Baz Halpin was ready to follow his family into classical music when a Jethro Tull tour changed everything. As a teenager in the Nineties, the Irish producer and director had been working at a Dublin concert hall, where he became captivated by the way that lighting could accentuate the emotionality of music. So he accepted a gig as a lighting tech and rigger.
“I went on tour, and it was like stepping through that door in The Wizard of Oz, where everything suddenly went into color,” recalls Halpin, CEO and founder of the production company Silent House Group. “This whole world of travel, excitement, responsibility, wildness, and everything the rock & roll lifestyle offered, I fell in love with it.”
Halpin’s yellow brick road has taken him all the way to Sphere Las Vegas, where The Wizard of Oz itself has stepped through bold new doors with an immersive 4D film. It’s here that Halpin has masterminded the visuals for residencies by the Eagles and Backstreet Boys. He’s now working with No Doubt on their own Sphere engagement, opening May 6 — a “nostalgic, exciting, surprising” ride chronicling the band’s 40-year run.
“This will be a journey through the most important moments in the history of No Doubt,” Halpin says. “The band grew up in Orange County and conquered the world. They’ve been through so many things together, and the beauty of the Sphere is the ability to tell those stories in a visual way. You’ll be swept away and feel like you’re experiencing their evolution alongside them.”
The artistic potential in Sphere is a long way from Halpin’s earlier work in production design and creative direction for Pink, Cher, Christina Aguilera, and George Michael’s final tour, Symphonica, which paired the late singer with orchestral accompanists. “He did a version of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ with this incredible orchestra, which still floors me,” Halpin recalls. He describes his diverse résumé, which also includes time spent working on Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, as a “university” that taught him how to enthrall audiences across genres and venues.
Silent HouseAnother major highlight in his career was collaborating with Taylor Swift as she transitioned into pop with her Red tour in 2013. Halpin continued to work closely with Swift on the global treks that followed, including her record-breaking Eras Tour. Live events like those highlight the ways today’s superstars are stretching the limits of live production: Artists want to achieve “more than what came before,” he says, at a time when concertgoers are creatively savvier than ever.
“Most people, whether through Instagram or TikTok, are creatives in their own right,” he adds. “Everyone’s an editor. There’s a knowledge base within the fandom that wasn’t there before, which increases the bar to wow people…. And the technology, software, and processing power [have increased] how much you can do. The whole industry’s moved forward, which allows you to dream bigger. Nobody would’ve conceived Sphere 20 years ago.”
No Doubt were fresh from their 2024 Coachella comeback when Halpin, who worked on their 2009 Summer Tour, was brought on for their residency. He began by presenting mood boards and reference images, which he fine-tuned with the band before creating a show deck. Once the set list was finalized, he showed Gwen Stefani, bassist Tony Kanal, guitarist Tom Dumont, and drummer Adrian Young what he envisioned for each song on a projector, then they developed the ideas together.
“So much of it has to take shape in your mind because you’re not seeing finished products — just references, models, or sketches,” Halpin says. “They’re all creative and able to do that, but it’s a tough process.”
No Doubt’s Sphere residency is shaping up to be one of this year’s biggest live events.WireImageThe greatest challenge with Sphere remains the “delicate little dance” of creating extraordinary visuals without overshadowing the band. With No Doubt, the creative possibilities felt greater thanks to the range of their discography, from ballads like “Don’t Speak” to pop-punk anthems like “Ex-Girlfriend.”
Halpin says that the group’s Orange County roots will feature prominently in the show, while eagle-eyed fans will catch numerous Easter eggs. “We’ve done a deep dive, pulling out obvious moments from the past and obscure ones,” says Halpin.
Having also directed Super Bowl halftime shows for Katy Perry and Usher, Halpin feels that both live sports and music are critical avenues for human connections. He ultimately hopes his work elevates such moments and memories.
“In an increasingly digital and isolated world, sports and live music are two of the few remaining things where humans gather, almost ceremonially, and participate,” he says. “Something magical happens there. As a director or producer, you want to heighten that experience. And when there’s that nostalgic element, those memories are threaded into our souls, so honoring that is important.”
Courtesy of Martin Garrix
Louis Van Baar*
Liam Payne (left) and Harry Styles of One Direction onstage during the 2013 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 24, 2013
Harry Styles Finds the Right Words on Liam Payne Tribute Song
For the past seven weeks, Harry Styles has reserved two minutes at each of his Madison Square Garden shows to reflect on the last time he gathered this many people in this room. Four years have passed since he performed 15 record-breaking nights at the venue during his Love on Tour. Now, every night at the new Together, Together shows, which span 30 nights at MSG, he acknowledges that “a lot of life happened to me and landed on me in ways that maybe it hadn’t before.”
Styles doesn’t usually go into much more detail; he typically just describes those in-between years as “a great reminder for me of just how wonderful and beautiful, difficult and inspiring, and also how fragile a life can be.” He encourages the audience to look around at each other and celebrate the community they’ve built together. Then he dives into “Sign of the Times.” It happens every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. But when he delivered this speech on Friday, Oct. 16, there was a shift. It didn’t conclude in its usual way.
Instead, Styles turned his attention to the banner commemorating his 15 consecutive nights at the Garden in 2022. “It means a lot to be able to look up there at my name up there from the last tour,” he said. “There are so many people, friends and people that I’ve worked with, that I would’ve never been able to do this without.” Two years ago, he continued, he lost one of those pillars. Friday’s show fell on the same day as the second anniversary of the death of Liam Payne, a loss that time has not made it easier to acknowledge. “I’m sure a lot of you have been through something similar,” Styles said. “I hope you haven’t.”
A frequent assessment of Styles, both among his fans and those who’ve only encountered him at a distance, is that he often talks at length before getting to the point. He recognizes it himself on the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally song “Coming Up Roses,” where he sings about fumbling his words. But recently, comments about his long-winded way of speaking have started to feel like purposeful misreadings. There are clear and carefully considered thoughts present between his starts and stops. Anyone truly listening will pick up on those threads.
Styles cut himself off a few times during his speech on Friday. He tried to talk for a second about looking after each other, and repeated his point about the banner and the people who’ve supported him. He never mentions Payne by name, instead referring to him as a friend, which somehow became a point of criticism from some fans. The context is clear enough. Still, he seems to know it’s a gamble to expect understanding, especially when the conversation grows more complex and personal.
After about a minute and a half, Styles figured it best to show us what he means rather than tell us. “I’m gonna sing a song I wrote two years ago for my friend,” he said before premiering “Wise Enough.” The sullen tribute to Payne settled the room into a cool near-silence, punctured by quiet gasps and muffled crying. It was beautiful, devastating, and deeply exposing to watch Styles share his grief with 20,000 people in the best, and maybe only, way he knows how.
Earlier this year, Styles told Zane Lowe about the acute dread surrounding the expected performance of his mourning. “Full transparency, even the idea of talking about it, I struggle with that a little bit. There was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief, in a way,” he said. “I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware there’s maybe a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
Artists often describe the act of sharing new music as a change in ownership, something that is no longer their own once it has been handed over to an audience. “Wise Enough” feels protected from this. It would be confounding to see Styles ever record and release it in any official capacity. The song is openhearted in a way that exposes deep scars, anxious in a way that worries and fidgets about time and how it passes, and inconsolable in a way that doesn’t make the futile attempt to fight through anger, regret, or sadness.
“I can tell you what it’s like to bury friends on Wednesday nights/Gather in a garden around the fire,” Styles sings in a particularly cutting verse on the song, which concludes with an honest admission: “I’m not wise enough to call for a conversation/And then back it up, right?/Like you’re in the sky.”
Celebrity doesn’t obscure grief. It doesn’t come with a script for what to say when someone is sorry for your loss, or when they recollect their own version of the person you knew. No one really has the right words for these moments. Over the weekend, fans debated whether “Wise Enough” is actually titled “What Is Enough?” Styles introduced the record so briskly it was hard to decipher. The question of adequacy feels similarly impossible to answer.
Grief is so plain in how universal it is, but so complex in how and when it chooses to present itself. It can be policed only as much as it can be predicted, which is to say barely at all. That Styles let us into his now yearslong search for some semblance of understanding — knowing how his words have been picked apart before for far lesser things — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Styles never acknowledges that banner at MSG. It’s not for lack of gratitude — he cried when it was unveiled. But the point he has reiterated every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday since the end of August is that the achievement is something that must be shared because he couldn’t have done it alone. He talks about being on stage as if what happens in that room exists far beyond and outside of himself, something that endures even in his absence.
It’s true in a way. There’s muscle memory tied to the music. It’s in the spinning, dizzying way fans dance to “Satellite,” or the way they wildly kick their feet and make the building shake during “Kiwi,” a song he brought back to the set just for New York. It’s just like before, but still so different.
Friday night continued as usual after “Wise Enough.” Styles belted out “Sign of the Times” in the sobering way he always does, then “Aperture” let in a cathartic flood of strobing lights and pulsating beats. The emotional whiplash took physical form as fans consoled one another, holding out their hands to help up friends and strangers who crumbled to the floor at the conclusion of the tribute. Some were crushed by their memories of loving One Direction, and the care they hold in their hearts for Styles. Some were just as wrecked by their own personal losses.
A lot of life and loss can happen in four years, as Styles says each night. For some people who were at MSG on Friday, there are friends present in their memories from the last tour who are missing from the new ones they’re making. The lyric “You dance until you’re tired/No, you don’t, and now you never will/Will you?” surfaces their own devastation completely separate from what inspired Styles to sprawl those words on a page. How do you dance to “Aperture” — the beating heart of this show in its declaration that “we belong together” — after hearing something like that?
You take the hand of the friend or the stranger who pulled you from the ground and use it to lead each other back to the dance floor. When Styles talks about community and stresses the importance of caring for one another each night, he reminds everyone of the fragility of a moment, and urges them to cherish every second they get. To dance wildly and sing loudly and wrap their arms around each other. To hold tight to what’s here right now.
It’s all any of us have, so it has to be enough.