Is Harry Styles Getting A Little Too Thirsty For Viral Moments?

The Bunnings hat, Daryl Braithwaite, the shoey — Harry Styles‘ Australian tour birthed tons of viral moments. But what did it all mean?

As you probably know, the beloved English singer Harry Styles just finished up his Australian tour that included Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Kicking off in Perth, Styles made international headlines when he did a shoey — the objectively disgusting Australian ritual that involves skulling beer from a shoe. As The Conversation lays out, while the shoey probably has European origins, it speaks to a mythic Australian egalitarianism, with Liz Giuffre describing the ritual as a “great leveller”. 

Then there was Styles’ foray with a Bunnings hat in Melbourne — a hat-tip (!) to a hardware store apparently so tethered to our national identity that a version of it appears in Bluey.

If that wasn’t enough, Styles had a cover of Daryl Braithwaite’s 1990 hit ‘The Horses’ up his sleeve, a song that tends to evoke something in even the hardest of national hearts. (On Saturday night, Braithwaite even joined Styles on stage to belt out the song himself.)

Don’t get me wrong: Styles seems like a good sport. But his engagement with the local motifs didn’t feel super thought out. For example, at separate times on stage he waved both the Australian flag and the Aboriginal flag: two pretty much contradictory acts.

All of this spoke of a scattergun approach to engaging with his Australian fans: one that whiffed, just a touch, of desperation. Could it be that last year’s Don’t Worry Darling drama and his recent Grammys speech took a hit to his public image? Would this explain his keenness for viral moments?

Being on stage, an audience of fervent fans with their phones ripe and ready, is the perfect opportunity for musicians to make a statement — whether it’s with their outfit, the covers they perform, or the flag that they wave. But by throwing literally everything associated with Australia at the wall, it’s hard to know if Styles actually has nothing to say.

---

Photo credit: Instagram, @harrystyles