Every night during his 30 concerts at Madison Square Garden, Harry Styles asked the same series of questions to his audience throughout “Season 2 Weight Loss,” from his fourth album. Kiss all the time. Disco, occasionally: “Do you love me now? Really? Really? Am I letting you down?”
The song occupies one of the set’s darkest moments, and not just because of its anxious questions: beyond the red and blue strobes, the stage is largely devoid of light for its four minutes. It also finds Styles at this most physically distant level. He spends almost the entire performance in the center of the stage, away from the perimeter which he otherwise treats as a combination of dance floor, treadmill and playground. And yet it is the most illuminating part of the show.
Styles mirrors the song’s hard-hitting percussion with full-bodied thrash. He stumbles frantically, but never falls. In front of 20,000 people, he “dances like no one is watching” to the extreme, mainly because he knows everyone else is. It’s fitting for a record so concerned with the tension of performance, not just from an artist’s perspective, but also from a person who wants so much to show off without dissolving the dissonance between who she is and what people believe she is. In that regard, “Season 2 Weight Loss” may be the most important song Styles has ever released.
Styles has previously spoken about the weight of pressure and emotional expectations that often compound what he might already be feeling. It’s an extension of the central conflict of “Season 2 Weight Loss,” in that particular moment where he sings, “It’s a little sad, but there’s something I know/Too much to analyze.” » He seems to be thinking, perhaps more than ever, about the elements of himself that shape how we understand, or in some cases misunderstand, who he is. It’s become more important as he continues to reconfigure his relationship with fame.
Styles’ questions about devotion and doubt landed differently on Saturday, which marked the residency’s final show after 10 weeks. Madison Square Garden is the smallest venue he will play on the Together, Together tour, which is otherwise only booked in stadiums with three to four times that capacity. An audience of this size is now considered an intimate audience for him. Watching him drag a closed room into his dizzy trance one last time brought an added urgency to the song – it even transcended the fact that he entered the stage dressed as a rat, then changed into a shirt that said “I’m a Rat.”
During the penultimate residency, Styles recreated the outfit he wore during his audition for The X factor when he was 16, that was 16 years ago. He did it surrounded by his band members, who were dressed as different versions of him throughout his career. Styles’ existentialism rubbed off on fans, who eagerly awaited what he might have in store for them on the final night — what he might say, what he might sing, how he might say goodbye to this moment.
“I’m going to go back to safety on my mic stand because I feel vulnerable and I don’t know what to do with my hands,” Styles said after New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson presented him with a banner commemorating his 30-night run Saturday night. The crowd’s praise overwhelmed Styles as he cried. He dragged out the night as long as he reasonably could, closing the show with a lengthy dance mix of “Aperture,” during which he danced around the stage while crushing slices of pizza. The moment seemed endless. If only it could have been.
In September, Styles wrote a letter to his fans that sent them into crisis mode. “Being an artist is the only life I’ve ever known, I’ve been doing this since I was 16 and I feel like the luckiest person in the world to still be able to share these moments with you,” he said, noting that he would extend the Together, Together tour next year. “After this, I don’t know what’s next for me, but I know I can’t wait to find out.” Fans pored over every word and every possible interpretation seemed to amount to the same thing.
“If I leave and I grow up and I change my relationship with this idea of having to present myself as this version of myself, will you take me like that? » Styles said in an interview with Zane Lowe. “Or are you taking me because I appear as this version of myself that you have desired of me in some way?” This tension has always existed for Styles, but the song revels in the confidence of having built such a strong bond with his audience that he can deploy this level of communication, even when feeling slightly anxious and conflicted, without breaking it.
His latest tour, Love on Tour, may have cemented this honest relationship as a possibility for him. “I think it was a realization that these shows seemed to be the culmination of so many people’s support,” Styles recently told Thom Yorke on The Rolling Stones Musicians on Musicians. He was talking about the crushing finale of the tour, which spanned 169 concerts over nearly two years. “I felt supportedin a way that’s more like, ‘We’re here because we want to hear this song you made.’ It was just like, “We’re here because we believe in what you’re doing.” » That’s why I found it so moving.
When he retreats for extended periods of time, Styles returns with albums that reflect the self-interrogation he conducted during those periods. Now all he asks is that everyone does the same: sit with that discomfort and what it reveals when allowed to settle. “Sometimes you gotta sit down,” he sings. When he stands center stage, singing those words and begging for answers, that’s when Styles feels closest. “Season 2 Weight Loss” isn’t as overtly moving as something like “Carla’s Song,” which he reconfigured as a beautiful piano ballad for running around New York, but it’s the show’s most vulnerable moment.
Styles spoke every night during the residency about having the honor of performing at the Garden for the first time at 18 years old. He spent almost half his life being welcomed into this room with open arms, first with One Direction, then again and again alone. And yet, in all his years, Styles has never put on a show as captivating and certain as the Together, Together set he performed in New York. His other tours, in support of his first three studio albums, felt like watching someone become who they were meant to be.
There was an obvious effort at the time – the custom couture suits on the first tour, the over-the-top showmanship on the second, his solo rendition of “What Makes You Beautiful” on both. Styles was in the early stages of building his legacy in a way that he felt lucky to witness in real time. This time it was different. Now he lives there. Walking out of Madison Square Garden on Saturday, it was clear that this show wasn’t just about watching something special take shape. We reaped the rewards of leadership based on what seemed indisputably true: none of us are immune to the changes that time brings, but we are responsible for how we spend it.
If we choose to spend this time together, in rooms like these, it’s worth following the advice Styles offers on “Weight Loss Season 2”: “Let the light in every once in a while.” »
Gn entert
