through screens.
Phones, laptops, televisions, projectors, tablets balanced against cups, living room walls turned into viewing surfaces, bar screens lifted high above people's heads, and cheap speakers pushed past what they were built to handle. The arena had carried the sound in one place, but the broadcast scattered it into millions of smaller rooms where people had not bought plane tickets, had not stood in the London cold, had not fought their way into the O2, and still somehow felt as if the song had reached across the distance and touched them directly.
At first, most of them were loud.
That was the natural thing.
The live chat moved like a broken dam when Dayo stepped into the light for Beautiful Things. People typed before thinking, sending the same words in different languages, all of them trying to catch a feeling that was already moving faster than their fingers.
He's alone on stage.
