(No “Falling,” “Cherry,” “Fine Line,” not even “Lights Up.”) It’s a super-emotional show, even without the sad songs, because the will to uplift never quits. He’s going for a festively manic vibe, so you don’t mind him leaving out the ballads. This set is almost all uptempo bangers, mostly from Harry’s House. One of the coolest fan signs in the pit: “Pose if you can see this.” Guess he saw it? Because this vixen never stopped wiggling, twirling, swooshing down the catwalk, giving high kicks like a Rockette with the rent due. And a Harry show is live music at its best.
ROLL WITH IT CHORDS FULL
The music was overlaid with the voice of Buddhist scholar Alan Watts, saying, “This sensation of being a separate lonely individual is a hallucination.” Watts is talking about the soul breaking free of “our phony feeling that we are something lonely locked up in a bag of skin.” But it’s also a perfect description of live music at its best: a room full of strangers from different cultures, countries, generations, breaking free to become part of something vast and strange and slightly scary. He took the stage to jazz pianist Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece,” which (as he told Rolling Stone in 2019) was his longtime wake-up ritual. Harry Styles Wrote a Key Song for 'Don't Worry Darling' in Just Five Minutes NYC in August is usually a place people are desperate to escape, but he makes it seem like the most romantic destination on the planet. You can tell Harry’s in town, by the trail of feathers and sequins for blocks - a touch of glam in the dog days of summer. As he told Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos in our brand new cover story, it’s a way to perform without the energy-sucking strains of travel. Styles is trying a new mode of touring, celebrating his blockbuster Harry’s House with extended residencies in New York, Austin, Chicago, and L.A.
Let’s just say this man is not doing wonders for the city’s emotional stability right now. “Within reason.” It was a perfect intro, because the concept of “within reason” does not exist anywhere in the Harry cosmology - he couldn’t even say it with a straight face. “Please feel free to do whatever you want to do in this room tonight,” Harry told the fans on Night Two. He kicked off his NYC Love on Tour residency with a riotous two-night celebration of mega-pop rapture at its most ecstatic. When the entire crowd roared, “ Noooo!,” he replied, “Good!” We can’t say he didn’t warn us. “New York, are you feeling well and emotionally stable?” Harry Styles asked on the opening weekend of his historic 15-night stand at Madison Square Garden.