From Taylor Swift to Beyoncé, Concerts Are Turning Into Something New
Posted by
JD (aka Jason Dean)
Aug 4 '23, 09:54
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By Elamin Abdelmahmoud
Mr. Abdelmahmoud is an author and the host of the pop-culture radio show “Commotion.”
I have found myself crying in public multiple times this summer, standing next to strangers who were also crying in public. I do not mean to suggest we were welling up or misty-eyed or otherwise feeling our feelings with some kind of dignity. We were not. We were properly crying, the sniffling and sobbing type, absolutely overwhelmed with joy.
All of these tearful gatherings have been concerts. I wept when Taylor Swift played “The Archer” at her Eras Tour in a 60,000-person stadium. I bawled my eyes out when Joni Mitchell took the stage at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State for her first announced concert in more than two decades, as the sun set behind a venue overlooking the Columbia River. I was overcome again watching a fan cry-sing into Phoebe Bridgers’ shoulder onstage during a boygenius show.
Concerts are back. After a pandemic that halted live performance, followed by two years of tentative returns, this summer has seen audiences flocking to live music to be reminded of the emotional release that concerts can bring. Not only are they finding this cathartic rush — for both performers and audiences — they’re also often finding something more. Concerts have always been spaces where like-minded fans can gather to discover connection, but now this brand of togetherness has transformed concertgoing into an urgent pilgrimage, drawing the faithful in record numbers and providing near-ecstatic experiences.
Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself, or seen evidence of it on your social media feeds: the videos, for example, of teary-eyed crowds with hands on their hearts as Ms. Swift sings, “It’s been a long time coming.” The Eras Tour, her first tour since 2018 and a sprawling, three-hour spectacle highlighting a 44-song set list, is simply the biggest and most extravagant of the summer’s great attractions.
Beyoncé and Drake are also touring, each after a five-year hiatus. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are back on the road for the first time since 2017. The Cure is touring. Ed Sheeran is touring. Luke Combs, with his hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” is touring. Morgan Wallen, with his No. 1 album, is touring. Boygenius, the supergroup that comprises the singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers, is touring. The only disappointment of the summer for fans so far is that Madonna’s long-anticipated Celebration Tour, a career retrospective, was postponed because of a last-minute health crisis. (It’s now scheduled to start in Europe in October.)
Back in March, a Live Nation executive told Bloomberg that his company was seeing “incredible demand” for live music — which now seems almost comically understated. Ms. Swift’s tour alone is on pace to earn over a billion dollars, while Harry Styles’s Love On Tour ended a couple of weeks ago as the fourth-highest-grossing tour of all time. Elton John wrapped a tour earlier this summer that stands as the highest-grossing of all time — at least for now.
Of course, part of the reason for these record-breaking grosses is record-breaking ticket prices. While the average ticket price for the Bruce Springsteen tour is an already hefty $250, thanks to so-called dynamic pricing, tickets have been on sale for as much as $5,000. And audiences — at least those who are able — seem willing to pay the extraordinary tab. No doubt fueled by the relative scarcity of big-name acts over several years, the concert has now achieved a new status. It’s no longer a casual entertainment decision, like a movie or a baseball game, to fill a summer evening. Instead, it’s more like a summer vacation: something you plan for, save for and splurge on, chasing the promise of a lifelong transcendent memory.
With prices and expectations this high, performers understand it’s not enough to come onstage and sing a few songs. You have to be spectacular. Beyoncé’s tour this summer boasts a giant metallic tank and robot arms, and Ms. Swift’s set is like a traveling Vegas production.
Those with the means who are persistent and lucky enough might just snag a ticket. For everyone else, there’s social media — and there’s been plenty this summer for online audiences to enjoy. TikTok exploded in popularity when everyone was confined indoors, so this is the first summer when TikTok’s viral potential has fully collided with an abundance of live music events. The prospect of thousands of cameras fixed on a performer’s micro-expressions transforms each show into a potential melodrama — and buoys the possibility that it might be interrupted by a rowdy onlooker. Online you can watch Pink’s puzzled reaction when someone apparently throws their parent’s ashes onstage, or the time a fan threw a vape to Drake onstage, presumably hoping he might smoke it. Another concertgoer foolishly threw a drink on Cardi B — who threw the mic right back.
Perhaps chasing a social media moment, artists are getting interactive with the crowds: Everyone from Harry Styles to Shania Twain is willing to lend a hand with gender reveals and coming-out announcements. Swifties have turned the Eras Tour into a must-watch drama, as the extremely online fandom has developed rituals around show nights, including “surprise song o’clock,” the point in the show where Ms. Swift plays two songs acoustically that are not on the original set list. Online fans tune in to hundreds of live streams of surprise song o’clock on TikTok and Instagram, temporarily joining the crowds to revel.
All the available online theatricality hasn’t kept people away from big tours, though — if anything, it seems to have upped the urgency of attending in person. It’s not just a concert anymore, it’s the chance to witness a viral moment that everyone will be talking about online. You might even be the one to post it.
Or, as I’ve experienced on multiple occasions, it’s a chance to step outside of life and feel overwhelmed in the best possible way. For all the extravagance of this year’s tours, I think our concert summer is being powered by a simpler idea: a reminder of just how good it feels to be in the presence of one another once again. At Ms. Swift’s concerts, fans bring dozens of friendship bracelets to exchange. Before the boygenius show, a fan created a TikTok group to help coordinate a secret project to surprise the band with a rainbow light display for Pride.
Halfway through the set at the Joni Mitchell concert, thousands of people turned their cellphone lights on while swaying to “Shine,” to create a moment that’s become familiar to anyone who has regularly attended concerts in recent years. But Mitchell, who has rarely performed since the ubiquity of cellphones, was deeply moved.
“You’re stardust, and golden,” she told the audience (paraphrasing her song “Woodstock”). “You look like a fallen constellation.”
Behind me, one woman remarked to her friend, “How can I ever take this cellphone light thing for granted ever again?”
Her friend replied, in a tearful voice, “Honestly, how can we ever take any of this for granted ever again?”
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