{"id":54883,"date":"2022-08-24T11:11:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-24T11:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/harry-styles-gives-new-york-the-wildest-party-of-the-summer-with-the-start-of-his-15-night-stand-rolling-stone\/"},"modified":"2022-08-24T11:11:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-24T11:11:11","slug":"harry-styles-gives-new-york-the-wildest-party-of-the-summer-with-the-start-of-his-15-night-stand-rolling-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/harry-styles-gives-new-york-the-wildest-party-of-the-summer-with-the-start-of-his-15-night-stand-rolling-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Styles Gives New York The Wildest Party of the Summer With the Start of His 15-Night Stand \u2013 Rolling Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\u201cNew York, are<\/span> you feeling well and emotionally stable?\u201d Harry Styles asked on the opening weekend of his historic 15-night stand at Madison Square Garden. When the entire crowd roared, \u201cNoooo!<\/em>,\u201d he replied, \u201cGood!\u201d We can’t say he didn’t warn us. He kicked off his NYC Love on Tour residency with a riotous two-night celebration of mega-pop rapture at its most ecstatic. \u201cPlease feel free to do whatever you want to do in this room tonight,\u201d Harry told the fans on Night Two. \u201cWithin reason.\u201d It was a perfect intro, because the concept of \u201cwithin reason\u201d does not exist anywhere in the Harry cosmology \u2014 he couldn’t even say it with a straight face. Let’s just say this man is not doing wonders for the city’s emotional stability right now. <\/p>\n

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\tStyles is trying a new mode of touring, celebrating his blockbuster Harry’s House <\/em>with extended residencies in New York, Austin, Chicago, and LA As he told Rolling Stone<\/em>‘s Brittany Spanos in our brand new cover story, it’s a way to perform without the energy-sucking strains of travel. You can tell Harry’s in town, by the trail of feathers and sequins for blocks \u2014 a touch of glam in the dog days of summer. 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.<\/p>\n

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\tHarry’s residency starts almost exactly eight years after the first time I saw him onstage with One Direction, in August 2014 at MetLife Stadium. It’s unmistakable how so much has changed about this guy, but not the weirdest thing \u2014 his pure devotion to Too Much All the Time. He thrives on an absurd drive to give his energy away, to bombard every corner of the room with the joy he gets from music, no matter how huge that room might be. As he sings in the show opener \u201cDaydreaming,\u201d he wants to give you something to dream about. And he does, from the tubular-bells synth groove of \u201cAs It Was\u201d to the destructo-punk headbang of \u201cKiwi.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\tHe took the stage to jazz pianist Bill Evans’ \u201cPeace Piece,\u201d which (as he told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2019) was his longtime wake-up ritual. The music was overlaid with the voice of Buddhist scholar Alan Watts, saying, \u201cThis sensation of being a separate lonely individual is a hallucination.\u201d Watts is talking about the soul breaking free of \u201cour phony feeling that we are something lonely locked up in a bag of skin.\u201d 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. And a Harry show work<\/em> live music at its best.<\/p>\n

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\tOne of the coolest fan signs in the pit: \u201cPose if you can see this.\u201d 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. This set is almost all uptempo bangers, mostly from Harry’s House<\/em>. He’s going for a festively manic vibe, so you don’t mind him leaving out the ballads. (No \u201cFalling,\u201d \u201cCherry,\u201d \u201cFine Line,\u201d not even \u201cLights Up.\u201d) It’s a super-emotional show, even without the sad songs, because the will to uplift never quits. The mood was summed up in the great moment where his guitar boogie \u201cCinema\u201d crashes into \u201cMusic for a Sushi Restaurant,\u201d linked by the horn fanfare from the Village People’s \u201cYMCA\u201d <\/p>\n

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\tWhen he debuted these songs live in May, at his NYC One Night Only extravaganza, his excitement was off the rails \u2014 he ended the show by doing \u201cAs It Was\u201d twice, a totally unexpected and unplanned move, because he just didn’t want it to end. (At his very first NYC show, in 2017, it was \u201cKiwi\u201d he did twice.) As he says in the Rolling Stone<\/em> cover story, that moment was starting even for him. As he said, \u201cI kind of felt like, ‘All right, I’ve seen how crazy it can get.’ And I think there was something about it where I was \u2026 not terrified, but I just needed a minute. Because I wasn’t sure what it was. Just that the energy felt insane.\u201d That’s how this show feels all the way through.<\/p>\n

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\tIt’s his first time at the Garden since his HarryWeen blowout last October. He’s back to performing in the round, or as he elegantly put it, \u201cI’m gonna be in the middle of you all night!\u201d This stage set means he has to cover more space, but nobody loves covering space like he does. He explained, \u201cSometimes we’re gonna be face-to-face, eye-to-eye, window-to-soul. If I’m not facing you, you’ll be looking ass-to-face. If you have a preference, face or ass, let me know.\u201d He gallantly promised to distribute his ass evenly, saying, \u201cI can assure you there is plenty to go around. Which leads me to the introduction to this very sad song.\u201d (Who else could get away with using an ass-to-face disclaimer as a lead-in to a ballad as heart-wrenching as \u201cMatilda\u201d? This man only.)<\/p>\n

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\tAs always, he took special joy in roasting all the dads in the audience. On Night Two, he announced a new innovation. \u201cIt’s called Golf Dad Cam,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’re gonna find the golf dads. It’s like Kiss Cam, except nobody wants to kiss them, because they’re golf dads!\u201d He found 30 victims to mortify on the video screen, then proclaimed, \u201cAt the end of these shows, they’re gonna erect a banner in Madison Square Garden in honor of the golf dads. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the bottom of your tucked-in polo-shirt hearts.\u201d <\/p>\n

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\t(Note: Can you imagine if Harry played the Super Bowl halftime show? It would take hours because he’d have 70,000 golf dads in the house, and he’d need to make fun of every single one of them. They’d have to cancel the damn game.)<\/p>\n

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\tOn Night One, a fan held up a sign asking for advice: Her ex just texted her after seven years. Harry took her phone to call the ex, Josh. (\u201cIt’s always<\/em> Josh, isn’t it?\u201d) When Josh immediately hung up on him, Harry told her, \u201cI wish you all the happiness. Just not with Josh. There’s someone else out there who will treat you with respect and love you for who you are. Never Josh!\u201d At the end of the show, he told the crowd, \u201cMake some noise for Josh, whatever kind of noise you want to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHarry’s House<\/em> was made in pandemic isolation, so it’s a trip to hear how the songs open up live. The album’s most ethereally beautiful moments \u2014 \u201cDaylight,\u201d \u201cKeep Driving,\u201d the peerless \u201cSatellite\u201d \u2014 turn into full-blown glitz rockers, thanks to his all-star band: guitar god Mitch Rowland, drum guru Sarah Jones, percussion master Pauli Lovejoy, keyboardist Ny Oh, bassist Elin Sandberg, keyboardist Yaffra, and a jazzy four-piece horn section. On Sunday night, he busted out \u201cMedicine,\u201d really treating the microphone like a gentleman. At one point he paused so he could point out to Mitch and Sarah a T-shirt in the crowd that said \u201cBitch for Mitch.\u201d (A category that pretty much included us all.) <\/p>\n

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\tHe ended with the rock & roll mosh-pit raunch of \u201cKiwi,\u201d a song that never fails to make strong buildings quiver in terror \u2014 both nights, it turned the floor of Madison Square Garden into Jell-O. Has anyone ever made a \u201cKiwi\u201d supercut of Harry’s faces at the line \u201cSuch an actress\u201d? He gives a different actress every night, and it’s always an Oscar-worthy star turn. You also gotta love how he always says \u201cGet home safe\u201d right before dropping \u201cKiwi\u201d on our heads \u2014 it’s like telling someone \u201cHave a nice day\u201d before setting them on fire.<\/p>\n

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\t\u201cGrapejuice\u201d isn’t in the set, probably because of its tonsil-trashing high notes, but maybe it’ll be the \u201cTo Be So Lonely\u201d of this tour \u2014 the fan fave that sneaks into the show by popular demand. On Night One, he teased an instrumental snippet while introducing the band \u2014 just a little edging. FWIW, when Paul McCartney hit the road this summer for his Got Back Tour, he surprised fans by busting out the slightly similar Wings groove \u201cLet ‘Em In.\u201d Could this mean that Sir Paul is a \u201cGrapejuice\u201d-head himself?<\/p>\n

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\tHarry slowed it down for his two most soulful ballads: \u201cSign of the Times\u201d and the new \u201cMatilda.\u201d They feel spiritually linked \u2014 two poetic songs about trauma, grief, and rebirth. \u201cSign of the Times\u201d is a communal anthem that gets mightier the more strangers you sing it with \u2014 in a way, that’s what the song is about. (I thought I already loved that song in 2017, but it’s built to be lived with over the years.) Yet \u201cMatilda\u201d is so intimate, it’s still disorienting to hear it in a crowded room. It’s a song designed for fans to access their most private selves, in a public, supportive space. Some spent \u201cMatilda\u201d having a meditative moment to themselves. Others let it all hang out, like the weepy group hug in front of me, with eight chosen sisters singing together. But everybody became part of the story. It’s the kind of moment Harry lives to generate. <\/p>\n

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\tHe’d be the first to say that the audience creates these moments, and he just shows up to be part of it. But either way, the New York shows were a nonstop rush of those moments. You spend a couple of hours in this environment and the outside world looks a little brighter when you leave, because you take that feeling with you. It’s a revelation that enthusiasm is everything<\/em>. Somehow, a 15-night stand of Harry Styles seems like it could never be enough.<\/p>\n

\n\tSet List:<\/strong>
\u201cDaydreaming\u201d
\u201cGolden\u201d
\u201cAdore You\u201d
\u201cDaylight\u201d
“Keep Driving”
\u201cMatilda\u201d
\u201cLittle Freak\u201d
\u201cSatellite\u201d
\u201cCinema\u201d
\u201cMusic for a Sushi Restaurant\u201d
\u201cTreat People With Kindness\u201d
\u201cWhat Makes You Beautiful\u201d
\u201cLate Night Talking\u201d
\u201cWatermelon Sugar\u201d
\u201cLove of My Life\u201d
Encore:
<\/strong>\u201cSign of the Times\u201d
\u201cMedicine\u201d (Sunday only)
\u201cAs It Was\u201d
\u201cKiwi\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n