HARRY STYLES: The Today Show Fan Experience
By Jamie Alatzas
With the recent release of his third solo album, Harry’s House, and the success of single “As it Was”, Harry Styles is at the height of his career and is only going up. With 15 nights at Madison Square Garden and The Kia Forum this fall following his European tour, Harry Styles is a working machine. On May 19, he kicked off the Today Show’s Citi Summer Concert Series, which I found myself lucky enough to attend. The process, however, was not simple. More than 50,000 people registered for a Today Show concert pass. Only 1,300 fan passes allowing “priority access to the show, ahead of General Admission” according to The Today Show website were given away. And I didn’t get one.
My best friend and fellow Harry fan flew up to my place in Maryland from South Carolina for the week to listen to the release of his new album, as well as try and find a way to get tickets to either the Today Show or his One Night Only show in Long Island. Just as we had given up hope of seeing Harry up close, my friend saw a Harry fan on Twitter in Atlanta who scored a pass, which allowed three guests, and was looking for fans to go with her. We jumped at her offer and within an hour booked a NYC hotel that we ended up spending very little time in and tickets on the earliest Manhattan-bound bus the next morning. We went from a pretty empty week to the most insane week of my entire life.
We arrived at the NBC studios at 11 a.m. the day before Harry would appear onstage. We were greeted by a group of fans who had already been camping outside the studio for three days and had organized a numbering system. When one of the fans wrote “69” on my hand I realized how close we might be. But the next moment I realized that to keep our place in line my friend and I would be standing in this spot for the next 20 hours. We threw two blankets down on the sidewalk right outside Radio City Music Hall and settled in for the long wait.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
One of the best parts of the entire experience was the people I met camping out to see Harry. Bee came by herself and she had our backs when we needed to step out of the line to find food or a bathroom. The others brought a Harry Styles candle and held a little vigil. By the end of the night, our group had become about 10 people, all sharing different stories and getting excited for the morning together.
For the next eight hours, we sat in line, made friends, got interviewed by Access Hollywood, watched students from Columbia University and Pratt Institute march by on their way to their graduation ceremonies and we answered the question, “What are you all waiting for?” at least 80 times. Although it may seem like sitting on the sidewalk in one place in New York City for that many hours seems boring, enough was going on that it went by pretty quickly – until the lines moved.
The later it got, the more people showed up and the mass of people in line now stretched for several city blocks and had grown more chaotic. I began to panic. Would the fans’ numbering system matter? The fan from Atlanta with our fan passes had just landed at JFK and hadn’t arrived yet. Would the studio honor our place in line if she wasn’t with us yet?
Thankfully, she arrived just as the Today Show staff took control of the line moving fan pass holders closer to Rockefeller Center. At 10 p.m., we settled in for the night, arranging ourselves in the comfiest positions we could on the sidewalk. Some people managed to sleep, but I struggled due to the excitement. I spent the night hanging out with fans beside us and trying to find a bathroom open at 2:00am.
And then, at 3 a.m., the rain started and didn’t stop. We draped ourselves in plastic rain ponchos as it steadily pelted us. We couldn’t leave our spot on the sidewalk, so we just laid there as our blankets turned soggy and our fingertips puckered.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
It was pretty miserable. But just an hour later, our energy returned as everyone started to get ready to be allowed into the concert area, which was to open at 5:30 a.m. Today Show staff started passing out wristbands and corresponding tickets and fans farther back in the line started pushing and demanding lower numbers and I worried that after 16 hours on the street, we still might not get a good view. But when I got my number from the show staffers, it was pretty close to what the fans had assigned. Starting with number 69, I ended up officially number 76.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
When they led us to our spot behind the stage that had just been set up outside Rockefeller Center, I realized we had done it. We’d been awake for more than 24 hours and we were cold and soaked to the bone, but we were close enough to touch a walkway that reached into the crowd behind the stage. But the waiting wasn’t over just yet. We stood in that cold and rain for another hour. I looked into the sky and begged for it to stop over and over again in my head. And then everyone started screaming.
Mitch Rowland, Harry’s guitarist and collaborator since his first album, had walked onto the stage. This is when everything really started to feel real. I knew that Harry was going to join them on stage at any second for soundcheck. I heard the screams from the front and I knew that he was coming on stage. As a huge fan who has not seen Harry Styles live since 2013 for One Direction, I was so excited, almost nervous to see him.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
And then he was there, dressed all in denim, jeans and a jacket with a fur collar, looking better in person than I’d even imagined. Almost as soon as he stepped on stage, the rain stopped. After this point it’s hard to even pinpoint any of my emotions beyond shock, but I was extremely happy. He and his band soundchecked a few songs, he interacted a little with the crowd, and then went back inside to get ready for the show.
An hour later he was back again in a custom JW Anderson yellow, brown, and black striped jumpsuit, similar to the one he wore in Harry’s House promotional photos.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
He played “Golden”, “As It Was”, the single for Harry’s House, which is now running on its ninth week as #1 on the charts. Then he played “Boyfriends'', a new song on Harry’s House that he debuted for the first time at Coachella a few weeks prior. We watched all of this from our position near a walkway that jutted out from behind the stage. But then, when he started “Late Night Talking'', another song he debuted at Coachella that is featured on the new album, he began to head down the walkway that reached into the crowd at the stage’s front. That was the moment I realized he would come over to our side. Someone yelled, “He’s touching hands!” and before I knew it he was walking toward us and reaching down.
We all were reaching one hand out to him while the other captured the moment on our phones. After 26 hours without sleep, 20 hours in line and three hours standing in a steady rain Harry Styles himself really was close enough to touch.
Photograph: Jamie Alatzas
After “Late Night Talking'', he sang his Grammy-winning song “Watermelon Sugar”, and finished with “Daylight” from his new album, the first time he ever sang it live to an audience.
The entire Today Show experience from beginning to end has to be one of the most wild things I have ever done in my life, but even with all of the waiting and the rain it was all worth it.