Welcome to Harry’s House

I just visited Harry’s House. And I’d like to live there.

On October 13, the United Center in Chicago was transformed into a raucous celebration of life, community, and self-affirmation. Thousands of concert goers packed the stadium to experience the overflowing fountain of charisma and music known around the world as the Harry Styles Love on Tour.

There were boas galore. Sequins. Pink sunglasses. Blue cowboy hats. Hugs. Smiles. Dancing. Tears of joy. All swirling around Harry Styles as he tore through his song catalog.

I expected Harry Styles to be great. I expected him to work the audience. I’d seen clips of him on TikTok, and even on my hand-held iPhone, he seemed like a force of nature. He did not disappoint. His singing and energy were infectious.?

But what I did not expect was the raw energy and love coursing through the night from the audience. It was evident the moment my wife Jan and I walked into the United Center and were enveloped in a blanket of happy people, mostly Gen Z and young Millennial women and couples celebrating and uplifting each other, including strangers.

Like the young 20-ish couple who drove from St. Paul, Minnesota, and eagerly asked Jan and me about our favorite Harry Styles songs, our lives, our interests in travel. It was more than a casual, spurious conversation. There was genuine warmth there, such as the young man learning that I like vinyl records and asking me about why I have a collection and my favorite albums. There were the two young women in front of us holding each other as they danced to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” one of the pre-recorded interstitial songs that played before Harry Styles took the stage. In fact, the entire stadium erupted in a Queen singalong.

My God, I wondered, the concert has not even begun, and this place is rocking.

Normally I dislike it when people in front of me stand up during a seated concert, but everyone stands in Harry’s House, as if being swept out of our seats by the powerful vibe. Beside me and behind me, I saw tears on the faces of young women as Styles slowed things down a bit for his more romantic and introspective songs. During “Matilda,” various sections of the audience held up different colored slips of paper in front of their cameras, creating the effect of a multi-colored light show. (This was organized by a group on Instagram who crowdsourced the distribution of the slips of paper before the concert.)

Styles’ banter with the audience was refreshing and natural. Stage patter can be so tedious when an artist is just making wisecracks that you suspect are the exact same jokes they made at the last concert, and excessive stage patter can suck the energy out of a show. But he pulled it off well. He shared genuine affection. Like when he devoted a segment of the show to read different signs people were holding up. He would select one or two, read them aloud, and ask the person holding them something about their lives, such as a woman whose sign announced she had just been divorced.

“Chicago,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are divorced. Married. We’re here to celebrate you.” He famously once helped a fan come out at a concert, and I can understand now why that fan chose his concert for the occasion. Harry’s House is a safe zone of love and affirmation, and he gets credit for encouraging the fans to be comfortable in their own skin and to uplift each other – something he did often, as when he encouraged people to love one another and show kindness on their way home from the show.

Why does all this matter to my LinkedIn community? Because many of us on LinkedIn try in some way to create a brand, either corporately or personally. And Harry’s House reminded me that a brand is all about an emotional connection. The Harry Styles Love on Tour is powered by the fuel of emotion. The fuel of community and shared experience. In turn, the experience generates an incredible power to make someone feel like they are connected to Styles, even though they have never met him and probably never will. There is only one Harry Styles. But emotion is universal, and we have the power to create an emotional bond with our audiences, too.