I feel like no matter what happens in my life, all roads will somehow lead back to Louis Tomlinson. In the past 11 years, I’ve seen him grow up from being in One Direction to becoming a solo artist finding his own sound. Last weekend, I finally got to see Louis solo at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC, and I honestly don’t think I could be prouder of a person that I’ve never met.
Going to Louis’s concert oddly felt like I was coming home. One of the first things I noticed when I got in line at 9 am on Friday morning was how many pride flags of various identities were surrounding me. The first thing that was handed to me was a small pride flag that everyone would wave for a fan project during the song “Only the Brave.” There’s this ongoing joke with Louis fans that if he was your favorite One Direction member as a kid that you’re a part of the LGBTQ+ community now, and even though it’s (mostly) a joke, it really is true. Some of my favorite signs I saw during the night had sayings on them like “Lesbians 4 Louis” and “Defender of the girls, gays and theys.” We are all genuinely so supportive of one another, regardless of our identity. And even if we’ve never met each other, we will support each other, and our love for Louis is supported throughout our bond as a community. When I first bought my ticket to the? tour back in 2020, I knew I would have a great time, but I didn’t expect to meet some of the best people. A few weeks before the show one of my friends on Twitter put me in a group chat for people going to the concert, and we started doing Twitter Spaces leading up to the show, with none of us being able to contain our excitement for the night. The people that I have met through being a fan of Louis Tomlinson are some of my favorite humans ever. Louis’s relationship with his fans means just as much as the fan’s relationships with each other.
There were a few songs during the night where I just kind of stood? in the pit in awe watching him sing, not wanting to take away from his moment. I’m the type of person who doesn’t cry often, and although I expected “Two of Us”, a song Louis wrote for his late mother Jay to get me, his cover of “Beautiful War” by Kings of Leon was the song that made me sob. I was listening to the song on repeat the week before because I wanted to be prepared and know the lyrics, but that was probably the only song during the night where no one was singing, there was this unspoken mentality that we had to just shut up and let Louis sing. The entire concert wasn’t set with that mentality, however. We all screamed the opening lyrics to “Always You” extra loud, and everyone went absolutely feral when he played the One Direction songs “Little Black Dress” and “Through the Dark.” Both songs are from their third album Midnight Memories that Louis had fought so hard for in the studio.
On the second night, Louis took a moment to tell us how much he loves us (right after he was hit in the head with a chicken nugget, but I digress). He told us that he didn’t feel 100%, but he could feel our support just from the first song. Going on, he said that “I need you and you need me, we’re a codependency.” The love that Louis has for us is one of the things I love most about being his fan. I could probably count the amount of artists on my fingers who love their fans as much as Louis loves us. Everything Louis does is for us, and the fact that he can feel our support in a room is something so special that not a lot of other fan bases have.