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Harry Styles spends enough time in America to know that the affordability crisis is a very big deal right now, so maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that a joke he cracked at a recent concert came off as tone deaf to many of his fans.
After he complained about expensive coffee on stage at Madison Square Garden, the former One Direction singer is getting a lot of side eye. As if he can’t afford it after a sold out tour?!
Harry’s target was overpriced coffee and tipping culture, all at the same time.
During one of Harry’s Halloween-themed “Harryween” concerts over the weekend, he happened to be fully dressed as Elvis Presley when he decided to crack a joke about his experiences buying coffee during his time in NYC, where he stayed this fall during his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden.
“The scariest thing about this Halloween is the price of caffeinated beverages in the city,” he told the audience, via the Daily Mail. “Astronomical. It’s out of control. They have to be stopped. It’s a cappuccino, it can’t be $10. It can’t be.”
Then he came for tipping culture — something that he doesn’t have to think about when he’s at home in the UK, adding, “And then you spin [the iPad] around to me [and ask for a] 20, 22 or 24 percent [tip]. It’s out of control.”
Some fans think Harry had no room to talk after what he charged for his concert tickets.
Harry is hardly the first person to have a complaint like this (or joke about people spinning an iPad around and looking for a tip, regardless of what the transaction is) but the comments, some fans are saying that it all came off a bit hollow coming from a pop superstar.
“Does he know how much his ticket prices were?” one person asked, while another wrote, “Wait until he hears about his own ticket prices.”
(According to the New York Times, that’s anywhere between $50 and $1,182 after fees, though those tickets on the low end of the price spectrum were in much shorter supply.)
Then, there was what MSG was charging for merch and concessions. As one person wrote, “Good sir, your light up cups are $26.”
Others think this is the biggest recession indicator of them all.
Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Harry is worth a whopping $200 million, so the fact that he’s feeling the price increases lately says a lot.
As one fan put it in the comments: “A millionaire celebrity noticing coffee is expensive is a recession indicator.”
Indeed it is.
Harry’s right — there’s no world in which a cappuccino you can buy anywhere should cost $10, no matter how wealthy you happen to be. Sure, he can afford it (and so can many others), but can a coffee chain please capitalize on the moment and offer their drinks for much cheaper in honor of Harry?
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