Goodbye, Love On Tour

On July 22nd, Harry Styles and the 100,000 fans he shared RCF Arena with (and millions more watching at home through update accounts and live streams) said goodbye to Love on Tour.  

As Styles came out dressed in a silver, shimmery, star-covered suit, it was clear that this was going to be a night like no other. The final show was filled with nods to our shared past, such as the full rendition of “Best Song Ever” and the Two Ghosts/Falling mashup that originated from the first leg of Love on Tour. Harry showered us with the sweetest farewell in the form of loving words: “none of you are alone,” “ I love you and I’ll miss you,” “I know you want to make it special for me but you make it special for me every night,” “what you create together, it is the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” “thank you for being amazing friends,”. 

All of this emotion was put into Harry’s parting gift to us, a ten-minute instrumental song that he wrote just for that moment. After the adrenaline high of Kiwi, Harry sat down at a piano for the first time live and shared a piece of his heart with us. The Fine Line-esque song spoke of the beauty of this tour – the way it could fill your heart time and time again, connect you to a found family, and make you feel safer and happier than you ever have – without saying a word. As we carry the weight of this goodbye with us, we now have a song to hold in our hearts, a piece to remember the magic we shared and the magic that will someday come again.

As if that wasn’t already enough and more, Harry signed off one more time on Instagram with the “kissy” sequel: a loving message saying thank you and “I love you more than you’ll ever know.” And in yet another extraordinary act of love, Harry shared a three-and-a-half minute clip of Love on Tour memories, from our perspective and his. As Grapejuice and Fine Line played over our most joyous memories, we were reminded of how inspiring this experience was for us. How unbelievably beautiful that we are the most inspiring people Harry knows! Does our love for him – and his love for us – know any bounds? 

The end of any tour can be a bittersweet event, but this goodbye is especially hard for the millions of fans who have felt the joy, light, and love of Styles’ sophomore tour. Its evolution over the past two years has been a journey every Harrie has been in the passenger seat for. We were so excited when the tour was announced in 2019 (before we had even heard Fine Line!). We were heartbroken and scared when it had to be postponed in 2020. We were thrilled and hopeful when the tour was back on in 2021. We were pleasantly surprised when it just kept going in 2022 and 2023, this time with an Album of the Year in the setlist. And now, we mourn the end of this era together. 

We have gotten adorned in sparkles and feathers to celebrate this golden age with our golden boy. We have worn masks and boas and our hearts on our sleeves. We have cried with our friends and hugged strangers and healed our inner child. We have made inside jokes and choreographed dances and custom clothing. And it’s all because of the sun that we planets orbit around, our Harry. 

There’s no doubt that the fans helped make Love on Tour what it was. Harry himself has noted that we are his “mirror,” providing an emotional generosity that makes him feel like he can be himself. But it wouldn’t have been possible if our curly-haired conductor didn’t set the tone if he hadn’t opened the doors of his house to host coming outs and proposals and gender reveals and birthday parties. A place to feel good, to feel safe to be “whoever it is that you want to be in this room tonight.”  Think about how incredible you have felt watching Love on Tour, whether at the barricade or in your room. You have made Harry feel that incredible, too. What a beautiful thought that we as fans have created that same shining atmosphere for him. 

Harry is a very private artist, seeming to protect his solitude after his chaotic coming-of-age in One Direction. And yet his live shows have become the space where he revels in his friendship with his fans the most openly. He’s sold us hats that are similar to his own (one quite literally saying “Harry is my friend”). He remembered familiar faces and stopped songs to check on the injured. He’s created inside jokes with us, “This is a family show,” “She is dressed as a banana,” etc. and sometimes even learned the ones we created with ourselves (“the hitties are out!”). It says something that he never released Medicine for the whole world to speculate and tear apart. He kept it a sacred tradition between him and his fans, knowing what it means to them and what it means to him, as well. 

My own journey with Love on Tour has taken me to incredible places and brought me some of my happiest memories. They play back to me in a supercut: singing Happy Birthday to him at the top of my lungs as he stood there in a sparkly pink tracksuit, being loopy and recreating scenes from Don’t Worry Darling with my friend in the box office line in Chicago after our original show had been postponed to a date we couldn’t go to, seeing him so happy and settled in Manchester with him recanting childhood memories to us all, blowing him kisses a mile a minute and getting one in return in LA, seeing him get hit with a Skittle and being so worried, swaying to Grapejuice at Slane and smiling when I saw him join in with us, singing complicated Freddie-Mercury-style vocals as Harry led us in Wembley, hanging around the venue of my hometown show for two days straight because I just couldn’t not be where the action was happening. As it all comes to an end, I will – as Taylor Swift once said – hold onto the memories as they hold onto me. 

Love on Tour has been so many things to me. It’s been the anxiety of waiting in a Ticketmaster queue, keyboard smashing as I text my friends that “WE GOT THEM SGSGDJAHA,” planning outfits and signs and flights and hotels. It’s been something to look forward to, something to keep me going during a bad day or a bad time. It’s been a safe space to cry and laugh and dance with strangers. Losing my voice and posing for pictures and creating new lock screens. Going with my mom, my partner, and some of my closest friends and knowing that we will bond over these memories for years to come. But most of all, Love on Tour has been a place to see my oldest friend, the one who wrote the soundtrack to my coming-of-age, helped me discover who I am, and told me in the sweetest way I’d ever heard that we’ll be alright. 

I am sad to lose the chance to see him dressed in sparkles and telling fans to dump their shitty boyfriends every few days. To say goodbye to Satellite stomps, Matilda balloons, Adore You shimmies, the boot scoot (which Harry has now learned!), the whale, and the countless other traditions we’ve created as a family. Yet, I know we will carry many of these with us to Harry’s third tour (and his fourth and his tenth and his thirty-eighth). We will reunite and sing Bohemian Rhapsody while Harry is wheeled under the stage in a “soft goods” box or stretching backstage. That home will always be there for us. And Harry will, too. 

After all, Harry once told us that the time to dance would come again. 

And it did. 

Now, the time to rest has come. Let us rest with our phones full of shaky videos and blurry pictures. Let us hang up our boas and our cowboy hats. Let us look up at the summer stars and remember a time of dancing…and dream of a time when we will dance again.