#harry opened the second leg of love on tour in glasgow

[this-daydream-is-dangerous-13]

Fine Line (the song) as Harry’s emotional barometer: a thesis

Fine Line, my beloved. It belongs to my favourite type of songs by male vocalists: straining tenor songs about longing.

Fine Line is the closing track on the album which shares its name. Track 13 on the album Harry held for months so he could release it on Dec. 13, 2019. Blondie’s 30th birthday; the preshow playlist that night featured 2 tracks from Lover. It is haunting on the album, and live it’s even better.

Harry begins while quietly strumming his moon and stars/galaxy guitar with the fox on it. He often starts low, shifting into the upper register for lines like “You sunshine, you temptress. My hand’s at risk, I fold…”. It builds to a musical crescendo where he cries out one final “we’ll be alriiiiiiight” while horns and guitar and keys and percussion swell. It a weeper for me, and a no skip always.

Now that the tour is over, I can find all the stats, and there are some interesting trends;

During the first shows of HSLOT, in the fall of 2021, it was the final song on the set list prior to encore.

Here it is on opening night in Las Vegas, with the loveliest speech to introduce it

Here’s Tacoma where before singing it, he begs people to tell those they love that they love them:

Sometimes, he seems to be up in his feels and chooses not to sing the final line. He thanks the city instead, as he does here on the final night of the 2021 US leg:

He releases Harry’s House on May 20, 2022. He starts touring in European stadiums in June in Glasgow, and Love of My Life has replaced Fine Line as the set list closer.

At the first concert, he plays it midset between Boyfriends and Satellite, and it seems to be too emotional to do at that point in the show. It disappears after that.

He plays a particularly emotional version, following LOML and as actual main setlist finale, at the final European show in Lisbon in July 2022.

It vanishes from the setlist after that. It becomes the most requested song, even more then Medicine since Medicine is played from time to time.

He plays it for a 3rd time in 2022, in São Paulo. Coming out to do the ONLY second encore he’s done on tour, on Dec. 13, 2022 he plays it. (In true Harry fashion, he’s wearing a flag as a skirt because he’s ripped the crotch of his Gucci jumpsuit while 🕺).

He finishes, and in Portuguese thanks the city, the fans, and “Fine Line”.

Think I am kidding? Here are the times he played it in 2022, as per the stats:

He does not touch it during the bonus North American dates, nor in Australia/New Zealand or Asia.

Imagine my shock watching a livestream from Horsens, Denmark on May 13, 2023 when FINE LINE replaces LOML as the main set finale; it remains in that spot for the entire European leg of 2023.

And there are some doozies. On May 28th, on night 2 in Edinburgh, he sings the most emotional rendition I had ever seen. I wept through the livestream.

For interest’s sake, the night before while at MetLife Taylor released YLM and sang Maroon for the first time.

Another doozy of a performance was n3 of Wembley on June 16th

And he continues to perform the song with high levels of emotionality, all the way to the end of the tour on July 22nd.

That night, he performs the only other 2nd encore of the 169+ shows, a 10 minute instrumental piano ballad, and original composition which he introduces after by saying in Italian: “I wrote this for you, just for tonight”.

Thoughts?

[larrylimericks]

11Jun22

Zouis Edition A Zouis exchange left us gassed: A like on Zayn’s high note was cast! And Lou’s mind was blown When Away From Home Sold 17K out mad fast!

Greenbluey Edition Yet more green and blue has us balking. Lou wrapped in green S’s?! We’re squawking. While H made a show Of blue in Glasgow … But maybe that’s just the mold talking.

[aggresivelyfriendly]

~Meet Me In The Hallway~

 Huge shout out to @emulateharry And @nocontrolforlouis for their eagle eyes and cheerleading!! 

 Chapter 4- Detour

I thought about Harry everyday while I was home, a month in someone’s bed could do that. That was the sadness of geography.It was the worst the first week home, when I hadn’t heard from him and my sleepless nights were full of reverie. I, surprisingly, missed tour.

When my brother had first broached, well, insisted, that I go on tour with him, I had looked at the months-long break scheduled between April and June with relish. I was excited to get home and check in with my friends from secondary school. I had plans and I was ready to tell them all about my big gap year adventure.

But being home was not nearly as exciting as I had hoped it would be. I didn’t have as many friends to share with as I thought and many of the things I mot wanted to share, I could not. When we had first left for the road, I had been excited, but nervous and unsure. I'd sat on that first plane and wondered if I would not be better off in Australia, going straight to university. The first several days on tour, maybe the first weeks had been exhausting and overwhelming and exhilarating. And I had loved it. I missed the people and the crew and the band. And I missed Harry.

Truth was, that I had underestimated how much of my day revolved around the time I spent with Harry. I'd wake up, often in his bed and lately, wrapped in his increasingly inked arms. He'd groan in my ear about being exhausted until I brow beat him out of bed and he got in the shower. I'd order his breakfast then, our breakfast, his black coffee and my milky tea, that he'd grumble about, rashers and eggs if he was hungry, oatmeal and egg whites if he was listening to Mark. I gauged his mood and made his order based upon that.

I'd wait for him to get dressed and we would eat together on the couch in his suite before I scrounged up clothes which were usually my own mixed with his. Then he'd walk me to the door and kiss my forehead when he hugged me goodbye, as though there was more that a couple hours that separated us.

I'd wander across the hallway, ignoring the sock and the scantily-clad girl often in my brother's bed. I'd shower and go out to see wherever we were. Since our conversation about what Harry felt he was missing, I’d try to see whatever city we'd been in through his eyes. My phone would buzz often with his random thoughts and horrible jokes. And I'd send him pictures of the places I went, trying my best to experience the place for both of us.

In Glasgow, the second time around, I sent him snapshots of Buchanan Street and selfies from the Art Lover's house. His reactions were wonderful. He would send back pictures of his silly faces. When I showed him the pub I was sat in he made a pun

“Hey where did my Glas Go?” He wrote.

So I sent him a picture of my boisterous response with the caption, “People are staring at me!”

“Course they are” He returned. And it made heart flutter. It was flirty and I couldn’t reckon whether I should chalk it up to his personality, or the way we related to each other now, or, my hope, something more.

His respones were more than flirty. They carried an air of jealousy.

“Ah, I’ve always wanted to go there…” One read as I walked the cobbled royal mile. I knew that.

“Have a black russian for me!”

“Gross!” Was my caption as I dutifully sent a picture back to him of me swilling the vodka back.

“Really?” his disbelief was full.

“I don’t like alcohol, really.” I returned. He knew that, I thought.

“Well, you have to like it in Scotland. It’s a rule. I’m surprised you aren’t being forced to drink whiskey. I’ve wanted to try that too, have some for me.” He hadn’t mentioned whiskey before and I was going to count my dues paid.

I wanted to tell him these were not the places I would choose, but where I thought he'd want to go. I would have seen the cathedral's stained glass, not the drinks from some pub on Buchanan Street. In Dublin, I went to the Guinness factory, though I loathed the dark brew, because he and Niall had blathered on about it on the ride back to the hotel one time.

After my Harry inspired tours. I'd join the boys at the arena. I'd do the crazy hair the boys favored, with enough hairspray to hopefully withstand their water fights and try to even out their skin tones before they told me to fuck off. The water fights seemed to be a catching affliction. The 1D boys had started them too, and Lou was bemoaning her fate as she watched them destroy her work side stage. I heard the ‘fuck’s sake’ under her breath and chuckled. I’d given up that fight.

While my brother warmed up the crowd who made it early enough to catch them, I’d stay backstage. I told myself that I had watched them a lifetime's worth. I'd watch Harry ride around on a Segway, imagining his front to my back. I missed the length of him against me when the sun was out and more as it waned.  

What would it feel like to have his front pressed to my back in daylight while we squealed and chased Niall around?

Then during my favorite part of the day, I'd watch the big show. I knew my focus always drifted to Harry from side stage, but I figured no one was watching me, except him. He'd occasionally give me a smirk or wink, and I suppressed the thrill it would give me.

On the way back, I'd pretend to try to ride back with my brother and his band, but was easily convinced to ride with the British lads instead. Usually squished in, thigh and shoulder next to the boy who I spent most of my time preoccupied about. We'd go our separate ways then, until I was kicked out, or as was happening more often lately, I'd wander down or across or through the hallway to his door. He'd order room service and we'd talk, or watch a movie, cuddle or sleep.

Going to sleep in Harry's bed had become the best part of my day when his light snores began as soon as his head hit the pillow. I swore sometimes just the act of leaning towards the pillow put him out. His breath would rustle my hair. My days of sleeping on the other side of the bed had ended before they'd really begun. Now I smelled his shower gel and minty breath all night, and could kick off the unnecessary blanket. I didn't need any additional help staying warm. Harry's t-shirt and body heat did that plenty well.

I thought about all these things in my own bed and wished I was back there. Those were the some of the things I was missing during the break. After my serious jet lag wore off, I found it took ages to fall asleep at night. The first two days I woke up confused and alone, but I'd slept like the dead. A day of travel took three days to recover from, and I thought of the next tour legs with dread, and wonder. That first normal night home, as I was restless and cold and the bed beside me, the single bed that had no room to share, still felt big and empty. The next legs of the tour involved some horrid flights, but they also meant a shared bed. I hoped at least.

There was no telling what it would be like when we got back, what the European dates would mean,maybe Harry would have found a girlfriend, a real one, where there was no space between the two words, where there was no pause before going to bed. The kisses on the foreheads were replaced by lips and tongue and the cuddling was not mildly arousing, but a precursor to more.

I'd felt it once, well, more than once, really. But those were mostly in the morning. Those could be written off, I thought. I'd heard a lot of jokes about morning wood, being the only girl in a smelly van with grotty boys driving across vast distances, then sharing buses and hotel rooms would instruct anybody in their dirty ways. I think sometimes it was just biology. There had been a couple of times, once or twice, that I tried not to think of, when it hadn't been morning.

Once, it had been after a rom-com, my choice, on the couch, and a shared plate of fries. There had been a bit of a food fight and Harry had wound up pressing me down into the bed. His slim thighs notching between my own as he forced salty potatoes into my laughing mouth.

"Eat it!" he'd ordered. "I dare you to tell me they have better fries down under."

I'd shook my head, pushing against him, but he was so much stronger and inches taller, so I just kept my mouth shut. When he had reached up to tickle my sides, the battle had been lost, and the fries and his fingers had found my mouth.

"Eat em," his command was softer then, and I'd complied, a little out of breath myself. My lips had closed around his fingers, sucking the salt as he pulled them away. I'd chewed the mushed fries and become conscious of where he was pressed into me, along me.

He seemed aware too, or his anatomy was. I could feel him, thick and growing against my heat. It felt different to when I'd fumbled in the back of cars after dates. It felt better.

"Good?" He'd asked, retracting his hips and coloring pink.

I'd nodded, not trusting my voice and let him excuse himself to the bathroom. My mind had followed him in there, and I'd used my limited knowledge to fill in my imagination's wish. I closed my eyes and watched him stroke himself and bit my own lip as I hoped he bit his. My hand wandered over my breast and my right palm had slid down over the soft cotton of his t-shirt I was wearing.

But, the bathroom door had opened too soon and I'd spent the night frustrated. I'd curled my body into Harry's andhe fell asleep even faster  found myself wriggling like a fish on a hook. I nearly straddled his leg. But the thought of explaining myself, of why I was riding his thigh, kept me to myself. And the humid feel between my legs finally faded enough for me to sleep.

Another night, I'd woken to a firm friction along my backside and stretched back into it. I could tell Harry was still asleep, so I catalogued the feel of him. He murmured in his sleep and said my full name, one he never had used before. It slipped from his mouth. "Melody," he breathed into my hair. I was so charged up, surprised maybe, that I had to get up and go to the bathroom, I sat on my hands in the cold bathroom and forbid myself from touching between my legs in his presence.

He was dreaming, and I was the only girl he was around. I told myself this and more - that he hadn't been laid in months, because he was spending his time with me; that we had developed a friendship, but he was a 19 year old boy wrapped around a nearly 19 year old girl, and his physiology overruled his sense. He was sleeping, it meant nothing.

Except to me.

I missed all these things about him.

It was the end of our first week home when I heard from Harry.

My phone buzzed with a picture of his new bedroom in his new London house. “I think I hate sleeping alone here," he said.

"I can’t sleep either," I'd replied.

"Course not. It's morning for you."

"No, last night. Doofus."

"You just miss sleeping with me."

I tried to cover my blushing response with my usual armor of humor. "That's the thing, I figured I'd be able to catch up on all that sleep your snoring robbed me of."

"You love it."

I scoffed to hide my blush, because, oh god, I did.

[lordendsavior]

Ruth Capps’ reputation as one of the most hardcore One Direction fans precedes her. In the days before I see her in her pajamas under west London's Hammersmith flyover, I’m told by at least three people that she’s an “angel.” At just 19, she has as many tickets to see Harry Styles through 2018 as years she’s been alive. On Twitter, she posts earnest messages of support for her idol to her 110,000 followers. Offline, she projects a calm rationality that belies the reason she’s become so well-known within the fandom to begin with. Five days before the first UK date of Styles’ solo tour, Ruth is one of nearly 50 girls camped outside the Hammersmith Apollo in sleeping bags and foil blankets. When the Daily Mail stops by to interview them, Ruth diplomatically volunteers to be a representative.

“I’ll make us not look crazy,” Ruth assures the crowd of skeptical girls surrounding her. The reporter kneels down upon the sidewalk and pulls a notebook from her bag as Ruth holds court atop the pallet of £6 Primark duvets, and does her best to explain the situation as plainly as possible. “What’s going on here?” the reporter asks, assuming a “fun mum” tone with the girls in an attempt to get them to open up.

“We’re camping out here to see Harry Styles,” Ruth says, unperturbed by the fact that there are five days until he’ll take the stage. Her honesty with the reporter is a rarity among the camp. The truth is that the girls are waiting for the 23-year-old pop star, but if you ask them why, you’ll get a different answer. One fan tells a passerby they’re waiting for Mary Berry. Jacob Sartorius. A hot dog eating competition. All of which provide a simpler explanation than the reality, which is: it is Wednesday, and they already have tickets to the show on Sunday, but they’re sleeping on the street to perhaps – if they’re lucky – be noticed by Harry himself.

This is “camping culture,” an act of stan devotion in (often uncomfortable) pursuit of the rarest and most valuable fandom currency: proximity and access. For many fans on the street, this will be a one-time thing, an anomalous event only made possible by the grace of its novelty. But for some, camping is merely part of “following” an artist on tour. When the house lights rise in the Apollo on Monday, some will pack up their sleeping bags and head to Manchester. Then Glasgow. Then Stockholm. They will spend several hundreds, even thousands of pounds to see the same show over and over again. But what happens when these fans attempt to take the show into their own hands? What happens after – if, when, finally – Harry notices them?

London, Night One

Grace has spent five days camped outside of the Apollo, but four hours before the show, you wouldn’t be able to tell. In groups of two, Grace and her friends pose for photos in front of the bright red marquee. Last night, they cuddled on the pavement in sweatpants; now they’re made up in florals, high-waisted flares, berets. The temperature is 13°C, and Grace wears a crop top. Now 19, Grace became a fan in 2011, when she found solace in One Direction after moving from the US to Italy. “I wasn’t happy in high school, so I kind of invested in myself fully,” she tells me. What is it about Harry in particular that makes him stand out? “He’s just very accepting. He believes you should be whoever you want to be, and everybody’s going to love you.”

It’s this message of acceptance that makes Harry’s shows both empowering and entertaining. For £35, you can buy merchandise that reads, “Treat People With Kindness.” In the crowd throughout his set, hundreds of mini Pride flags – passed out by fans in the queue for free before the show – wave up at Harry as he sings. And when a larger flag makes its way onto the stage, he holds it up and dances, urging the crowd “to be whoever you want to be”.

“It’s not that I don’t have people in real life telling me that, but it’s different when someone you aspire to be like says it,” Grace explains. As anything might, these messages of support feel more significant when delivered from a stage, and echoed back by a crowd who agrees. From Harry's mouth in a room filled with admirers, such messages feel not only powerful, but genuine.

London, Night Two

Harry Styles, notoriously, doesn’t say much. While parasocial celebrity-fan relationships thrive on Twitter, his tweets read as if randomly generated by an extremely grateful bot. His live show is similar: each night, his between-song banter is near-verbatim to the previous, a carousel on which phrases like “I’m Harry, and I’m from England,” and “My job for the next hour is to entertain you,” spin round evening after evening. To see one show is to see them all. But for those in the front row, following Harry on tour feels like the only way to access the person beneath the persona.

“Because he’s so inaccessible online, it means more in person,” Grace says, “We’ve learned to work around that. If you’re first or second row, he’ll interact with you in some way. That’s your accessibility.”

Yesterday, fans attempted to use this access to bring Harry’s attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Hoping for an acknowledgement similar to his support for the LGBTQ+ community they brought Black Lives Matter signs which – whether intentionally or not – he didn't pull up on stage to wave as well. By the second night Harry’s lack of attention toward these placards has become a big point of contention among fans; the fact he didn’t respond to the signs the previous night felt, to some fans, off brand from his accepting persona. And yet, once again, his eyes passed over the raised signs as if they read a message in a different language and, for Harry, they might as well have. Aside from a small hat-tip to “all the different kinds of messages in the crowd”, the evening passes without note.

After the show, one fan roasts him online with a photoshopped image of a hand that reads like a cheat sheet of his onstage script: “You all look ____ this evening,” it says, alluding to the slight variation in adjective each night. After a parenthetical reminder for Harry to smile, it urges, as if he were in danger of stating the directive instead of acting, “Don’t say out loud!” But Harry doesn’t need the reminder. He doesn’t, after all, say much of anything anyway. He dances his dance, recites his script, then the lights go off.

Manchester, Night Three

Four hours before doors open, Ruth applies makeup in a hotel room she’s rented to store her things, which is littered with tour merchandise, hair straighteners, and phone chargers. When I ask about the second show in London, she confesses that she left the show early in order to join the Manchester queue. “We had to miss Harry in order to see Harry,” she explains. “I was in the back, having a great time, but I would sacrifice three songs to be able to see him closer for the whole set.”

For fans who follow their fave, going to multiple shows permits this type of comparative economics. But tonight, Ruth is worried more about Harry himself. After 16 nights of the same set, she’s concerned that he’s bored. Each night, Harry performs his new single “Kiwi” twice. Initially repeated at the request of fans on the American leg of the tour, the song’s encore has now become somewhat of a gimmick, as Styles and the band stop and restart the song depending upon the crowd’s level of energy. Tonight, however, Ruth is hoping for a change. “Instead of chanting ‘Kiwi’ again like normal, we’re gonna chant ‘Girl Crush,’ and see if he wants to mix it up a bit. As much as I love seeing it, he must be bored doing the same thing.” Ruth admits that that probably won’t happen. “But I think it’d be nice for him to know that people are interested in change,” she shrugs.

That evening, Harry sings “Kiwi” twice, as usual, and gives the same speech that he gave in London, that he’ll give in Amsterdam and Milan. His job, tonight and in perpetuity, is to entertain us; ours is to be whoever we want to be in this room, and the next, and the next. Injecting variety into this process feels a bit like a Sisyphean task, but the struggle is enough to keep fans coming back each night anyway. One must imagine Harry Styles fans happy. And they are. It helps, in the end, that the show is an entertaining one.

Amsterdam, Night Four

Dani, 21, is showing off her new trousers. After sleeping on the sidewalk, she realised she had nothing fun to wear, and stopped by H&M. Their floral print, she says, reminded her of Harry’s own predilection for flowers and patterns. Though One Direction “weren’t big back then” in her home country of Bulgaria, she’s been a fan since 2010 . Tonight is her fourth and final show, and she compares her three previous ones casually. Night one in London was great, but Harry seemed better the second night – happier, and “less stressed.” Manchester was her favorite because “he was more himself.”

Like many fans, Dani knows Harry’s performance by heart. But she finds the show’s sameness exciting: “He’s so predictable, I love it. I end up talking over him. But you never know what’s going to happen. All you know is, ‘I’m seeing Harry tonight.’ What if he ends up doing something nobody expects?”

Before the show, I’m given a “Black Lives Matter” sign which I hold from my spot in the second row. When Harry sees it, he nearly flinches, either in shock or out of discomfort. Though I expect this, the reaction stings as much as it empowers. Because for a moment, I understand why Ruth, Dani, and Grace sleep on the street – to look at Harry and have him look back is intoxicating. All continues as usual, but Harry Styles and I now share a secret. Few people notice that the show, for a second, teeters on his silence, his adherence to a script that most don’t even realise exists.

Milan, Night Five

Grace has decided against queuing.

“It’s not about the show count. It’s about seeing and being with him. Obviously I’m there for the music, but it’s the same every time. I’m supporting him.”

For Grace, this means holding Harry accountable for what he does and does not say. And though they try to intervene, fans do understand the repetition. When I catch up with Ruth, it’s with the same kind of diplomacy that made them look less crazy back in London that she says, “Concerts are for people to go once, they aren’t meant to go to 500 times.”

In a few hours, the curtain will fall on the European tour without an unscripted word uttered about black lives, the controversy his silence has stirred up amongst fans, or anything else of significant consequence. Instead Harry will wave a Pride flag, silently. Grace will cry when he speaks Italian. For now though she’s visibly frustrated, longing for something that, seemingly, all his travelling fans are waiting for: the moment Harry goes rogue and deviates from the script.

“It’d be nice if he said something you didn’t think he was going to say,” she says, and it sounds a bit like his refrain in “From the Dining Table.” Why don’t you ever say what you wanna say? Styles is the one asking, but fans want an answer.

From Pride flags, to treating people with kindness, a good portion of Harry Styles’ popularity with fans lies in his populism. On stage, he is the embodiment of the will of the fans, the vessel who waves the flag they throw, and in him they find all things from acceptance, to fashion inspiration. But for many fans, his comfortable silence is, to quote the man himself, “so overrated.” For those who see themselves in Harry, urging him to use his platform to speak about issues that matter is as integral to the fan experience as camping and queueing and loving the product itself. The European tour may end tonight, but they will be back in the spring, and in the summer.

“Use your voice, Harry,” Grace sighs. She pauses, then adds, whether in defense of herself or of him: “I’m still here though.”