Caroline's Path of Grace

One surprise to no one who knows me is that I am a big fat Harry Styles stan. I am incredibly lucky that my boyfriend, Kevin, is a fantastic listener and will sit and pay attention while I go on and on about him at great length. This past week, even, I had him working on learning the bridge in Cinema, which he practiced to humor me, and took very seriously. This is what our life looks like, lots of Harry. 

On tour last week, turns out Harry performed Stockholm Syndrome and everyone online lost their minds. Fortunately, I got to see him do this live in 2018, but still, it stung to not get to see it live in 2023! I was telling poor Kevin about this and going into depth about “Harry’s different eras” and how during One Direction's last two albums, he was in the “Long Hair Harry” era (as seen on The Late Late Show 12/4/2015), arguably his best vocally by that point. I then played Cinema and Stockholm Syndrome for Kevin and compared his vocals and was just gushing over his growth in the last decade. 

For anyone who was a One Direction fan (or really any singer/boy band) you may remember feeling like you constantly needed to justify why you loved that artist. The older I get, the less I feel I need to justify, but with Harry’s skyrocketing popularity in the last few years, I still hold tight. I mean, I have two Harry inspired tattoos, how could I not be constantly justifying my love??

I was telling Kevin about how this love goes deep, and how far Harry has come. From getting eliminated on X Factor for not having a strong enough voice after singing Isn’t She Lovely acapella to going solo on sold out tours around the world. In the 1D days, I wasn’t even a “Harry girl”!  My favorite boys were Louis and Liam. I think probably because they were the oldest (I was like 13 at the time, they were ALL older than me) and they were also so funny. I loved the One Direction video diaries from the X Factor days, Louis carried the team with his humor. 

Despite not being a Harry girl from the start, I was so excited for all of the solo careers the boys took on post One Direction hiatus. I was never really into any of the boy’s solo music, mostly because it didn’t really fit with my taste. I have a confession to make too: I didn’t even really LOVE Sign of the Times when it came out either!! Don’t get me wrong, it was, and still is, an absolutely beautiful song, but I don't know, for some reason it didn’t hit me like I thought it would. 

But then, everything changed. I only realized this in this “masterclass” I was giving Kevin, but I finally pinpointed the moment I knew Harry was the center of my music world. On April 17th, 2017, the shift happened. Harry was the musical guest on Season 42 Episode 18 of Saturday Night Live and he performed Ever Since New York for the first time ever. It was the first time the world heard that song and his vocals…sent me into outer space. I was hooked; I knew I was going to follow Harry until the end of time. ESNY sits as my favorite Harry song to date, and will be the theme of my next tattoo, whenever that may be. I am so so lucky to have seen that live in 2018 at Live on Tour at MSG. 

Anyways, if you’ve made it this far, you without a doubt are the best. Thank you for listening to my rambling. It was such a journey to realize that ESNY was not only my favorite but was also the moment when I knew I would be a Harrie for life.

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