Concerts Are Making A Comeback
Harry Styles performing at Simmons Bank in Long Island, NY on November 4, 2021 (Photo:Erintheredmc/Wikimedia Commons).
Concerts are significant memories that live with us for life and they halted to a stop in an unsettling way in early 2020. Tours canceled, hearts broken just as the beginning of the new decade had hit. The pandemic hit the music industry directly putting concert crews out of work and venues out of business. According to the UK’s live music group as of 2020, “The live music business is shrinking four times faster than the rest of the economy.”
As the world adapted to the pandemic the music industry adjusted too with the reinvention of virtual concerts. Louis Tomlinson was scheduled to begin his first tour in March of 2020 and conclude the tour in September 2022. Though the pandemic thwarted the concerts,Tomlinson found a way to still give his fans a concert in 2020. On December 12, 2020 Tomlinson live streamed a charity concert from London on the concert platform Veeps selling more than 160,000 tickets worldwide.
The profit of $1 million was donated to four charities: Fareshare, Crew Nation, Stagehand and Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice (in Sheffield, UK). Along with Tomlinson’s touring crew receiving a portion of the profit from the struggle of the live music business being stopped for almost two years. The passion is in full swing despite the tough couple years to bring back the music industry. It is evident that live music means so much to music lovers.
As 2021 passed the opportunity to attend live concerts in person presented itself. Artists and venues are taking different approaches to providing covid-19 precautions and safety. Artists are making the judgment to have concerts predominantly in the United States. Harry Styles offers one example as he opted to reschedule his tour dates for September through November 2021 only in the United States. Styles required covid precautions with masks to be worn in the venue along with vaccination card requirement or proof of negative Covid-19 diagnostic test.
Music festivals like Lollapalooza that took place in the summer of 2021 tested how effective vaccinations at live events without mask requirements would be effective. For the four day festival there was an expected 110,000 people per day at the music festival. The results of the festival were surprisingly optimistic as out of the 400,000 festival attendees only 203 tested positive for covid-19. This provides faith in the protection of vaccination as an estimated 88 percent of festival goers were vaccinated.
Though there were many highs in 2021 for the future of bringing back normal concerts there was an unfortunate tragedy at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival in November. Prior to the festival opening its doors fans without tickets had stormed the event knocking down barriers overcrowding the festival. This was just the tip of the iceberg as later into the night during Scott’s set the large crowd surged towards the stage and in the process they crushed people at the front who were unable to escape the herd of people. As a result ten people were killed of compression asphyxia from the mass of people pressing into them.
Luckily this tragedy is an anomaly in the music world for other artists, however Astroworld seems to have a bad record of crowd control issues. At the 2019 Astroworld show, almost parallel to 2021,fans stampeded the gates before they were open causing three people to be hospitalized from leg injuries. As horrible as the tragedy was, it helped bring more awareness to artists to ensure the safety of their fans during their concerts.
Concerts reappearing means alot to fans of music including the Grandview Heights Students below:
“Music is very meaningful to my family and I. Every year we attend Com Fest together to experience live music. I have been lucky enough to go to three concerts in my life so far and am ecstatic to experience some this summer!” -Viessa Cantelmo
“I like to enjoy concerts because you really feel the connection between yourself and the artist on stage. As well as the people around you all gathered together for your love for the music. My favorite concert I went to was Louis Tomlinson in Chicago 2022. The experience of camping out for barricades on the sidewalk was definitely interesting ,but being so close to the stage was worth it,” -Andee Ely
“I have experienced 10 concerts in my life and can’t wait to enjoy more this year. I like being able to go with friends and be around people that care about the music and artist as much as I do,” -Charlotte Tucker
Concerts occurring normally in the coming months are exciting for music lovers all around the world. Concerts bond people together and bring all people of different backgrounds and cultures together to enjoy something they love. Which makes the emergence of normal concerts that exceedingly more exhilarating.