Why Does Harry Styles’ Tour Look Like That?!

Harry Styles is officially back on tour… and it’s not going the way that a lot of people had hoped. Over the weekend, Styles began his “Together, Together” Tour with a string of dates in Amsterdam. But instead of dissecting the setlist of new songs from his album Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., or celebrating the handmade outfits that the fans wore, the conversation has gone into places that few could have expected.

Let’s start with the literal shape of the concert’s stage. It’s a square catwalk with lines of runways inside of it, breaking the pits of floor seats into smaller squares. It can’t be overstated how gigantic the square is, especially once Styles starts frantically running back and forth during his set. (Countless jokes have been made about his recent penchant for running marathons.) Once lit up with LED screens on the floor, it looks like a bare-bones version of the Rainbow Road level of Mario Kart.

There are some smaller aesthetic choices made during the tour that don’t seem to help that underwhelming feeling: backup dancers are only occasionally onstage with Styles, and he carries a wired mic across the massive stage like someone vacuuming their kitchen floor. In this specific venue, the first portion of the show is also performed during daylight, which makes the whole thing feel (in the words of some commenters) like “the big light is still on.”

But this awkward stage design could’ve been fine, if not for how it was literally constructed. The base height of the stage is well above eye level, and there are two extra elevated bridges on the catwalk that allow Styles to get even higher up. Fans with pit tickets for the Amsterdam shows quickly took to social media to reveal that… it was nearly impossible to see what was happening onstage, unless Styles happened to be directly in front of them. And again, that’s not even a guarantee when he’s running around the catwalk so erratically. Given the amount of money fans paid for these pit tickets, they were (understandably) unhappy.

Will Harry Styles Change His Tour Stage?

On Tuesday, a source told TMZ that Styles’ team are “reviewing” parts of the stage layout, and argued that only “a small area” of the floor seats have obstructed viewing, even though the flood of posts on TikTok and Twitter seem to suggest otherwise. It’s unclear at this point if and when the stage will be “adjusted”: the tour still has a whopping eight shows in Amsterdam, before moving to London in the middle of June, and even small logistical elements like that can take a lot of time.

“The floor concept was designed to give fans freedom of movement and the ability to experience the show from different positions, rather than being confined to one fixed viewing angle,” the statement reads. “That open, free-flowing floor experience has always been an essential part of Harry’s live shows. A small area of the staging in specific floor positions appears to have had a restricted sightline. Those areas are being reviewed carefully and adjusted where possible in compliance with all safety restrictions.”

Fans’ complaints about the “Together, Together” Tour have even gone beyond the unfortunate aesthetic choices. The concert itself has faced scrutiny for having too short of a setlist and for literally cutting off or shortening certain fan-favorite songs. One fan even complained that their VIP package arrived with a half-empty and dried-up tube of nail polish.

To put it simply, the whole ordeal has just been a mess. It almost feels on-brand for the weirdness of the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. era, which has been met with polarized reactions and jokes about him looking like “if Sponge-Bob the Musical was an H&M [advertisement.]” But it also feels like a sad contrast to Styles’ previous tour, “Love On Tour” which became a genuine cultural moment of feather boas and whimsy during its run from 2021 through 2023 without as many snafus.

It’s also just messy in the larger context of the music industry. Before Styles officially began this new era, fans had joked for years that he needed to come back and reclaim his throne from the Benson Boones and Sombrs of the world, and there were plenty of ways for him to do so without annoying fans along the way and creating a show that can barely be seen from the front row of the pit.

It’s no secret that concert tickets are only getting more expensive, and the initial presale for the “Together, Together” Tour was already needlessly stressful for a lot of fans. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen fans say that they don’t have FOMO over a tour of this size, which is saying something.

(featured image: Anthony Pham/Getty Images for HS)

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