Harry Styles will undoubtedly go down as a legendary figure in pop history. The most successful member of One Direction, a global household name, and a fashion and pop icon, he’s forged a cultural status not rivalled by many.
He has just announced his fourth studio album – Kiss, All The Time. Disco, Occasionally – along with the first single, titled Aperture. I actually really like the single, and am pretty keen to see where this album takes Styles’ sound. However, the music itself is not what this feature is about.
Along with the album announcement, Styles has announced an absolutely mammoth ‘World Tour’ – the ‘Together, Together’ tour.
It’s a whopping 50 days on the road, travelling across the world, globetrotting across continents, and recovering from jet lag. Poor Harry is going to be exhausted! Except, I’m not sure he is… his mega tour is only covering 7 cities. 7 cities. For 50 shows. And 30 of those are happening in one place; Madison Square Garden, New York City, is hosting the ‘Together, Together’ tour from August-October, later this year.
I find this tour schedule… interesting (to put it nicely) and a little questionable (to be blunt). There are a few things to unpack here, I think, and that’s without considering the little peculiarities such as having one North American location but two in Australia, and just two British dates. What’s all that about!?
Firstly: I’m sure tours are incredibly taxing both physically and mentally, and I absolutely think that an artist’s mental health and wellbeing should be a priority when it comes to scheduling and the heavy demands of being a musician. 50 shows in 50 different cities would be draining. By having 30 shows in one location over 3 months, Styles will have a strange sense of normality, despite being in the grasps of a ‘world tour’. He has a flat in NYC, so I’m sure Styles will settle into a lovely routine, whilst singing his heart out to around 20,000 people each night. And I’m sure his accommodation in the other 6 cities won’t be an oversight either. Maybe being able to sleep in his own bed every night will allow him to put on the best show possible for his fans, whilst prioritising his own health and sanity?
Secondly, it would be remiss of me not to mention the environmental impact of a world tour. I am sure the ‘Together, Together’ tour will be a phenomenal production. That will require a heck of a lot of gear, staff, vehicles, and hundreds of other considerations. Lugging the tour to a different city every night would result in a very high environmental toll. That’s without considering that Harry will almost certainly be travelling by private jet, too. To put this into perspective – for the 2024 leg of Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’, the estimated carbon emissions from her private jet travel alone was approximated to be 511,154 kg. That’s equivalent to 122 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year, or the energy consumption for around 67 homes in a year.
Having said all this, I’m not convinced this decision was made with the environment in mind. Of course, it’s important to remember that the fans will make up for at least some of what Styles team will save. For example, a fan in Vancouver would have to travel 4,800km (by road) to get to a concert. I’m sure Harry Styles has plenty of fans on the East of Canada – and that’s just one example of plenty. 30 shows at Madison Square Garden equates to around 585,000 tickets, which will result in a phenomenal number of miles covered by travelling fans for the 30 New York dates – not to mention the other 20 shows in six cities. It’s hard to know which option would have been environmentally worse, but I’m sure a better balance could have been struck. For me, this excuse falls a bit flat.
The ingenuity of sticking on 30 shows in the same venue brings with it another issue too, and the one which I think is most important here. If Harry isn’t burdening the challenges of travel, who is?
Surprise, surprise! The fans, of course.
I don’t even want to think about how much some people will be paying to see their musical hero later this year. Travel, hotels, eating and drinking. It adds up. And people will pay it – including, I imagine, a huge chunk of fans who can’t really afford to. There will also be a considerable number of fans who are simply priced out, and will miss out on the opportunity to attend a show. By slashing their own financial and personal costs of travelling, Harry and his team have simply passed these on to his fans. Now is probably a good time to mention that Harry Styles’s net worth is estimated to be approximately £225 million – with a multi-country spanning property portfolio to match. He can afford to travel. And let’s not forget it would still reap its rewards bountifully; he’s hardly going to be making a loss from this tour, which is what thousands of grassroots bands up and down the country are facing just to gain some recognition.
Ultimately, I think what it comes down to is greed. There are not many musicians who could get away with this. But Styles and his team know they can, so they have. How much was he involved in the scheduling? I do not know. But for the so-called world tour, the only way fans are able to experience being ‘Together, Together’, is by paying a lot, travelling a lot, and sacrificing a lot – unless you happen to live in one of the 7 cities bestowed with the honour. I know Styles is a fan of more intimate arena shows and I can completely get behind this. A few nights at an arena would therefore be perfectly reasonable, but when one venue, in one city, creates over half a million tickets – that justification does not hold up.
The magic of embarking on a world tour is completely lost with this ‘residency’ nonsense. Injecting energy and money into 30 different cities across the States would be infinitely better than giving NYC the economical and cultural chokehold. It doesn’t even have to be 30 different cities – but at least have a few on the West Coast. And let’s be honest, there are a lot of venues, communities and cities who would welcome the ‘Together, Together’ tour in a heartbeat. Not cool, Harry Styles.
Waxing Lyrical 