Taylor Swift is on tour and so is Beyonce while babysitters are making money for putting in longer hours than usual. The two singers are setting high standards with their The Eras Tour and Renaissance World Tour respectively by turning in performances that can hit the three-hour mark. People want their money’s worth and, it seems, anything around two hours is now considered short.
Take the example of K-pop stars Ateez whose concerts are usually two and a half hours while Aussie psych-rockers King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are expected to play a three-hour gig at Los Angeles Hollywood Bowl in June. British rock giants Cure performed 88 songs over three nights last December and each gig was just under three hours.
Marathon concerts are no longer the exclusive domain of rock legends. Musicians want to show their stamina on stage and this is a great way to display it. In comparison, 57-year-old Janet Jackson is putting up concerts that are under two hours.
Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour has just started
While singers do their routines on stage, there is another side to the story. Consider a Swift concert. Fans, who are across a wide age spectrum, are swapping in heels for something comfortable like Keds, the sneaker brand Swift once endorsed. Hydration method also changes for fans when it comes to long concerts — more electrolyte drinks. All this to listen to the singer perform a 44-song set.
If this is not enough to process, young musicians with a vast catalogue are doing better business. Swift is performing 44 songs while Beyonce has 36 songs to offer. Compare this with Bruce Springsteen’s average of 29 songs in 1985 and Bob Dylan’s average of 28 songs during the 1978 world tour.
But we would be wrong to say that Springsteen is not doing long shows. In recent years, he has even performed four-hour concerts. In 2016, he set a record for the longest US concert of his career by performing marathon gigs. In August that year, he played for four hours and four minutes, completing 34 songs, at Citizens Bank Park. It’s his second-longest ever after a 2012 show in Helsinki.
Yet, there is something different about the current gigs. “Sure, Springsteen and Prince played these legendary long shows, but they were not singing the entire time. They had bands, and a whole lot of instrumental work that extended out the show,” said Nathan Hubbard, former Ticketmaster chief executive and co-host of the Ringer’s Every Single Album: Taylor Swift podcast series.
Also, these shows are going against another trend — our short attention span, thanks to watching Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. It’s clear that we want something epic to remember and not the same old-same old 20-second videos. And artistes are planning it well to ensure that fans don’t nod off in the middle of a gig.