Harry Styles finally wrapped up the Love On Tour. Why did it seem to last forever?
Let’s take a closer look at the effects of our changed perception of time.
Image courtesy of People.
Harry’s Love on Tour started September 4, 2021 and finally wrapped on July 22, 2023. When I first heard of its announcement, I figured it was a seasonal tour, just for the fall and winter months and would have a short-ish run— I don’t know, anything longer than that just seems SO long to me. Especially since, in the case of the US portion of the Love On Tour, Harry was to be putting on an hours-long show multiple times a night in the same city and then do it all over again in the next city.
I guess I was too caught up in trying to buy tickets to realize the full extent of this tour and that it would go on for multiple years.
Image courtesy of Twitter.
Turns out, there’s not a one-size-fits-all amount of time that artists go on tour. It really does just depend on their level of success. Local bands, for example, commonly go on tour for a few months at a time, while larger names and larger bands can go on tour for years at a time. And given Harry’s success, and how it’s just grown exponentially with this last few album releases— the timing of his tour tracks.
Harry had lineups and posters and different creative for each year and regions of the tour. All of them pretty to look at, of course.
So many historical and cultural events happened during this tour too, I mean, as expected, now that we can realize it’s true length.
2021
Oct. 4: The World Health Organization endorses the first malaria vaccine.
Nov. 11: SpaceX launches the Crew-3 mission, carrying four Expedition 66 crew members to the International Space Station.
Nov. 12: Britney’s conservatorship battle concluded.
Nov. 24: NASA launches the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first attempt to deflect an asteroid for the purpose of learning how to protect Earth.
Nov. 28: Groundbreaking designer Virgil Abloh dies.
2022
Jan. 1: Wildfires continue to burn through Boulder, Colorado, leading to the evacuation of over 30,000 people and the destruction of homes across Boulder County.
Feb. 4: The 2022 Winter Olympics begin in Beijing, China.
Feb. 6: Queen Elizabeth II celebrates 70 years on the throne as Britain’s longest-serving monarch.
Feb. 17: Brittany Griner is detained in Russia in possession of marijuana cartridges.
Feb. 22: Russian President Vladimir Putin announces a “special military operation” in Ukraine, sending troops to the country. The U.S. and other countries begin sanctions against Russia.
Mar. 27: Will Smith slaps Chris Rock at the Academy Awards after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife.
April 25: Twitter announces that it will sell to Elon Musk for $44 billion.
April 27: Olivia Wilde is served custody papers while promoting Don't Worry Darling at CinemaCon.
May 2: The U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is leaked to the public.
May 14: A gunman shoots 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
May 16: Karine Jean-Pierre is the first black woman and LGBTQ person appointed as U.S. press secretary.
May 24: A gunman kills 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
June 1: Amber Heard and Johnny Depp are awarded money in a settlement due to a defamation suit between the couple.
June 11: A Google engineer claims that the company’s Lamda Artificial Intelligence may have a sentient mind and the company places him on leave.
June 24: The U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
June 30: Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in as the first black woman in the U.S. Supreme Court.
July 4: A gunman kills seven people at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.
July 23: World Health Organization declares monkeypox a public health emergency.
July 26: Russia announces it will withdraw from the International Space Station at the end of 2024.
Aug. 22: Anthony Fauci announces that he will step down as the U.S. adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Sept. 5, 2022: Fans dissect a viral clip of Harry Styles and Chris Pine at the Don’t Worry Darling premiere (yes, the spit thing).
Sept. 6: Liz Truss is appointed as the new British prime minister.
Sept. 8: Queen Elizabeth II dies at the age of 96.
Sept. 16: Civil rights protests erupt in Iran as a response to strict morality laws that target women.
Oct. 9: Rapper Kanye West makes anti-semitic remarks, resulting in major companies withdrawing from deals with the rapper.
Oct. 13: Parkland shooter sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Oct. 20: British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces resignation, serving for only 44 days — the shortest term served by a British prime minister in history.
Oct. 27: Elon Musk takes ownership of Twitter, immediately firing large numbers of employees.
Oct. 28: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is assaulted by a home intruder, resulting in severe injuries.
Oct. 31: South Korean Halloween crowd surge kills over 150 people.
Nov. 13: Four University of Idaho students are murdered in their apartment in Moscow, Idaho.
Nov. 18: Harry and Olivia Wilde split.
Nov. 19: Five people are killed in a shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
2023
Jan. 5: The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI is held at Saint Peter's Square within the Vatican City.
Feb. 3: The US announces it is tracking alleged Chinese spy balloons over the Americas, with one drifting from Yukon to South Carolina before being shot down the next day, and a second hovering over Colombia and Brazil. This event is followed by subsequent detections and shootdowns of high-altitude objects elsewhere.
March 10: Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the United States, fails, creating then the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, affecting companies around the world.
March 14: OpenAI launches GPT-4, a large language model for ChatGPT, which can respond to images and can process up to 25,000 words.
May 1: San Francisco-based First Republic Bank fails and is auctioned off by the US FDIC to JPMorgan Chase for $10.7 billion. The collapse surpasses March's collapse of Silicon Valley Bank to become the second largest in US history.
June 14: At least 82 people die and 500 are reported missing after a boat carrying migrants capsizes off the coast of the Peloponnese.
June 18: Titan submersible implosion: All five crew members of Titan, a deep-sea submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic, are killed following a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.
July 14: SAG-AFTRA announces it will begin an ongoing strike against the major film and TV studios in protest of low compensation, ownership of work, and generative AI.
July 20: The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup begins in Australia and New Zealand.
Image courtesy of Travel and Leisure Asia.
Shocking, right? Why does it seem like time passed by so slowly these past two years? And honestly, why has time been moving so oddly ever since…the pandemic?
“…our experience of time is influenced by the activities that we perform and the emotions that we experience.” says one article from the National Library of Medicine. “Deprivation of temporal cues affects human ability to situate oneself in the time perspective which in turn influences temporal distortions. In extreme cases of isolation where individuals suffer from complete sensory deprivation, they can become unable to perform correct judgments of time intervals…It is likely that changed routines and uncertainty about the future contributed to our distorted experience of the passage of time”.
Okay, that was so validating to read. Sheeeeesh, I feel better? But am also now kind of sad that we’ve changed so, so much in so, so many ways because of the pandemic and lockdown. But it’s not only a change in routine that can affect how you perceive time, it can be your emotional states too.
And this kind of upheaval can have lasting effects long after the event that affects you ends, as you’re probably noticing as well. I can’t say we’re completely behind the side effects of Covid, especially with talks of another wave coming later this summer, but I definitely don’t feel as if I’m living the same way anymore.
I’m back out and about, meeting new people, going to crowded places and using my TSA pre-check again. But, I still find myself saying, “Ack, my sense of time is off, sorry” at least once a week. So, will this time fog ever end?
Image courtesy of Twitter.
While Harry’s Love on Tour did go on for almost a whopping 2 years, it likely, for many others besides me, felt like 5ish years. I know I personally was worried for his well-being and overall health and astonished that he was still posting photos from shows way beyond his Austin, Texas tour stop.
Time aside, I do wish I could’ve lived through his show for so much longer than what it was. Not that it was short by any means, but I definitely left a different person and with a newfound, much larger love for the artist. I’ll admit, I only knew a couple of songs going into it, but about a week to the day that I went and saw him live, I basically had all his solo discography memorized.
His energy, his ownership over the arena and stage and of course his music, just beautifully combined itself into a love letter that felt personalized just for me. I basically used his music as therapy, to pull myself out of ruts, have a little dance party with my cat— you name it. You certainly didn’t ask, but Cinema and Satellite are my top picks.
Photo courtesy of People.
Not only did his performance and music blow me away, but can we talk about the fashion? Or rather, shall we take a look at just some of his greatest hits? Oh, btw, I found this really awesome Etsy creator who is making art of his tour stops that are compilations of the outfits he wore that night or while in that city. I think it’s so cool! You can check it out here.
I was prompted to write this article because Harry posted on his IG story a really heartfelt response to his last tour stop. I captured a screenshot of it and set it as my phone wallpaper and lockscreen because it really changed me too, and his music has helped me get through a lot of emotions.
If you’ve gotten this far in the article, I’m sure you feel the same. 💚
Image courtesy of the US Sun.
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Sources:
People
Twitter
Travel and Leisure Asia
CNN
Wikipedia
NPR
CBS News
Deseret News
National Center for Biotechnology Information
ETSY
StyleCaster
Billboard
British GQ
Last.fm
Gigseekr
US Sun
