I have done it again! I had the opportunity to see Harry Styles once again this year, and this time on a much larger scale. If you remember I attended one of Harry’s first shows as a solo artist last fall at the Ryman Auditorium (click here for post) and had a fantastic time; however, I was not intending on going to any of the shows this summer until one of my friends couldn’t make it to the show in September.
Needless to say I went scouring for tickets as soon as we confirmed plans, and scored a couple seats in the first row of the balcony. Now those weren’t terrible seats; however, you can see from the photos and videos in this post we were technically behind the stage. While we were definitely close to the stage, we were lacking nearly all of the show elements like those lovely rounded video boards and walls of lights that were so carefully thought out months ago. It was glaringly obvious to me that the “Harry Styles 360 Experience” was never truly intended, yet I have to give major props to both Harry and his opener, Kacey Musgraves, who both did a fantastic job of including everyone behind the stage. Harry himself made several full laps around that oval stage through the show.
As mentioned above, the opener for the American dates for the 2018 tour for Harry was Kacey Musgraves. If you are unfamiliar, Kacey is an American country artist who sings ‘Velvet Elvis’, ‘Space Cowboy’, and ‘High Horse’). She released her latest album, Golden Hour, on March 30, 2018, and according to several interviews, Kacey was asked to open the tour by Harry, which is honestly not a huge surprise to me knowing some of the musical tastes of Mr. Styles. However, I did feel that the selection made for a very interesting show dynamic. It obviously worked quite well in Nashville where Kacey is rather well known, and I’m sure it has worked fabulously over the remaining dates.
Kacey opened her set with song in a lovely rhinestone outfit complete with some tall rhinestone heeled boots that I am personally quite jealous of. If I am completely honest I can’t remember being massively focused during Kacey’s first few songs because I was busy admiring her lovely outfit, and trying to figure out just how our view would be for the show. As you can see from the pictures, the main stage had two rounded video boards with the front and back being independent of one another. For us poor souls behind the stage, there was one large projector centered on the back of the stage and two smaller ones on either side; however, those two screens only showed a constant feed of either Kacey or Harry. Kacey fit right into Harry’s tour seamlessly in my opinion. While they do have quite different styles of music, Kacey shares Harry’s kindness mantra quite exquisitely. Personally I loved hearing the two different styles of music in one night, I say this because I am someone that easily switches from one genre to another quite often. For example, as I sit outside the Thompson Hotel in Nashville typing this out I have a massive 14 hour playlist rolling that just switched from some live Eric Clapton over to Kamikaze by Walk The Moon followed by one of my all time favorites Collide by James Bay. See what I mean? I don’t mind quite the variety of music, so I loved having the opportunity to hear a few different genres in one night.
Kacey’s set honestly was much more laid back than Harry’s high energy rock so it was an interesting choice to start the night off. She started her set with ‘Slow Burn’ which was a nice way to ease into the night yet also get the crowd excited by the line “In Tennessee, the sun’s goin’ down”. Kacey’s set moved rather quickly from one of her signature slower country tunes to another. I personally enjoyed the set; however, I found myself getting distracted and felt that it was a few too many of the same songs over and over. This could be because I find that I don’t tend to listen to country music, but I did enjoy the mellow feeling her set gave.
One of the more fun elements of Kacey’s set came from the rhinestone saddle hanging above the drum kit that ended up being used as a disco ball during ‘Space Cowboy’ toward the end of her set. I had been seeing pictures of the saddle on Twitter prior to my show, so it was definitely nice to figure out exactly what that was being used for, and I have to say that it was definitely one of my more favorite moments of the set. Kacey also managed to make my night by covering ‘Tearin’ Up My Heart’ by NSYNC which I definitely remember dancing to with my sister back in the day with some hairbrushes pretending we were the next big act to take over the world.
In the set up of the stage for Harry, the house music featured plenty of classic rock that tended to be much more of the recognizable songs from bands like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones. The last song the house music played was‘Olivia’ from One Direction, Harry’s former band, as a hype song which was truly fun to hear everyone sing at the top of their lungs, see the video to the side to see exactly what I mean. Immediately following ‘Olivia’ the screens all turned on to show the opening graphic sketch of Harry’s hands solving a Rubik’s cube while Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ (I believe only parts one to maybe three or four were played, only the instrumental of the first parts of the song on a loop.) My friend and I took great enjoyment of the Rubik’s cube graphic because it was most definitely inspired by the graphics for Yellow Submarine by the Beatles.
From our seats we could see the band come from the dressing rooms and go up to the stage through a trap door, so it was a truly interesting perspective. As the final graphics of the opening video played and the opening to ‘Only Angel’ played, we could see Harry saying his final words to the band and he even climbed up onto the platform with Adam, his bassist, and waved to the sections behind the stage before he took his place front and center and the screens slowly ascended as ‘Only Angel’ ascended. We honestly couldn’t see much of the opening graphic or any of the graphics from our seats, but our small screens on the side showed the Rubik’s cube being solved but at this point I have no doubt that you can see the entire show on YouTube if you really want to seek it out.
Harry’s high energy set started out with quite the bang with arguably my favorite song from his self titled debut album, ‘Only Angel’ followed quickly by another banger of ‘Woman’ and my second favorite song of ‘Ever Since New York’. Personally I didn’t take much notice of ‘Ever Since New York’ until I heard it live last fall in the Ryman, but I really loved the way the song felt in its live form. Personally I am glad that this tour was opening with ‘Only Angel’ the natural opening of the song lends itself to a fantastic opening song and I love when things of this nature are really thought out.
The first big issue we had with our seats came in the fourth song of the set ‘Two Ghosts’ where the back curved screen dropped down a bit so the graphics for the main screens were split. As soon as that screen started moving down further I remember that the sections behind the stage let out a big “no”. If we had been any further up in the section than the front row we definitely wouldn’t have been able to see anything going on with the position of the screen, not to mention we couldn’t see either of the large screens around the back of the stage without bending awkwardly. But even with those screens, all we could see was a constant feed of Harry on stage and the video of those screens never changed. The other issue we had from our seats was that we had no visible sight line to the b-stage because our view was blocked by two large sets of speakers; however, from what we could tell there was a large light ball hanging above that stage. We could see a few of the lights shining on the crowd at various times during the set; however, we couldn’t see any of the stage. From that b-stage Harry performed two songs, ‘Sweet Creature’ and the cover of ‘If I Could Fly’. Mitch Rowland, guitarist, joined Styles on the b-stage for ‘Sweet Creature’ and left Styles on his own for ‘If I Could Fly’ which Harry played with the crowd toward the end of the song. He sang a majority of the song on his own and honestly didn’t change it much from the original version and had the crowd sing out the end of the song from the final chorus on. I could see the bottom corner of the graphics for ‘Carolina’ and it looked like the Yellow Submarine inspiration continued all the way through the set this time with some kites and other various sketches. The first of the four covers Harry used during his set was ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ which was a song that Styles wrote with One Direction for their fourth album. Styles changed the song up a bit to make it match his new vibe a bit more; however, really he didn’t need to do a ton of tweaking to the song since it was already a bit of a retro rock vibe. Really all he did was take a bit more of the pop edge off of the song and it fit right in with his set. He immediately followed‘Stockholm Syndrome’ with a second cover that he kept from the previous “smaller tour” ‘Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart’ which I previously explained was a song he wrote for Ariana Grande and I have to say that I prefer his version of the song a bit more than hers. Styles also played two of his unreleased songs during this tour, ‘Medicine’ and‘Anna’ both of which I totally refused to listen to prior to the show because I didn’t want to ruin my first impressions of the songs unless I caught a recorded version prior to my show. My first impressions of the songs are that they were both fantastic. ‘Medicine’ is a high energy rock track that Harry and the band totally rocked during the set, and has the same big energy as ‘Kiwi’ as far as crowd reactions. ‘Anna’ is a bit more low key but would have fit right into the debut album quite well. Speaking of ‘Kiwi’ it is still a massive high energy bop that still a big reaction from the crowd and Harry used it as his closing song thus ending the night on a huge high that really truly sent the crowd off in a massive way.
Overall I loved this show just as much as I had enjoyed the show at the Ryman; however, I felt that I didn’t leave the show on quite the high that I had previously. Not to mention my hearing wasn’t nearly as affected as it had been with the previous show. After the Ryman show, my ears were ringing until nearly lunch the following day, this time my hearing cleared up by the time I was unlocking my car. The Nashville show was the third night in a row this time around and honestly quite close to the end of the tour and it really showed. You could feel that the energy in the room was high but in my opinion it felt a bit like Styles was going through the motions a bit. He was still as fantastic as ever but he was visibly tired and he was definitely a bit distracted. Even with this, I could tell he has visibly grown in confidence as a solo artist from the last time I saw him to now. The last time I caught his show, it was only his third official night as a solo artist and he was stiff when he was performing with a guitar. This time around he was more confident with the guitar and he was moving about the stage freely and with his swagger. As I mentioned above he was visibly tired and he wasn’t his usual cheeky self where he was getting easily distracted.
Again what a show from Harry. I would suggest dates for you to go see him on this tour; however, the tour just finished up a few weeks ago with a massive double header in Los Angeles complete with three rounds of ‘Kiwi’ on the final night for a massive send off to the Harry Styles Live On Tour 2018. Currently there hasn’t been much mention of the plans for another tour or if he is writing a new album. Regardless the world will be alight when he comes back out of hiding again, but until then his former bandmate Niall Horan is finishing up his Flicker World Tour with around thirty dates in the States, one of which I attended last night so expect a review of that as soon as possible!
