#hs1t

[darklarrie]

Buenos Aires, you just blew my mind. Thank you. I loved every second. H

[tayseerighthroughme]

Harry Styles, Live on Tour 2018

[seokjinsonlyone-main]

Baby, What's Your Name?

[lia-is-in-love]

Some personal thoughts on Harry singing WMYB at his concert

I’m sure other people have already said much better and more eloquent things about this but I really just want to take a moment to say how much Harry singing What Makes You Beautiful at his first concert of his tour in the US means to me.

For so long, all of the media have been going on and on about how One Direction is over and how Harry wants to move on and put that far behind him.  Everyone, even fans--Harry’s as well as the other boys’--and some of the most dedicated ot4 stans have been saying that Harry is so over 1D and will never go back.  How a 1D reunion will never happen because Harry’s done with it and wants to be seen as a “real” artist and not a boyband singer.  For so long, that’s the message that’s been broadcast through almost every source and outlet.  That even if the other boys want a 1D reunion, it won’t happen because Harry’s heart isn’t in it and he would never want that.

Everyone’s been talking about how he’s trying to “break free” of and “shed” his boyband roots and image and “put as much distance as possible” between himself and One Direction.  How he wants to leave that in the past.  That’s been the dialogue for so long now, that I found myself really really struggling to not believe it.  It was so omnipresent that having and expressing another differing opinion was almost impossible. 

I guess for me, One Direction means so so much to me, not just as individuals--I love all of my boys so much and I fully love and support them each on their own and in their solo pursuits and careers--but as a band, a family.  I think the thing that drew me to One Direction so strongly was their friendship and their relationship with each other.  How they were more than just a band of four--five--boys, more even than just best friends, they really and truly were a family.  They loved and supported each other so much and so freely and so dearly.  It was their love for each other I think that is what made them so deeply embedded in my heart.  Yes, of course I loved their music, I thought they were all hilarious and adorable and sweet and kind and silly and wonderful, I loved them all as individuals.  But it was the way the fit so seamlessly together, the way they were so clearly meant to be together, the way they became a family that truly resonated with me the most deeply.

As someone who does not have a particularly loving or supportive family, and who has struggled to feel like I belonged anywhere, seeing these boys, who had never even met before, fall together and love and accept and support and trust and protect and care for each other and become a family...it gave me hope.  It gave me hope that happiness and love and friendship and families really do exist. You don’t have to share a name or blood in order to be family.  Your true family are the people who find and love you for who you are unconditionally and no matter what.  And even if those people aren’t the ones you are tied to by blood or lineage or name, you can still have a family where you belong.  You can still find love and support and acceptance and happiness.  And maybe one day I could find my own family.

For me, One Direction was hope--and proof--that love and happiness and friendship and family really do exist and maybe one day I could find that for myself.  Even if I didn’t have a family like that, even if I didn’t have friends like that, even if I was so lonely and so sad and so hurt, even if my world would never be full of light and love, even if I knew that no one could ever possibly love someone like me, even if I knew that I didn’t deserve to be loved like that let alone to be happy, even if I knew that I was a worthless human being, even if most days I didn’t even want to be alive, there was still a tiny flicker of hope inside me.  Because this band, these boys, were proof that it really did exist, it really could happen.  And maybe, just maybe, if I kept holding on, it might someday happen to me.

And I know I’ve gotten really side-tracked and off topic here, but I can’t find the words to fully express what these boys meant--mean--to me and why.  And I don’t think I ever will be able to fully explain how much they mean to me, and how much they have done for me.  But that’s okay.  I know.  

But to get back to the point I was actually trying to make, having Harry sing What Makes You Beautiful at his solo concert means the world to me.  It brings back all of that hope and happiness and light.  Because Harry loves One Direction.  He loves his boys.  He loves them.  No matter what the media say, no matter what people on tumblr say, no matter what anyone says.  He loves them.

Also, the fact that he sang WMYB, and not just another One Direction song, a later one that he and the other boys actually wrote themselves, means so much.  What Makes You Beautiful is the One Direction song.  It is the song that everyone automatically thinks of and associates with One Direction.  No matter how many years, and songs, and albums later, What Makes You Beautiful is still the most globally known and ubiquitously One Direction song.  And to have Harry choose to sing that--the very first and most infamous One Direction song--at his solo concert says so much and means the world to me.  For years the boys have been trying to prove to the world that they have more (and “better”) songs than WMYB, that they are legitimate and talented artists and have progressed well beyond pre-teen/teenage boyband bubblegum pop love songs, that they are not just a silly boyband for teenage girls.  To have Harry knowingly and willingly tie himself back to the One Direction song even when he is in the midst of a prominent and successful solo career where he could easily shake the boyband image and label once and for all, means more to me than I can say.  

To all of the people who have said that One Direction are over and never coming back and all of the boys want to move on and disassociate themselves from it completely, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is both naive and stupid; to all of the boys’ individual stans who want to turn us and the boys against each other and make everything a competition, to all of the people who want to tear the fandom apart with fighting and competition and stupid drama, I want to say that these boys still love each other.  They still love the band.  They are still a family.  

To One Direction, I want to say thank you for all of the hope and inspiration and joy and courage and strength and laughter and light that you’ve brought to my life.  Thank you for giving me the hope and strength to keep going and keep fighting and keep dreaming and keep believing. Thank you for showing me that life is worth living. Thank you.

To Harry, I want to say thank you.  Thank you for restoring my hope.  Thank you for sparking the flicker of hope and light inside me back to life in a time when it was fading, struggling beneath suffocating darkness.  Thank you.

[north-and-south-blog]

Harry Styles Live: East and West

I’ve never moved faster than when, 90 minutes before doors, Bella told me she’d found me a ticket for Harry Styles at Radio City Music Hall in New York (for face value at that - mountain-moving magic). It was one week ago, but even with time to think about it, I still consider grabbing it up it to be the second craziest decision I’ve ever made.

The crowning glory? Flying 3000 miles to see the same show opening night in San Francisco just the week before (and then taking a bus to Las Vegas the following day for a whirlwind adventure with my best friend over the weekend).

When tickets went on sale in May, I was planning to stick to a strictly east coast journey. The more we learned about how difficult they would be to get (codes! Verification! Gladiator-like battles against each other on the World Wide Web™ for venues that would house a shaving of the people who were trying for them from all over the country and all around the world), the more the blowout got cut down. Whereas my friend and I were initially planning on New York and maybe Nashville to make up for a previously postponed trip, we whittled it to New York if we were lucky with Boston as a backup. When only I became verified and received a code, the team got cut down to one, and when Ticketmaster failed to refresh (something our cousins across the pond assured us was the key in their ticket-buying process)….

The day ended with no tickets for me. My best friend had friends who had gotten them tickets to San Francisco, though, and at the time that was most important to me. She’d roped me into the wild ride of supporting this artist, and her getting to see him was my main priority. I kept perspective by remind myself this meant more money for seeing him whenever the next tour was announced (which it was — a little over a month later. I impossibly scored the tickets I wanted at the venue I wanted during presale).

The rollercoaster turned us upside down when the pals she was supposed to go with had to back out. There had already been a few false starts earlier in the summer when codes and tickets were allegedly rereleased, and by this point I’d made my peace with biding my time for the next year. As patient and settled as I was, though, when she asked if I wanted to buy one of the tickets and make a trip out of it with her, I jumped at the opportunity and took a flight out of JFK at 7:00am to head farther west than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Opening night at the Masonic in San Francisco was a whole lot of new for me. It was full of queuing (for 10.5 hours at that without food or drink — I know, I know…), getting barricade, nearly passing out (I repeat: I know, I know…), and fire alarms that had my father’s age old reminder of, “Remember the fire at the Cocoanut Grove” echoing in my head as I triple-checked that I knew where the exits were.

(Should he ever see this post: I was right by one and there was a straight shot to another one. I very clearly made it home in one piece. I am OK).

Anybody who remembers anything about level of promo for this album leading up to its 12th of May debut will know that no expense was spared and all stops were pulled. Subsequently, expectations for this tour were high, both from those curious to see what he could do and those who had seen it before. As a fan who skidded in just before the start of One Direction’s hiatus but before the four members’ solo careers, the show was everything I expected it to be. I don’t think the crowd stopped screaming from the moment the lights first dimmed and Styles’ silhouette appeared on the pink and flowery curtain in front of us (a sight unseen to me since I was tucked all the way off to the side with the tradeoff of being able to see behind the curtain as the band and Styles darted out to take their positions on stage before anybody else. Incidentally, the highlight of the evening for me was when I smiled at bassist Adam Prendergast just before the curtain dropped and he grinned back — a moment important only to me that has made him my fast favorite out of all Styles' bandmates).

What you hear is what you get — apart from improvisations, the songs sound precisely as they do on the record in tone and quality, even with the enthusiastic jumping, kneeling, and, as he puts it, prancing, from the man who sings them. Anybody questioning whether or not he can sing based on any number of criticisms (from his X-Factor beginnings to the One Direction cannon that shot his name into virtually every household) should have no doubt about it. From a showmanship perspective, although the first few songs seemed rushed — either part of a squeaky-clean plan or a time crunch thanks to the half hour delay from the fire alarm — and he, consequently, seemed tense, once the 75 minute set was half over, he had relaxed into the groove of the exchange of love between him and the auditorium full of people who returned his apparent affection in spades.

This, I think, was the special part of the evening, and it’s what fans go to see and experience — the certainty that they are loved by someone they love, too. Seeing Harry Styles blow kisses and clutch his chest while very clearly saying the words, “I love you so much,” it was impossible to deny that he meant it. With arms thrown open, he unfurled a blanket of love and gratitude that stretched to the rafters and knitted into the one that the crowd rolled out his way — evidenced by the way they (we) sang, “You bring me home,” during his soft acoustic Sweet Creature and how he had his Sign Of The Times sung back to him as he stood there watching in silent awe, absorbing 3,480 people singing the words he wrote that meant something to them where they started out meaning something to him.

I left that night exhausted and running on fumes that carried me through an 18 hour bus trip to Las Vegas and with the pipe dream of somehow finding my way into Radio City. Even over the summer, I’d eyed tickets on StubHub with the impractical and unfounded urge to hear New York’s stars Kiwi and Ever Since New York in New York. I had the rest of the week in Vegas and the majority of the following week back in the city to kick it out of my system. After a friend and I asked Radio City if any tickets would be released and they assured us it was a no (due to his Dunkirk fame and popularity, all tickets were going to be sent to industry waitlists), I was well and truly ready to settle in for Periscope streams from my couch. Free snacks and the ability to lounge about were licking my wounds.

And then I got the call (the first time I’ve ever been able to say that in my life). From  4771.69 miles away, Bella had found someone whose friend had canceled on them at the last minute (cancellations seem to be my lucky charm) and they were selling their ticket for face value — much better than the prices that started at five times the original selling price on StubHub. She verified the tickets were real while I threw clothes on, slapped makeup on, and ran out of my house to make it to the venue in time. While I can’t necessarily say I endorse this since there are any numbers of ways it could have gone wrong, I had the appropriate systems set up in place (people were told, code words were established, and a plan to call Bella after getting there was made) and in an hour and a half I was inside Radio City for the fifth night of tour.

Both San Francisco and New York were special experiences. San Francisco was historic — it was opening night of the first sold out solo tour in a venue that only time and his management will be able to tell if he’ll be able to play ever again. Being there for the debut and all the bumps that came with it was an honor as a fan, and it’s something I’m looking forward to thinking about for years to come and telling any children I might have in twenty years time when they’re listening to his seventh album and marveling at the cool stuff their mom used to do.

As important and magical as that night felt, though, I knew that the experience between hearing it on the road and hearing it at home would be palpable, especially with the way the performances in L.A., Nashville, and Chicago had increasingly ramped up. After the curtain dropped and was carried away, it became apparent that my rash decision had been the right one. Any bumps that had been apparent during opening night were long gone, and without the fear of passing out from exhaustion, jet lag, dehydration, starvation, and heat, I was able to scream, sing, and dance in ways I hadn’t been able to in San Francisco (I apologize to the people behind me who had to deal with my 5’8” self keeping my arms in the air for most of the night). Styles debuted a new cover of One Direction’s Story Of My Life, and he led the crowd through two and a half renditions of Kiwi to prove that New York is actually always jacked up and that it would do well as a single (Columbia Records, Styles’ label, confirmed the release of the single less than a week after the Radio City tour date). Although my first rockstar moment came when I was 22 and saw Morrissey at MSG when he threw his shirt into the pit for adoring fans to tear to shreds, the second came that night when Styles, evidently having lost his mind only moments after asking Radio City to do just that (with a please — he’s British, after all), raced up a wall to loom over the venue below him during his cover of Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain. If you want pics for proof or it didn’t happen, you’ll have to dig through Twitter — I was too busy doing exactly as he’d asked and staring in shock to be able to snap a photo of it.

I’m going to see him next year — once at Madison Square Garden and once in the midwest, so I’ll again be traveling a ridiculous distance — and I don’t have a doubt that I’ll be in for many more surprises and much more love.

[seokjinsonlyone-main]

[thedailyharry]

Harry Styles, Niall Horan Find Success With Solo Tours

Styles wrapped his 10-month trek – titled “Harry Styles: Live on Tour” – last month, racking up more than $62 million from over 800,000 sold tickets. Styles hit the road last fall in support of his eponymous debut studio album that arrived in May 2017. With a string of 13 theater dates on tap in North American markets, the English singer kicked off the tour on Sept. 19 in San Francisco. For the remainder of 2017 he was booked in Europe, Asia and Oceania, also primarily in smaller, theater-sized venues, but he jumped to arenas when he resumed the trek in March after a winter break. He began his 2018 schedule with a 20-city run in Europe that included an engagement at London’s O2 Arena and a $2.1 million take – his top gross outside of North America. With sellout crowds on two nights (April 11-12), total attendance was tracked at 29,212. It was his second two-show stint in London, having played the 5,300-seat Eventim Apollo on Oct. 29-30 during the first European leg of the tour.

The highest boxoffice gross during the tour came this summer during Styles’ final run through North America. He sold out two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 21 and 22 and drew 36,353 fans, grossing $2.8 million. Those boxoffice counts are second only to U2 at the Garden this summer, based on reports to Pollstar since Memorial Day. The Irish band’s three shows (June 25-26, July 1) took in $8.7 million from 55,575 sold tickets. Styles did best the other headliner at the arena who also sold out two shows this summer -- fellow countryman Sam Smith with a $2.1 million total from concerts on June 29-30. Styles took the No. 13 ranking on Pollstar’s Mid-Year Top 100 Worldwide Tours based on $50.9 million in revenue from 663,711 total tickets in 49 cities worldwide. The Mid-Year rankings, based on a January through June time period, encompassed the bulk of his tour, but not all of it. As noted earlier, the tour’s final overall gross ultimately reached $62 million.

[darklarrie]

one of the best parts while waiting for harry is that we were all singing bohemian rhapsody at the top of our lungs i was shook