Our theme for the month of June is “snapshots.” Writers were asked to submit a piece with a cover photo that they took or created.
Last month I attended back-to-back Harry Styles Love On Tour shows in Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium. If that sounds a bit extra: sure, I can’t argue that it wasn’t, but it was absolutely worth it.
I got in line around 1 p.m. on the day of the first show. Last year, my friends and I showed up at 2 p.m. for Harry’s show in Glasgow, and we stood awkwardly on a residential sidewalk for 3 hours in the rain. In Edinburgh, the queue snaked through a well manicured grass field, where I sat lazily among thousands of fans in the slightly overbearing sun (this is a rare complaint in Scotland in May). Once inside, I stood (sometimes squatted) in a tightly packed crowd of eager fans for another four hours. My legs hurt. It was too warm. I was bored and dehydrated. There was not a hint of phone signal.
The second night, I set off to the stadium around 5 p.m. and joined a 10-person queue of recent arrivals. I had a seat near the front of the upper bowl, and I knew it would still be there after I visited the merch booth and found a water fountain. Once my tasks around the venue were complete, I sat comfortably through the opener, Wet Leg, and the pre-show playlist.
Before the show, night one was, in turns, dull, painful, and uncomfortable. Night two was a breeze. Once Harry came on stage, none of that mattered. I wanted to be in the fray.
I sensed that everyone around me was experiencing a near-identical rush of joy and fervor. I do not, in life in general, scream—not on roller coasters, not in pain, not when Wet Leg encouraged the crowd to unleash bloodcurdling cries—but when Harry was on stage, I couldn’t hold back.
There’s a lot to look forward to at a Harry show, a lot of possibility. What will his outfit look like? Will he change up the setlist? Which fan in-jokes will he reference? Will he sing “Medicine”? (“Medicine” is an unreleased track that he sometimes performs live, seemingly entirely at his own whim. A significant portion of fan signs are challenges and jeers and pleas attempting to win the elusive prize of hearing “Medicine” in person. Of the three Love On Tour shows I’ve attended, he sang it only on night two in Edinburgh, in response to a sign that read “Shitebag if you don’t sing Medicine.”)
When you’re close enough to see Harry, the person—rather than Harry, the figure on the giant screens—you and everyone around you hope for the same thing: that he looks at you, sees you, waves at you, gives you a thumbs up, even talks to you, if you’re very lucky. But he’s one man, and we’re a crowd of thousands. I can still feel the dopamine rush of waving at him when he neared my corner of the stage. I can’t remember what he was singing, and I know he didn’t see me, but that feeling? That will stay with me.
It’s hard to fathom the organization that goes into the world around the show. The set pieces, soundchecks, merch stands; the food stalls, drinks tents, middle-aged feather boa vendors on the side of the road; the dozens and dozens of porta potties distributed around the venue. From my seat on night two, I counted 175 fluorescent-vested employees within the main stadium area an hour before the show began. Afterwards, hundreds of us queued for a line of buses brought in by the city to ensure we could all get home, and thousands more crowded onto the tram. A lot goes into ensuring the safety and wellbeing of 65,000 people for two nights in a row.
This isn’t unique to Harry, of course: the weekend before, the same stadium was at capacity with 55,000 Beyoncé fans for the Renaissance World Tour, and a few days after Love On Tour, Bruce Springsteen sang to an audience of 70,000. Murrayfield is built for rugby matches—30 players on the field at any given time—yet one solo artist can fill the same space. I’ve never attended a Scottish Rugby Union event, so I don’t know how it compares, logistics-wise, to Love On Tour. I imagine the rugby crowd sports substantially fewer rhinestone cowboy hats, heart-shaped sunglasses, and JW Anderson cardigan remakes.
Near the beginning of the show, Harry tells us, “You have one job, and that is to have as much fun as you possibly can.” And we do.
