top 5 music tours

site categories

Sad oasis fans “could get to hear reunion gigs on live concert album” – report, breaking news.

The Top 10 Music Tours Of 2023

By Robert Lang , Tom Tapp

As in most other areas, Taylor Swift dominated the touring landscape in 2023. Her The Eras Tour grossed more than $1 billion , the biggest haul for any tour ever.

But there were other notable acts making big bucks on the road this year, including Beyoncé , Harry Styles and Drake .

Scroll through the gallery below to see who came out where on the list.

1. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

2. Beyoncé: Renaissance World Tour

$579 million

3. Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band 2023 World Tour

$379 million

4. Coldplay: Music Of The Spheres Tour

$325 million

5. Harry Styles: Love On Tour

$290 million

6. Morgan Wallen: Dangerous Tour

$284 million

7. Ed Sheeran: + – = ÷ x Tour

$268 million

8. P!NK: Summer Carnival Tour

$231 million

9. The Weeknd: After Hours ‘Til Dawn Tour

$220 million

10. Drake: It’s All A Blur Tour

$184 million

Must Read Stories

‘potter’ & ‘downton’ casts, breaking baz mourn stage & screen legend.

WB Discovery Hits Back At Sky UK’s Lawsuit Over ‘Harry Potter’ TV Series & More

Netflix suffers ‘baby reindeer’ defamation suit defeat as case moves forward, ‘wild robot’ eyes $35m opening; ‘megalopolis’ melts down, read more about:, subscribe to deadline.

Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.

Deadline is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Deadline Hollywood, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Most popular artists worldwide

• Trending artists worldwide

• Tourbox for artists

Search for events or artists

• Sign up Log in

• Get the app
• Moscow concerts
• Change location
• Popular Artists
• Live streams
• Deutsch Português
• Popular artists

Discover concerts for your favorite artists

Be the first to know about concerts, tour announcements & news based on the music you love

Artist Leaderboards

Discover tour dates, photos, videos, reviews and news from the most tracked artists on Songkick.

Pop • R&B

Hip-Hop • Pop

Hip-Hop • Funk & Soul

R&B • Hip-Hop

Taylor Swift

Country • Pop

Biggest tours of 2024

Check out the most anticipated world tours from the world’s biggest superstars.

Rock · Indie & Alt

Imagine Dragons

Indie & Alt · Rock

Billie Eilish

Justin timberlake.

Hip-Hop · R&B

R&B · Hip-Hop

Twenty One Pilots

Latest news & announcements.

Get up to speed with the latest concert updates and music news from the best artists on Songkick.

Martin Garrix

Electronic · Pop

Folk & Blues · Rock

Linkin Park

Rock · Metal

Gwen Stefani

Pop · Hip-Hop

Who’s trending right now?

Hottest artists worldwide.

These are the names blowing up across the globe. Get to know the fastest growing artists on Songkick.

Los Farmerz

Indie & Alt • Rock

Hottest artists in Moscow

Find out which artists are trending in your area, and buy tickets to their upcoming dates before it’s too late!

Mighty Birds

Top artists by genre.

Know what you like? Discover artists in your preferred genre, and check out their upcoming tour dates.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

The killers, kendrick lamar, nicki minaj, indie & alt, lana del rey, mumford & sons, arctic monkeys, jason derulo, alicia keys, top rated artists.

Dive into some of the best reviewed artists on Songkick, and find out what makes their performances so awesome.

Courtney Barnett

A mind-blowing live personality, a revelation! A huge spontaneous crush! Power, cheekiness, everything that can reinstate one in the love for women and music. A never again to be missed!

Mindblowing. Asskicking. No holds barred. Take no prisoners. These are the words that come to mind when I think about a Foals show. The first time I saw Foals was only after I had just listened to their song, "Spanish Sahara". Just that one song and my mind was made up. I needed to see them. Turns out that one song was merely a comma in the string of punctuations this band is capable of creating. That song is probably the tamest one they played, and I couldn't be more grateful. A strobe light show starts off their performance to the band members entering one by one. Then lead singer Yannis Phillippakis takes the stage, his signature black Travis Bean guitar in hand. He had a wireless setup for that guitar - a tipoff that I immediately recognized. This show was about to get insane. They ran through a few of their hits from their first album, "Mathletics", such as "Red Socks Pugie", and "Cassius". The crowd was in absolute hysterics. Ebbing and flowing with the music, people crowd surfing and ramming into each other. The song progressed into songs off their sophomore release, "Total Life Forever", where they played "Blue Blood", the aforementioned "Spanish Sahara", and the amped-up "Two Steps, Twice". Then mayhem. Yannis runs top speed and propels himself into the crowd (who were miraculously ready and caught him). All the while, Yannis continues playing his guitar. What happened next was a thing of beauty. Somehow, Yannis makes his way to the side of the venue and proceeds to climb up to the balcony level, and again, launches himself off into the crowd. In all my years, I've never seen someone with such a low fear of death or injury. Since this first performance I've seen Foals a number of times and they never disappoint. Even when they were added as a last minute addition to fill in for a band that canceled for Governor's Ball 2013, they managed to win over everyone at the festival, some saying they were the highlight of the entire event. Easily one of the best live acts I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. Without a doubt, I have never danced, jumped, and sweat so much than when I am at a Foals show. Do yourself a favor, drop any plans you might have and go see Foals. Well worth it.

Moses Sumney

Moses was amazing. Very enigmatic but still approachable, and he had a lot of fun with the crowd. The performance was incredible, his voice is truly something to behold. I've listened to "Worth It" a million times but still got chills when he hit the high note. Would highly recommend seeing Moses live, especially before he gets really famous and expensive to see.

Absolutely the best concert I was ever at, honestly I don't think any other artist could top this. She had such an incredible presence on stage, every eye was on her and her wonderful team. Dua and her dancers moved gracefully and fluidly, with bursts of power and energy. Her vocals were insanely beautiful, every word was sung with such passion and love. Her grand finale of IDGAF and New Rules was simply amazing, with breathtaking choreography and stunning visuals behind her. The band sounded great and the backup vocalists and dancers were on point for every minute. Without a doubt in my mind it was the very best live performance I have ever seen, and I don't think anything in the future will ever compare to it. Dua Lipa, Olympia Theatre, Dublin. Monday 9th April 2018.

Tyler, The Creator

I have been a fan of Tyler for a long time, as well as the whole group of OFWGKTA, and seeing him live was something I had on my bucket list. I went in with high expectations for his show, already knowing of how much energy and enthusiasm he puts into his live performances. What I got at The Forum went above and beyond anything I could have hoped for. The crowd was amazing, knowing every song and shouting and yelling along with unrivaled amounts of energy. Tyler was just as, or even more, energetic and knew how to work the crowd perfectly by interaction, be it between moments talking about random things or talking about his music and singing. I was blown away by the fact that at least twice he called to stop the song just to start it again because he loved how into it the crowd was and wanted to see it again. Of course we, the crowd, loved it and drained our lungs out with every lyric. I've seen the Arctic Monkeys, Sleigh Bells, Banks, Pendulum, Wolf Alice and others and can honestly say Tyler was the best overall. Everyone exited the venue with shirts soaked in sweat and with cracking voices, with grins on their face from having experienced something they'd never forget. If you like Tyler, or by extension OFWGKTA, you have to see him live if you get the opportunity, you can never anticipate how godly his live performances will be. I will definitely be waiting for his next visit to see him again.

Absolutely incredible!! Khalid was only my second concert ever and it has inspired me to see as many as I can. It felt like every song was played at 250% and it sounded incredible. The band was phenomenal and I could really feel the music. The crowd was happy and everyone was having a good time. I'd see him again if I could.

Music artists

For new users looking to follow their favorite bands and performers, our Artists pages are often the best place to start.

Whether you're on our site, or using our free app for iPhone and Android, the Songkick artists search engine is the fastest and simplest way to keep track of who's doing what right now. Be the first to learn which acts are touring, when they might be playing a venue near you, and how to get tickets for any future shows you like the sound of.

Looking to discover someone new? Hey, you’re our kind of music fan. That's why we've also included upcoming Live Stream Concerts alongside our artist searches, meaning you can easily schedule a more casual drop-in from the comfort of your couch.

Since launching our first app back in 2007, you guys - the fans, the concert-goers, the musical explorers - have been at the very heart of everything we do here. Our dream and our drive was always to bring Songkick members closer than ever before to the sounds they love, and the people who create them. Simply put, we pride ourselves on being your direct link to the greatest music artists on the planet.

Who are they, exactly? Well, according to our members, that changes almost by the hour...so let's talk about how Songkick keeps you in the loop.

Best live artists

A quick glance at our Most Popular Artists chart might tell you a few key things about the sorts of music fans we vibe with. For starters, it shows just how varied our members' tastes are. Pop, rock, dance, hip-hop, indie/alt and R&B all feature heavily, alongside a whole bunch of underground genres and rising scenes.

No two of you are quite the same - and frankly, we love to see it! Any time you check in, our 'most popular artists worldwide' and 'trending artists this week' leaderboards always read like a line-up for the greatest, most diverse live festival on Earth.

Among the top searches and best-selling music artists on our global roster, you might find anyone from Rhianna, Coldplay, Eminem and Ed Sheeran, through to Drake, U2, Kanye West,

Maroon 5, Beyoncé, The Midnight, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Taylor Swift, Calvin Harris, Imagine Dragons, Justin Bieber - and that's barely looking outside the top 20.

After all, if the weekly race for a spot on our most popular charts tells us anything, it's that the whole concept of 'best live bands' is a tricky one to pin down. Everybody's looking for a completely different type of experience, every night of the year.

That's another thing we love about our users: you're incredible at keeping us on our toes. In return, we’ve made it our mission to help keep you on yours.

Find and follow your favorite artists on Songkick

When people talk about the 'best live bands in the world', a few big names will reliably come up time and time again. Just as crucially, there'll always be a good handful of newcomers, hot tips and total curveballs in there too.

For us and our members alike, that's a huge part of what keeps the live concert scene so fresh and exciting. There's nothing quite like the thrill of discovering a new favorite artist you'd previously never even heard of - and when that discovery involves a performer blowing you away with an incredible live show or streamed concert, the feeling is enhanced tenfold.

Songkick started out with the goal of helping you capture that moment as often as possible. Now, more than a decade into this, it's 100% what we're still about today.

New members visiting our site or downloading the app can use our powerful search tools to stay ahead of the game. Simply log in with a user profile to keep tabs on more than 6 million bands, shows, festivals and live streams. By joining them, you'll be sharing a platform with 15 million fellow music fans worldwide, all using Songkick to:

Effortlessly track the best live artists

and hottest new tours, wherever and whenever they’re happening.

Follow anyone or anything

You like at the touch of a button, all via our up-to-the-minute global listings database.

Buy tickets with confidence

At prices the artists and promoters intended: no inflated costs or charges, no unwanted spam.

Find concerts near you

Popular in New York, NY

Central Park

Madison Square Garden

MetLife Stadium

Prudential Center

Barclays Center

Hammerstein Ballroom

Selling fast

Comedy Cellar

Vinny's Kendall Park Pizza

Pete's Candy Store

Beacon Theatre

Starland Ballroom

The Bitter End

Venues near you

Toyota City Mamaroneck - Mamaroneck, NY

Seaside Park - Bridgeport, CT

Eastern States Exposition - West Springfield, MA

Historic Crew Stadium - Columbus, OH

zMAX Dragway at Charlotte Motor Speedway - Concord, NC

Garrison Grounds - Halifax, NS

Fair Park - Nashville, TN

Port Everglades - Celebrity Summit - Fort Lauderdale, FL

Miami Marine Stadium - Miami, FL

Coachman Park - Clearwater, FL

Hard Rock Stadium - Miami Gardens, FL

Smoothie King Center - New Orleans, LA

Retama Park - Selma, TX

Central Park - New York City, NY

289 10th Avenue - New York City, NY

New York City - New York City, NY

Le Poisson Rouge - New York City, NY

Bhakti Center - New York City, NY

Parkside Lounge - New York City, NY

St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church - Kings Point, NY

Nimbus Arts Center - Nimbus Dance - Jersey City, NJ

Jersey City City Hall - Jersey City, NJ

Hoboken - Hoboken, NJ

BRIC - Kings Point, NY

Roulette Intermedium - Brooklyn, NY

Pioneer Works

Pioneer Works - Kings Point, NY

SOUK Yoga Studio - New York City, NY

Arlo Williamsburg (Formerly The Williamsburg Hotel) - Kings Point, NY

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library - New York City, NY

Eris - Brooklyn, NY

Concerts in New York, NY

Find tickets to concerts, tour dates and live music near new york, ny, never miss another show. explore upcoming concerts, festivals, and live music events with bandsintown.

Step into the world of live music with Bandsintown, your ultimate guide to finding concerts near you. From historic venues in New York City to intimate stages in Los Angeles, Bandsintown helps you find personalized concert recommendations from today's top artists and trending musicians you've yet to discover. Browse upcoming concerts, music festivals, and artists currently on tour, all  tailored to your music tastes.

With over 85 million fans, 600,000 artists, and 45,000 venues, Bandsintown is the world's leading live music discovery platform. We help concert-goers connect with their favorite artists. Be the first to know about newly announced tour dates, tickets, and everything live music. And, as one of the largest musical communities in the world, explore fan reviews, concert photos, and exclusive content that helps you stay connected to the music you love.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

Your guide to 2024's biggest music tours

From Olivia Rodrigo to the Rolling Stones, here are the most anticipated shows and festivals of the year.

Lester Fabian Brathwaite is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly , where he covers breaking news, all things Real Housewives , and a rich cornucopia of popular culture. Formerly a senior editor at Out magazine, his work has appeared on NewNowNext , Queerty , Rolling Stone , and The New Yorker . He was also the first author signed to Phoebe Robinson's Tiny Reparations imprint. He met Oprah once.

2023 was a banner year for music , with Taylor Swift and Beyoncé leading the charge and shattering box office records with their respective world tours (one of which is still chugging along).

This year promises its own crop of superstar treks. In addition to Swift's Eras Tour, Nicki Minaj, Bad Bunny , Olivia Rodrigo , Sabrina Carpenter, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Rolling Stones are all hitting the road. Plus, the Eagles have their farewell tour and Madonna continues to stir up controversy with her Celebration Tour.

Here, we present our roundup of the concerts and music festivals hitting North America in 2024 that you won't want to miss. Keep checking back as we update the lineup throughout the year.

Amy Sussman/Getty

Weezer Tour: Voyage to the Blue Planet Dates: Sept. 4-Oct. 11 Supporting: The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr.

Kacey Musgraves Tour: Deeper Well World Tour Dates: Sept. 4-Dec. 7 Supporting: Nickel Creek; Father John Misty, Lord Huron on select dates

Clairo Tour: Los Angeles and New York City Residency Dates: Sept. 6-Sept. 19

Cat Power Tour: Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert Tour Dates: Sept. 6-Oct. 5

Hans Zimmer Tour: Hans Zimmer Live Dates: Sept. 6-Oct. 6

Pulp Tour: This Is What We Do for an Encore 2024 Tour Dates: Sept. 8-Sept. 18

Angel Olsen Tour: Songs From the Archive Tour Dates: Sept. 8-Sept. 30 Supporting: Maxim Ludwig, Runo Plum, Kyle Ryan, Greg Mendez, Domino Kirke

Post Malone Tour: F-1 Trillion Tour Dates: Sept. 8-Oct. 19

Tommy Richman Tour: Before the Desert Tour Dates: Sept. 10-Sept. 18 Supporting: Paco

PJ Harvey Tour: North American Tour 2024 Dates: Sept. 11-Oct. 14

OMD Tour: Fall 2024 North American Tour Dates: Sept. 11-Oct. 20 Supporting: Walt Disco

The War on Drugs and The National Tour: Zen Diagram Tour Dates: Sept. 12-Oct. 12 Supporting: Lucius

Maxwell Tour: The Serenade Tour Dates: Sept. 14-Oct. 27 Supporting: Jazmine Sullivan, October London

Sigur Rós Tour: U.S. Tour Dates: Sept. 19-Oct. 4 Supporting: Wordless Music Orchestra

André 3000 Tour: New Blue Sun - Live in Concert Dates: Sept. 19-Nov. 14 Supporting: Carlos Niño, Nate Mercereau, and Surya Botofasina with Deantoni Parks

Julien Baker Tour: North American Fall Tour Dates: Sept. 23-Oct. 26

Julien Baker Tour: North American Fall Tour Dates: Sept. 23-Oct. 28

ANOHNI and the Johnsons Tour: It’s Time to Feel What’s Really Happening Tour Dates: Sept. 24-Oct. 19

Jim Henson’s Labyrinth : In Concert Dates: Sept. 24-Oct. 27

Clairo Tour: Fall North American Tour Dates: Sept. 27-Nov. 7

Justice Tour: Justice: Live Tour Dates: Sept. 29-Oct. 23

The Jesus and Mary Chain and Psychedelic Furs Tour: North American Tour Dates: Sept. 29-Nov. 9 Supporting: Frankie Rose

Billie Eilish Tour: Hit Me Hard and Soft : The Tour Dates: Sept. 29-Dec. 17

Buda Mendes/TAS23/Getty Images

Cyndi Lauper Tour: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour Dates: Oct. 18-Dec. 5 Supporting: TBA

Taylor Swift Tour: Eras Tour Dates: Oct. 18-Dec.8 Supporting: Gracie Abrams

Duran Duran Tour: North American Tour Dates: Oct. 21-Nov. 2

ZAYN Tour: Stairway to the Sky 2024 Tour Dates: Oct. 23-Nov. 2

Allison Russell Tour: All Returners Tour Dates: Oct. 25-Nov. 17 Supporting: Kara Jackson

Modest Mouse Tour: Good News For People Who Love Bad News 20 Year Anniversary Tour Dates: Oct. 28-Nov. 23

LCD Soundsystem Tour: Los Angeles Residency 2024 Dates: Oct. 31-Nov. 10

Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty

Shakira Tour: Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour Dates: Nov. 2-Dec. 15

Slowdive Tour: Fall U.S. Tour Dates: Nov. 2-Nov. 23

Caribou Tour: North American Tour Dates: Nov. 8-Nov. 25  Supporting: Yunè Pinku, Joy Orbison on select dates

LCD Soundsystem Tour: 2024 NYC Residency Dates: Nov. 21-Dec. 15

TV on the Radio Tour: 2024 Tour Dates: Nov. 25-Dec. 7

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Madonna Tour: The Celebration Tour Dates: Jan. 8-April 26 Supporting: Bob the Drag Queen

Billy Joel Tour: 2024 Tour Dates: Jan. 11-Sept. 26 Supporting: Stevie Nicks, Sting, Chris Isaak on select dates

Drake Tour: It’s All a Blur Tour – Big as the What? Dates: Jan. 18-March 27 Supporting: J. Cole

Mitski Tour: T he Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We Tour Dates: Jan. 26-April 13 Supporting: Tamino, Sunny War, Julia Jacklin, Sarah Kinsley, Cowboy Junkies on select dates

André 3000 Tour: New Blue Sun - Live in Concert Dates: Jan. 29-March 9

Enrique Iglesias, Pitbull, Ricky Martin  Tour: The Trilogy Tour Dates: Jan. 30-March 10

Gilbert Flores/Billboard via Getty

Red Hot Chili Peppers Tour: Unlimited Love Tour Dates: Feb. 17-July 30 Supporting: Kid Cudi, Ken Carson, Irontom, Wand, Ice Cub, Seun Kuti, Otoboke Beaver on select dates

Bad Bunny Tour: Most Wanted Tour Dates: Feb. 21-May 26

Olivia Rodrigo Tour: Guts Tour Dates: Feb. 23-April 9 Supporting: The Breeders, Chappell Roan, PinkPantheress, Remi Wolf on select dates

Jason Koerner/Getty

Nicki Minaj Tour: Pink Friday 2 World Tour Dates: March 1-May 12

Bikini Kill Tour: Bikini Kill 2024 Tour Dates: March 3-Sept. 11 Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Tour: 2024 World Tour Dates: March 19-April 21

LCD Soundsystem Tour: North American Tour 2024 Dates: March 21-May 27

Noah Kahan Tour: We'll All Be Here Forever Tour Dates: March 26-July 19

Kevin Mazur/Getty

Khruangbin Tour: A La Sala 2024 Tour Dates: April 14-Oct. 10 Supporting: Hermano Gutiérrez, John Carroll Kirby, Peter Cat Recording Co., Men I Trust, Arooj Aftab on select dates

Alvvays Tour: North American Tour Dates: April 18-May 18; Aug. 15-24 Supporting: Spllit, Horse Jumper of Love, Joanna Sternberg, the Beths on select dates

The Flaming Lips Tour: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 2024 Tour Dates: April 20-July 26

Hurray for the Riff Raff Tour: Summer Tour Dates: April 27-Aug. 3 Supporting: NNAMDÏ, Hannah Frances, Norah Jones 

The Rolling Stones Tour: Stones Tour 2024 Hackney Diamonds Dates: April 28-July 17

Justin Timberlake Tour: The Forget Tomorrow World Tour Dates: April 29-July 9

Festival: Coachella City: Indio, Calif. Dates: April 12-14; April 19-21 Headliners: Lana Del Rey, Tyler the Creator, Doja Cat, No Doubt

Theo Wargo/Getty

Foo Fighters Tour: Everything or Nothing at All Tour Dates: May 1-May 11  Supporting: Nova Twins on select dates

Pearl Jam Tour: Dark Matter World Tour Dates: May 4-May 30 Supporting: Deep Sea Diver

Gunna Tour: The Bittersweet Tour Dates: May 4-June 11 Supporting: Flo Milli

Maggie Rogers Tour: The Don’t Forget Me Tour Dates: May 4-June 22 Supporting: The Japanese House on select dates

Serpentwithfeet Tour: Grip Tour Dates: May 10-June 11 Supporting: Miles

Joanna Newsom Tour: The Strings/Keys Residence Dates: May 15-May 27

Anitta Tour: Baile Funk Experience Tour Dates: May 18-June 2

Bleachers  Tour: From the Studio to the Stage Tour Dates: May 18-June 15; Sept. 19-Oct. 4 Supporting: TBA

Lionel Richie and Earth, Wind & Fire Tour: Sing a Song All Night Long Tour Dates: May 23-June 16

The Japanese House Tour: United States Tour Dates: May 25-Aug. 15 Supporting: Skullcrusher, Miya Folick, Abby Holliday

Niall Horan Tour: The Show Live on Tour Dates: May 29-July 31

Sophie Ellis-Bextor Tour: North America Tour Dates: May 30-June 8

Soccer Mommy Tour: The Lost Shows Tour Dates: May 31-June 9

Festival: Lovers and Friends City: Las Vegas Dates: May 4 Headliners: Janet Jackson, Usher, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Backstreet Boys

Paras Griffin/Getty

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Tour: Can’t Let Go Tour Dates: June 2-Sept. 1 Supporting: JD McPherson

Janet Jackson Tour: Together Again Tour Dates: June 4-July 30 Supporting: Nelly

Alanis Morissette Tour: The Triple Moon Tour Dates: June 9-Aug. 10 Supporting: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Morgan Wade

Foreigner and Styx Tour: Renegades and Juke Box Heroes Tour Dates: June 11-Aug. 28 Supporting: John Waite

Jenny Lewis Tour: Joy’All Ball Dates: June 18-June 30 Supporting: Dean Johnson

Jessica Pratt Tour: North American Tour Dates: June 18-Oct. 3 Supporting: Tony Molina, June McDoom, @, Otto Benson on select dates

Blink 182 Tour: One More Time Tour Dates: June 20-Aug. 15 Supporting: Pierce the Veil

Kid Cudi Tour: Insano World Tour Dates: June 28-Aug. 30 Supporting: Pusha T, Jaden, and Earthgang on select dates

Jason Mraz Tour: The Mystical Magical Rhythmical Radical Ride Summer 2024 Dates: June 30-Aug. 11 Supporting: Ripe and the Molly Miller Trio on select dates

Festival: Roots Picnic City: Philadelphia Dates: June 1-2 Headliners: Lil Wayne and the Roots, Jill Scott, Nas, Victoria Monét, Gunna, André 3000, Babyface

Festival: Governors Ball City: Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NYC Dates: June 7-9 Headliners: The Killers, SZA, Post Malone, Peso Pluma, 21 Savage, Rauw Alejandro

Festival: Summerfest City: Milwaukee Dates: June 20-22; June 27-29; July 4-6 Headliners: SZA, Kane Brown, Mötley Crüe, Illenium, Tyler Childers, Keith Urban, Maroon 5, Lil Uzi Vert, AJR, Carly Rae Jepsen 

Beck Tour: Orch estral Tour 2024 Dates: July 3-July 30

Def Leppard and Journey Tour: Stadium Tour 2024 Dates: July 6-Sept. 8 Supporting: Cheap Trick, Heart, Steve Miller Band on select dates

Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire Tour: Heart & Soul Tour 2024 Dates: July 10-Sept. 7

Melissa Etheridge and Jewel Tour: 2024 North American Tour Dates: July 11-Oct. 5

Mannequin Pussy Tour: I Got Heaven Tour Dates: July 12-Aug. 4; Sept. 26-Oct. 26 Supporting: Margaritas Podridas, Ovlov

The Pretenders Tour: U.S. Tour 2024 Dates: July 13-Aug. 14

Foo Fighters Tour: Everything or Nothing at All Tour Dates: Jul 17-Aug. 18 Supporting: Pretenders, Mammoth, WVH, Amyl and the Sniffers, L7, the Hives, Alex G on select dates

Olivia Rodrigo Tour: Guts Tour Dates: Jul. 19-Aug. 17 Supporting: The Breeders, Chappell Roan, PinkPantheress, Remi Wolf on select dates

Phish Tour: Summer 2024 Tour Dates: July 19-Sept. 1

Kaytranada Tour: Timeless Tour 2024 Dates: July 19-Oct. 26 Supporting: Channel Tres, Sam Gellaitry, Lou Phelps, Kitty Ca$h, Amaarae on select dates

311 Tour: Unity Tour Dates: July 20-Aug. 31 Supporting: Awolnation, Neon Trees

Jamie xx Tour: The Floor Dates: July 23-Aug. 3 Supporting: TBA

The Flaming Lips Tour: 2024 Tour Dates: July 23-Oct. 12 Supporting: Weezer on select dates

Green Day Tour: The Saviors Tour Dates: July 29-Sept. 28 Supporting: The Smashing Pumpkins (select dates), Rancid, the Linda Lindas 

The Smashing Pumpkins Tour: 2024 North American Tour Dates: July 29-Sept. 28 Supporting: Green Day (as part of The Saviors Tour) on select dates

Ice Spice Tour: Y2K! World Tour Dates: Jul. 30-Aug. 31

Future and Metro Boomin Tour: We Trust You Tour Dates: July 30-Sept. 9

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Tour: 2024 World Tour Dates: Aug. 9-Sept. 15

Ms. Lauryn Hill and the Fugees Tour: The Miseducation Anniversary Tour Dates: Aug. 9-Sept. 21 Supporting: YG Marley

Sabrina Carpenter Tour: Short n’ Sweet Tour Dates: Aug. 10-Nov. 18 Supporting: TBA

Childish Gambino Tour: The New World Tour Dates: Aug. 11-Oct. 3 Supporting: Willow

Kings of Leon Tour: 2024 Tour Dates: Aug. 14-Oct. 5

Lucinda Williams Tour: 2024 Tour Dates: Aug. 16-Sept. 29 Supporting: Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs on select dates

Usher Tour: Past Present Future Dates: Aug. 20-Oct. 29

Pearl Jam Tour: Dark Matter World Tour Dates: Aug, 22-Sept. 17 Supporting: Glen Hansard

Mitski Tour: The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We Tour Dates: Aug. 27-Sept. 25 Supporting: Lamp, Arlo Parks, Ethel Cain, Laufey, Wyatt Flores on select dates

Crowded House Tour: Gravity Stairs North American Tour Dates: Aug. 29-Sept. 28

Kim Gordon Tour: The Collective Tour Dates: Aug. 30-Oct. 3

Sign up for  Entertainment Weekly 's free daily newsletter  to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• The 10 best albums of 2023
• The 10 best songs of 2023
• Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is first to ever make $1 billion

Related Articles

• Album Release Calendar
• Festival Guide

Rock Dominates Over Half of Billboard’s New Top 10 Highest Grossing Tours of All Time

In Billboard Boxscore 's updated list of the top 10 highest grossing tours of all time, rock holds on strong and dominates over half the list, with two other active tours by young and veteran artists bookending the ranking.

Top Grossing Tours: No. 10 - No. 5

One of those active tours is English pop superstar Harry Styles ' Love On Tour, which has been ongoing since 2021, raking in an impressive $418 million so far, which is good enough to secure the No. 10 spot.

Appearing next at No. 9 is AC/DC 's Black Ice World Tour, which took place from 2008 to 2010. Across 107 shows attended by 2.8 million people, the run grossed $442 million. Pink Floyd bassist and co-singer Roger Waters occupies No. 8 as The Wall Live took in $459 million after playing to 4.1 million people at 219 total gigs.

Coldplay , who are rock to some and not to others (we'll let you decide for yourself), brought in $524 million on the A Head Full of Dreams Tour, which made 115 stops in front of 5.4 million fans. That landed them at No. 7 on the updated list.

READ MORE: Report Shows Only 5 Artists Sold More Tickets Than Metallica Over the Last 40 Years

Coming in at No. 6 and No. 5 are The Rolling Stones , who earned $547 million and $558 million on the No Filter Tour (2017-2019, 2021) and A Bigger Bang Tour (2005-2007), respectively. Comparatively, the more recent run was comprised of 58 shows for 2.9 million people and the mid-2000s jaunt was a more exhausting 111 shows for 3.5 million fans. It's safe to say the Stones earn quite a lot more per show these days!

Top Grossing Tours: No. 4 - No. 1

One of the most attention-grabbing tours of the last decade was certainly the Not In This Lifetime... tour, which featured the return of Slash and Duff McKagan to Guns N' Roses . After playing 158 shows to a whopping 5.4 million fans, GN'R netted $584 million, which places them at No. 4 on Billboard's list.

There's a significant gap in gross sales from the first seven tours on the list and the top three, leaping from GN'R's $584 million all the way up to $736 million for U2 's 2009 through 2011 U2 360° Tour. The band played 110 shows on that run and a staggering 7.3 million people showed up.

No. 2 is another younger artist, English sensation Ed Sheeran , whose 2017 through 2019 The Divide Tour found him playing 258 gigs in front of 8.9 million fans. And $776 million was earned.

Finally, the No. 1 spot is claimed by a world-renowned legend whose tour is still ongoing, meaning these figures are going to keep increasing. Sir Elton John 's Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour initially ran from 2018 through 2020, but was interrupted by the pandemic. He got back on the road last year and, so far, this tour has brought in $853 million. The living legend's tour has sold 5.5 million tickets across 293 shows.

Past Touring Stats

In addition to tracking those top grossing tours of all time, Billboard regularly tracks the highest grossing tours of each year. Last year, the list had a healthy amount of rock and metal acts, from Iron Maiden (No. 26) through The Rolling Stones (No. 6). Read more here  and for 2021's year-end figures, head here .

The Top 25 Best Selling Hard Rock + Metal Artists of All Time

More from loudwire.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The 13 Best Concerts of 2023 (That Weren’t Taylor Swift or Beyoncé)

Let’s get this out of the way first: You will not find Taylor Swift or Beyoncé on this list. Yes, many members of the Pitchfork staff attended the Eras Tour and the Renaissance Tour and had incredible, even life-changing, experiences there. But we covered those world-conquering phenomena extensively enough already this year. So for our final staff list of 2023, we thought we’d turn our attention to some other favorite concerts. Here, you’ll find everything from Sweeping Promises in a tiny venue in Minneapolis to SZA at Madison Square Garden, Water From Your Eyes on a boat to Floating Points and Shabaka Hutchings at the Hollywood Bowl. Let the FOMO begin…

Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2023 wrap-up coverage here .

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul

“Let’s just ignore the rain! It’s just water, fuck it!” With the sun setting in Chicago, the precipitation sparkled like icicles each time the lights strobed out through Union Park. But Charlotte Adigéry, Bolis Pupul, and the crowd watching them at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival merely shrugged off getting rained on. We were all too tuned into every lyric, scream, and laugh to care. Equipped with two microphones, a couple of synthesizers, a bass, and some percussion, the Belgian duo performed a set composed of tracks from their breakout album Topical Dancer , including a particularly wild version of “It Hit Me” and a polished, funky “Ceci n’est pas un cliché.” I lost my shit on the final drop of “Mantra,” and all too poetically removed my makeshift poncho, taking the bridge’s words to heart: “What’s left is a clean slate so what’s next/Thank yourself, praise your body/celebrate and dance.” –Jaeden Pinder

Feist started her Multitudes show with a reassuring smile as she filmed the audience while walking among them; she ended it with her eyes closed, caught in a reverie, her silhouette repeated to dreamy infinity on a curtain behind her. In between, she reminded us why she remains one of the most arresting performers of the 2000s indie boom. It was part solo high-wire act, as she stood alone on a stage in the middle of the crowd, mixing her bittersweet acoustic songs with charming banter that made you feel like you were catching up with an old friend. It was part clattering rock show, as she led a full band and the audience through communal catharsis. It was part DIY multimedia experiment, adorned with abstract visuals that were created in-the-moment. There was some sleight-of-hand in the form of a mysterious journal filled with casually profound poetry. There were yelps for songs that soundtracked past lives. There were tears at this Mother’s Day show, too, when Feist talked about her young daughter and the ever-upward branches of family. The whole thing allowed onlookers to live in a limbo between raw emotion and premeditated performance for a couple of hours, a magical suspension of belief. –Ryan Dombal

Floating Points, Shabaka Hutchings, and Friends

A confluence of jazz heads, electronic heads, jam band heads, philharmonic heads, and crickets descended upon the Hollywood Bowl this September for a performance of Promises , the 2021 cosmic jazz concerto by Floating Points and the late Pharoah Sanders. Some called the event an hour-long prayer, or a communion with a higher power, and all I have to say is yeah that makes sense . On Instagram, Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points) said that they probably wouldn’t do this show again, and that there would never be an official recording of it. Does that make this performance more special? I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t thinking about the one-night-only angle as I sat in my seat and watched Miguel Atwood-Ferguson conduct the final sounds Sanders put on record before he met his creator the following year. Shabaka Hutchings, in what he said was his final performance as a saxophonist, channeled the spirit of Pharoah without attempting to replicate the unreplicable. On stage alongside Shepherd pawing at various vintage keyboards, analog synths, and tape echo machines were Dan Snaith (aka Caribou), Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet), Kara-Lis Coverdale, Hinako Omori, and more, offering a final eulogy to the saxophone colossus. I held my breath for long portions of the performance. I didn’t hear a single word the entire show—a nearly sold-out Bowl, around 15,000 people, let all the silence in Promises hang over the amphitheater in the September breeze. In that silence all you could hear were the crickets, and all you could feel was Pharoah. –Jeremy D. Larson

Lana Del Rey

In support of her self-mythologizing album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , Lana Del Rey went on a tour eschewing the coastal cities she’s often sung about for less ogled-over corners of America. That included Charlotte, where I took five types of transportation from New York City to stand under a full moon in a sea of fans with ribbons in their hair, gathered to see Elizabeth Grant perform. When she did, floating in a collared white gown on a stage set that felt part dusky jazz lounge and part Puccini opera, she rode on a series of swells: of her backup singers’ crashing outros, of her dancers’ circling movements, of the crowd wailing along to the Born to Die classics. A hush held for every crisp, stuttered “t” of “Bartender”—which Lana sang seated solo at a vanity mirror—as well as during that manifesto of wayward spirits, the opening “Ride” speech. The whole show felt choreographed to overwhelm even its star, and when Lana left the stage for the final time, she was carried off, swaddled in a white sheet. In the Uber after, I regretted not hanging around the venue parking lot, smoking and gazing at the highway. When the root of the urge dawned on me, it made me laugh: it was so Lana-coded. –Hattie Lindert

Rauw Alejandro

Rauw Alejandro’s 2022 LP Saturno was a high-concept tour de force built on galactic aesthetics, touches of Miami bass, and addictive ’90s freestyle samples. I had high expectations for the show, which I hoped would match the album’s retrofuturist visual world. At the Brooklyn stop in March, Alejandro didn’t disappoint, pulling out all the production flourishes. El Zorro has always been an athletic dancer, but this time the choreography was even more intricate (tellingly, the moves on this tour left him with temporary groin and shoulder injuries). As Alejandro and his crew of backup dancers popped and locked, an LED screen, which doubled as the stage, radiated color-changing neon lights beneath them. During “Lejos del Cielo,” a wire harness lifted him into the air; suspended and spotlit, he sang caramel falsettos. Mid-concert, Alejandro brought out the Jabbawockeez for a nostalgic dance number that warmed every cold millennial heart in the room. It was an impressive display of showmanship that confirmed the Puerto Rican pretty boy’s status as one of the most prescient creative minds in pop-reggaeton. –Isabelia Herrera

In late March, I joined an army of “shluts” to bask in the glow of our provocative princess: Shygirl. The UK singer transformed the historic Wiltern theater into a pounding West Hollywood nightclub with her twinkly pop confections. Stunning visuals bounced off the tilted mirror hanging above Shygirl, immersing her in a psychedelic world that paired perfectly with her glitchy sound. Early on in the show, she brought out Tinashe for the “Heaven” remix to mass queer euphoria–a brief glimpse of the tour that could’ve been . But the show didn’t lose steam after Tinashe’s swift departure. Two dancers joined onstage, flipping and spinning down free standing poles as Shygirl let out playful moans and gasps. It was a night of unabashed horniness, especially for my friend, who made several Grindr matches throughout the night. As for me, “anytime that coochie calls, I'll be on my way.” –Maria Eberhart

Sudan Archives

Violinist, singer, songwriter, and producer Brittney Parks came through town once before, in 2021, so her ridiculously high-energy set as Sudan Archives wasn’t a surprise. But this summer she arrived with the extra firepower of Natural Brown Prom Queen , her tour de force of house, R&B, hip-hop, and pop released in 2022. Alone on stage, in a mini-skirt and heels, Parks shimmied, belted, and sawed away virtuosically at her violin, winning over an early-evening audience awaiting guitar-heavy headliners the War on Drugs. For celebratory finale “Selfish Soul,” Parks was joined by what she called her first-ever backup dancers, students of a free ballet and dance program for Black and brown youth offered through a local nonprofit. Embedded in the movements of both Parks and the dancers was a feeling of spontaneity and promise that stood as a counterargument to so much of the top-down, blockbuster-dominated pop culture of 2023: If she can do it, so can they, so can you. –Marc Hogan

Sweeping Promises

After a stellar and bittersweet last-ever set from local punks Green/Blue, Sweeping Promises’ show at 7th St Entry, the tiny venue attached to the historic First Avenue club, began inconspicuously. Lira Mondal quietly sang the opening lines of “Eraser,” the first track of their latest album, Good Living Is Coming for You , before belting at full volume. Good Living is an album with built-in lo-fi muffle, but with no distance at all between audience and band, everything became infinitely more powerful: the bass grooves, Caulfield Schnug’s guitar solos, and more than anything, Mondal’s extremely powerful voice. The show happened days after the mass shooting at the Minneapolis DIY venue Nudieland , and the band, which came up through a similar network of DIY scenes and punk house shows, paid a solemn tribute between songs. It was a great performance for a community that needed to experience loud, excellent music together in a small room. –Evan Minsker

When SZA took the stage at Madison Square Garden, it was the rare opportunity to watch an artist ascend to arena goddess status in real time. SOS had been firmly ensconced at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for several weeks, its songs equally inescapable in the grocery store and in your TikTok feed; in order to maintain that momentum, SZA needed to prove herself as a can’t-miss live performer at one of music’s most storied venues. She pulled out all the stops, musically and visually: There was a jaw-dropping stage set featuring a giant boat, an even bigger anchor, and an airborne life raft that flew the singer around the arena as she tossed flower petals down to the crowd. There was a staggering display of range, from the in-your-face raps of “Smoking on My Ex Pack” to the lovesick balladeering of “Nobody Gets Me” to the pure pop of “Kiss Me More.” There were even guest appearances by Phoebe Bridgers and Cardi B. The show both started and ended with SZA perched on a diving board, mirroring the SOS cover . At the beginning, it was an image of loneliness and introspection, a woman surrounded by nothing more than her thoughts and the waves below. By the end, it was an image of triumph, as she looked out upon her vast and powerful kingdom. –Amy Phillips

The Bowery Ballroom turned into a 2008 middle school dance when TisaKorean came to town for his Silly Tour. In the crowd you could spot baggy outfits that would have had mid-aughts Atlanta on smash and snap dances that haven’t been done in New York since the last Yankees World Series win. On stage, TisaKorean was the human Energizer Bunny, as he churned through joints from 2017 to this year’s Let Me Update My Status . Along with his hypeman Mighty Bay, both dressed like NBA Street Vol. 2 characters, they passed out props like Solo cups to make it feel like one big house party and t-shirts so people could spin them in the air for “HeLiCoPtEr sWaG Pt4.Mp3,” naturally. At one point, Tisa and Mighty Bay changed into hot dog and taco costumes, and the crowd reacted like they had been waiting all their lives for that moment. –Alphonse Pierre

Unwound reuniting felt like a dream , even when their physical presence onstage at Chicago’s Thalia Hall proved otherwise. Red and purple lights brought a backdrop of arching tree silhouettes to life while the post-hardcore band dove through its catalog like 21 years had never passed. Unwound structured the set much like their albums, with some sections focused on quiet reflections and others on abrasive, emotional breakdowns designed to lure you into a place of introspection and then snap you out of it. Reunion shows aren’t obligated to be good; plenty of bands have made that obvious by now. But the care with which singer-guitarist Justin Trosper and drummer Sara Lund approached the project following bassist Vern Rumsey’s death was the most affecting part of it all. Watching Karp’s Jared Warren up there in Rumsey’s place, tearing through those unmistakable basslines with a taut aggressiveness that honored, but never outshined, Rumsey’s originals, was deeply entrancing. In a year of countless memorable shows, Unwound was the one that’s impossible to forget, just like the best dreams are. –Nina Corcoran

Water From Your Eyes

The boat looked like a 1940s barbershop had been reincarnated as a middlebrow maritime entertainment vessel. Old-timey and white, with tacky curlicue adornments and two peppermint poles in the front, the four-story Liberty Belle carried concertgoers along a scenic route from Manhattan’s Pier 36 around the Statue of Liberty. (A gaggle of drunken girls admired Lady Liberty like she was a gay-famous diva, shrieking “you’re so cunt!!!”) This was the Water From Your Eyes Everyone’s Crushed record release boat show, a four-hour choose-your-own-adventure as bonkers and funny as the experimental rock duo themselves. On board, you could load up a paper plate of baked ziti and empanadas in a carpeted area that screamed “bar mitzvah,” have an awkward run-in with a Tinder date who ghosted you a year ago (I survived), and thrash around as cool-kid bands of New York City, including Frost Children, blasted through hits in a dank purple chamber. Rachel Brown looked effortlessly cool, as they always do, singing “Barley” in a leather jacket and sunglasses. At some point, my friend’s weed fell out of their joint right as they were about to smoke it, which was just perfect. –Cat Zhang

Leave it to Yaeji to find new possibilities in the humble rolling office chair. Backed by dancers Madison Wada and Iliana Penichet-Ramírez, she spun and wheeled her way through the With a Hammer tour, with a scene-stealing appearance by the big hammer itself. The clever choreography (by Monica Mirabile) brilliantly visualized the album’s playful, start-where-you-are creative ethos, and a rapturous reception from the crowd in Los Angeles went a long way toward warming up a corporate-feeling downtown venue. In Yaeji’s house, it’s all about recognizing everything we can do with the tools we’ve already got. –Anna Gaca

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Newsletters
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Balance transfer cards
• Cash back cards
• Rewards cards
• Travel cards
• Online checking
• High-yield savings
• Money market
• Home equity loan
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Options pit
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing

New on Yahoo

• Privacy Dashboard

Top 20 Global Concert Tours from Pollstar

The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.

TOP 20 GLOBAL CONCERT TOURS

For free upcoming tour information, go to www.pollstar.com

Recommended Stories

No. 6 ole miss upset by kentucky in sec opener, 20–17, after missing game-tying field goal.

No. 6 Ole Miss lost its first game of the season, getting upset at home in its SEC opener by Kentucky.

Judge rejects Apple’s last-minute request for a deadline extension in Epic case

Apple tried at the last second to get out of producing a trove of documents by Monday as it was ordered to in its ongoing dispute with Epic, and was denied by Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson.

Hurricane Helene left millions without power. Here's how electricity outages can impact your health.

It's important to have a plan in place for a power outage, especially if you have specific medical needs.

College football scores, games, updates: Kentucky stuns Ole Miss in Oxford

The biggest game of the season is upon us.

Dull knives out! This mega-popular sharpener has been slashed to just $9

Over 23,000 shoppers say this gizmo makes the 'cut' — it even comes with a protective glove to keep you safe.

Judge is unimpressed by Apple's deadline extension request in Epic Games dispute

Apple faces a looming deadline to produce what it says are more than 1 million documents related to recent App Store changes. On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Hixson denied the company’s attempt to extend that deadline, describing the request as “bad behavior." So Apple's deadline is still Monday, September 30: “It’s up to Apple to figure out how to meet the deadline, but Monday is indeed the deadline.” This is just the latest chapter in the ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Fortnite-maker Epic Games, which has been fighting Apple’s App Store rules.

Author Q&A: Here’s how to navigate the complex world of Medicare

In his new book, Medicare and Social Security expert Philip Moeller explains why it's easy to get lost in the program’s complexity and outlines ways to make it work for you.

One of the best chef's knives we tested is down to just $39: 'A real workhorse'

Prepping fall produce is about to get a whole lot easier, thanks to this 'super sharp' blade and its nonslip handle.

Smelly fridge? This deodorizer (on sale for $22) can keep it fresh for 10 years

Step aside, baking soda — this stainless steel doodad is more affordable over time and, more importantly, really works.

Welcome to 'comfy town.' Population you— these all-season sweats are just $19

These super-soft, breathable loungers are so flattering, have pockets and come in 24 gorgeous colors.

30 of the top-grossing music tours of all time

A record-setting $10.4 billion was spent in 2018 on concert tickets around the world. Thanks to streaming services and the preference of audiences for singles,  album sales are down overall , but it's clear fans are still willing to pay to see their favorite artists in person. And their proximity to the artist doesn't seem to matter, as ticket sales are up in every venue from intimate clubs to massive stadiums.

Stacker has rounded up 30 of the top-grossing music tours of all time. These tours were largely played in stadiums, but a few included smaller venues. The data have been pulled from a compiled list of sources, and concerts have been ranked by the tour's gross (adjusted for inflation). While this is not a comprehensive list of all concert tours, it's the most accurate representation as of January 2019.

Two of the tours on the list are still announcing new dates, so if you want to be part of concert tour history, consider snagging tickets now while you have the chance.

ALSO: Highest-paid musicians in 2018

#30. Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $272,863,087 Total tour attendance: 5.50 million Shows played: 197 Year(s): 1987–89

The English rock band  Pink Floyd formed in 1965. Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright were students when they met and began playing together, but their famous "A Momentary Lapse of Reason” tour didn’t come until much later, toward the end of their time as a group. In fact, Waters had left the band by the time this Pink Floyd tour took place and was  replaced by David Gilmour .

#29. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Magic Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $273,464,451 Total tour attendance: 2.20 million Shows played: 100

Year(s): 2007–08

For many an instrumentalist, landing a job with  the E Street Band would be a dream come true. The band has backed Bruce Springsteen from his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” in 1973, but, contrary to popular belief, they weren’t always Springsteen’s band. They were merely a group of local musicians who came together for a paid gig (the album recording) and then ended up getting enough paid gigs after that (for both Springsteen and other musicians) that it made sense to become a band. From 2007-2008, the band joined Springsteen for a  23-songs-per-set tour that was called "euphoric” and "profound.”

#28. Bon Jovi: Because We Can

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $279,110,786 Total tour attendance: 2.66 million Shows played: 102 Year(s): 2013

New Jersey band  Bon Jovi appeared on the scene in 1980 with big hair and electric smiles. Jon Bon Jovi, David Bryan, Tico Torres, Alec John Such, and Richie Sambora made up the original band, which had hits like "Livin’ on a Prayer” and "You Give Love a Bad Name.” Their "Because We Can” tour was wildly successful, with the group  hitting multiple continents , but it was also full of drama, as  Sambora quit the band in the middle night, hours before their fourth show.

#27. The Eagles: Long Road Out of Eden Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $288,513,488 Total tour attendance: 2.0 million Shows played: 155 Year(s): 2008–11

One of the  most successful musical acts of the 1970s , The Eagles (originally composed of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner) set out on their "Long Road Out of Eden” tour in 2008. The tour  coincided with the release of their new album of the same name and featured other artists like The Dixie Chicks and Keith Urban.

#26. Paul McCartney: Out There!

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $291,414,474 Total tour attendance: 1.96 million Shows played: 84 Year(s): 2013–15

Ever since his days as a Beatle, Paul McCartney has been wildly popular. In 2013, he embarked on his solo  "Out There!" tour , during which he played 91 gigs, sang a total of 3,631 songs (an average of 40 a show)—including 13 that he'd never performed before—and  drank zero glasses of water while on stage.

#25. Billy Joel: Billy Joel in Concert

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $301,000,000 Total tour attendance: 2.07 million Shows played: 120 Year(s): 2014–present

One of two tours on the list that is still announcing new dates, Billy Joel’s "Billy Joel in Concert” tour so far has booked 16 dates for 2019. While on this tour, Joel has created a sort of  residency for himself at Madison Square Garden, playing one show there a month, as long as ticket sales stay high (already six dates at MSG have been announced for 2019). The first artist to do that, Joel also broke the record for solo performances at The Garden, previously held by Sir Elton John, when he played his  65th concert on July 1, 2015 .

#24. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: The Rising Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $301,677,551 Total tour attendance: 3.23 million Shows played: 120 Year(s): 2002–03

Another wildly popular Bruce Springsteen tour, "The Rising Tour” began a week after the release of Springsteen’s 12th studio album, "The Rising."  The album won critical acclaim for how well it captured the feelings and aftermath of 9/11. However, the tour didn’t get off to an equally great start—Rolling Stone  called the tour’s opening nights "inhibited," pointing to tech and tonal issues. Eventually, the tour hit its stride, bringing in $300 million over its 14-month run.

#23. One Direction: Where We Are Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $307,106,208 Total tour attendance: 3.44 million Shows played: 69 Year(s): 2014

After  finishing third on "The X Factor” in 2003, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, and Liam Payne found almost unprecedented levels of success with One Direction. Winning comparisons to The Beatles for both their popularity and their British origins, their "Where We Are Tour” was the group’s fourth and final tour as a complete band. ( Malik left in the spring of 2015 .)

#22. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: The River Tour 2016

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $319,972,060 Total tour attendance: 2.67 million Shows played: 89 Year(s): 2016–17

Bruce Springsteen went on tour with the E Street Band in 2016 to mark the 35th anniversary of his 1980 EP "The River.” There are a whopping 20 songs on the album, and Springsteen  performed it in its entirety at all North American tour stops. That set list, combined with a collection of his classic hits like "Born to Run” and "Thunder Road” meant that many of the shows  lasted upwards of three hours . His  longest concert ever took place during this tour, clocking in at just over four hours.

#21. Cher: Living Proof: The Farewell Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $320,710,513 Total tour attendance: 3.50 million Shows played: 326 Year(s): 2002–05

Cher is known for her extravagant concerts, with multiple costume changes, elaborate sets, dancers, and video montages. "The Farewell Tour"  was no exception . When the tour was announced in 2002, Cher claimed that it would be her last (spoiler alert: it wasn't), and planned a massive, glittery farewell for herself with an incredible 326 stops. While 3.5 million fans were lucky enough to attend the concerts, millions more were able to watch a televised special that  won three Emmy Awards .

#20. Celine Dion: Taking Chances World Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $326,058,136 Total tour attendance: 2.60 million Shows played: 132 Year(s): 2008–09

Celine Dion’s "Taking Chances World Tour” marked her return to the touring circuit after taking an extended break for her first Las Vegas residency, " A New Day... ” The tour was  directed by Jamie King , who also directed Madonna’s "Confessions World Tour,” and included lots of new material from Dion’s album "Taking Chances,” as well as several of her classics like "My Heart Will Go On” and "The Prayer.”

#19. U2: The Joshua Tree Tour 2017

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $329,889,628 Total tour attendance: 2.71 million Shows played: 51 Year(s): 2017

On a crisp fall afternoon in Dublin in 1976, Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. gathered in Mullen’s kitchen and  decided to form a band : U2. A half-dozen albums later, U2 released "The Joshua Tree” in 1987, which won them the Grammy for Album of the Year and spawned two of their most classic tracks, "With or Without You” and "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” In 2017, marking the 30th anniversary of their landmark album, the group embarked on their " Joshua Tree Tour ,” in which they played the entire song list in order every night.

#18. Madonna: The MDNA Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $333,024,687 Total tour attendance: 2.21 million Shows played: 88 Year(s): 2012

In 2012, Madonna’s "MDNA Tour,” which followed the release of her 12th studio album of the same name, was the highest-grossing tour of the year. It didn't  come without controversy , though. The tour opened on a cathedral backdrop with biblical scriptures booming from the speakers and men dressed as monks filling the stage, before quickly shifting into Madonna’s #1 hits "Girl Gone Wild” and "Material Girl.” Later in the show, Madonna pulled out a fake gun and "shot” multiple people, a move that didn’t go over well with some audience members.

#17. Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $345,700,000 Total tour attendance: 2.89 million Shows played: 53 Year(s): 2018

Taylor Swift began her career as a country artist; her self-titled debut hit shelves in 2006 and was full of twangy guitar and fiddle interludes. These days, she’s very much a pop artist, and her sixth studio album, "Reputation,” proves it. The  accompanying tour , which lasted for a large portion of 2018, also proved that she has a massive fan base whose members go to great lengths to support her. Swift's sets primarily came from the "Reputation,” album with only one or two classics mixed in.

#16. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood: World Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $364,300,000 Total tour attendance: 4.74 million Shows played: 390 Year(s): 2014–17

Unlike Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks is a huge believer in  playing the old stuff . The "Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood: World Tour" is a perfect example of that. Married in 2005, the country music powerhouses teamed up for this three-year-long party, singing hits from both of their solo repertoires, as well as some of their fan-favorite duets like "In Another's Eyes."

#15. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Wrecking Ball World Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $415,280,347 Total tour attendance: 3.65 million Shows played: 136 Year(s): 2012–13

The final Bruce Springsteen tour on this list, the "Wrecking Ball World Tour” has been Springsteen’s most successful tour to date. Grossing over $400 million, the tour was  his first in three years (a long break for the Boss) and his most heavily attended of all time.

#14. The Rolling Stones: Bridges to Babylon Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $421,181,298 Total tour attendance: N/A Shows played: 108 Year(s): 1997–98

Closing in on six decades of being " the greatest rock & roll band in the world ,” the Rolling Stones are one of the  oldest bands still performing today . Announced at a news conference  held under the Brooklyn Bridge , the Stones’ "Bridges to Babylon” tour supported their album of the same name—their 23rd U.S. studio album.

#13. The Police: Reunion Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $421,251,623 Total tour attendance: 3.30 million Shows played: 156 Year(s): 2007–08

Proving that we often don’t know a good thing ‘til it’s gone, The Police’s reunion tour grossed more than any of their heyday tours. The band reunited for 156 shows, playing their  final show at Madison Square Garden . Most nights of the tour opened with their classic hit "Message in a Bottle,” but the August 2008 show began with Cream’s "Sunshine of Your Love”—a moving tribute to the band who had played their own final show at MSG years prior. The last song the band played live together? "Next to You.” That was the first song on their 1978 debut LP.

#12. Pink Floyd: The Division Bell Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $422,597,665 Total tour attendance: 6.0 million Shows played: 110 Year(s): 1994

When Pink Floyd  played their final tour in 1994 , only two of the band’s founding members (Nick Mason and Richard Wright) took the stage. They were joined by David Gilmour, who became an official member in the late 1980s, and eight other musicians who filled the holes left by Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. This final tour was run in conjunction with the release of the group’s final album, "The Division Bell.”

#11. The Rolling Stones: Licks Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $423,574,349 Total tour attendance: 3.47 million Shows played: 115 Year(s): 2002–03

To  mark their 40th anniversary , the Rolling Stones released their first compilation album, "Forty Licks," which featured 40 of their most popular and beloved songs. They also went on a year-long tour, primarily playing the  songs on the compilation , but sprinkling in a handful of other band favorites.

#10. Madonna: Sticky & Sweet Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $476,474,639 Total tour attendance: 3.55 million Shows played: 85 Year(s): 2008–09

Her eighth tour supporting her 11th album "Hard Candy,” the "Sticky & Sweet” tour was Madonna’s  least controversial tour . Known for gimmicks like hanging from a cross, the "Sticky & Sweet” tour had none of that. It did include an impressive array of the pop diva’s most famous hits from her 30-year career, as well as some iconic dance moves, but it was perhaps the pop star’s most family-friendly tour ever.

#9. U2: Vertigo Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $483,515,954 Total tour attendance: 4.62 million Shows played: 131 Year(s): 2005–06

Concert films have become a major trend over the last several decades, and U2’s "Vertigo” tour was no exception. The tour, whose set list leaned heavily on the band’s most recent release "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” spurred three concert films: " Vertigo 2005: Live from Chicago ,” " Vertigo: Live from Milan ,” and " U2 3D .”

#8. Roger Waters: The Wall Live

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $493,336,432 Total tour attendance: 4.13 million Shows played: 219 Year(s): 2010–13

Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, embarked on a solo career in the mid-1980s. His tour "The Wall Live” has been called "one of the most ambitious and complex rock shows ever staged.” It also marked  the first time that "The Wall” had been played in its entirety since a one-off performance beside the (fallen) Berlin Wall in 1990.

#7. AC/DC: Black Ice World Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $506,821,305 Total tour attendance: 4.85 million Shows played: 167 Year(s): 2008–10

In 1973, Australian brothers Malcolm and Angus Young  founded AC/DC . They didn’t stay a duo for long, swiftly being joined, and left, by a variety of other musicians. Their biggest album, "For Those About to Rock, We Salute You,” topped charts in 1983, but in 2008 they were still going strong. Their "Black Ice World Tour” was significant for being  the last full tour of longtime vocalist Brian Johnson.

#6. The Rolling Stones: Voodoo Lounge Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $526,158,550 Total tour attendance: 6.34 million Shows played: 124 Year(s): 1994–95

For close to a decade, and through several of their other tours, the "Voodoo Lounge" tour was the Rolling Stones' top-grossing tour. It's a particularly impressive feat when you consider that the band, which by this time had been performing together for 30 years,  had just lost a member . Bill Wyman walked away from the band, saying that he was tired of touring and would no longer continue playing with the group. Beginning with the "Voodoo" tour, Wyman was replaced with the group's  current bassist, Darryl Jones .

#5. Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $546,023,369 Total tour attendance: 5.39 million Shows played: 114 Year(s): 2016–17

No matter your personal taste in music, it’s highly probable that you know Coldplay’s breakthrough single, "Yellow,” which climbed the charts in 2000. The British pop-rock band, fronted by Chris Martin, has had a series of wildly successful albums over the past two decades. In 2016–2017, their tour "A Head Full of Dreams” became one of the top-grossing tours of all time, showing just how big an influence the group has had on the music scene. The tour also spawned the group’s  only live album "Live in Buenos Aires,” recorded at the final show.

#4. Ed Sheeran: '÷' Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $556,500,000 Total tour attendance: 6.39 million Shows played: 205 Year(s): 2017– present

British-born pop singer Ed Sheeran  released his debut album "+” in 2011, and it instantly won him millions of fans. In a genius move, he signed with Elton John’s management team the same year, and the rest, as they say, is history. His third album "÷” was released in 2017, and the album’s tour began the same year. The tour has been far and away Sheeran’s best. So many fans are still demanding to see him that there are regular shows scheduled until August 2019, with the possibility of adding even more dates.

#3. Guns N' Roses: Not in This Lifetime... Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $563,300,000 Total tour attendance: 4.38 million Shows played: 159 Year(s): 2016–18

By the mid-1980s, the rock and roll scene had begun to feel a little stale. Nothing new, or exciting, or experimental had popped up in a number of years. But in 1985, that all changed when Guns N’ Roses hit the stage. Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan, and Steven Adler mixed elements of classic rock with metal undertones and slasher influences and brought something totally new to the industry. However, in 1993, the band began to splinter. Their "Not in This Lifetime…” tour marked the first time in over two decades that Rose, Slash, and McKagan shared a stage—something fans were clearly excited to see.

#2. The Rolling Stones: A Bigger Bang Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $674,547,559

Total tour attendance: 4.68 million

Shows played: 144

Year(s): 2005–07

For a few years, the Rolling Stones held the title for the top-grossing tour of all time thanks to their "A Bigger Bang” tour. Avid Stones fans claim that this is the group’s best tour, but it’s also one that almost didn’t happen. Midway through the tour, the Stones took a month-long break. While on vacation with his wife in Fiji,  Keith Richards took a hard fall out of a coconut tree and suffered a major concussion. Richards said he only "spent a couple of days” in the hospital; it later came out that he’d actually  had brain surgery to remove a blood clot resulting from the fall.

#1. U2: 360º Tour

Tour gross (adjusted for inflation): $820,194,986

Total tour attendance: 7.27 million

Shows played: 110

Year(s): 2009–11

The honor for top-grossing music tour of all time is held by U2. And this tour was big. Not only did the tour break the record for the highest-grossing tour, but the band's Oct. 25, 2009 date at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, also holds the  record for the highest attendance at a single concert with over 97,000 people. In addition, U2 had a  stage set that was 164 feet high that accompanied them to every venue—twice the height of the previous stage set record.

Trending Now

50 most meaningful jobs in america.

Top 100 country songs of all time

Best Law & Order SVU episodes

Best black and white films of all time

The 50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years

The list below was born out of some pretty serious arguments. Was Bruce Springsteen better in 1975 or 1978? When did Kanye hit his stride? Which was more awesome, “The Joshua Tree” or “Zoo TV”? The concerts and tours that made the final cut weren’t just huge spectacles, they deepened the power of rock & roll itself – from Neil Young thrashing out 20-minute jams with Crazy Horse to Beyoncé turning stadium glitz into a personal outpouring. “You’re almost levitating on the energy from the audience,” says Keith Richards. “And I miss it when I’m not doing it.” Here are the people who’ve done it best.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Worldwide Tour

Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 debut album, Are You Experienced, established his genius. The 200-some shows he played to support the album assured his legend. Backed by his ecstatically indulgent English rhythm section — bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell — Hendrix did nothing short of liberate the electric guitar, turning each show into a pyrotechnic exploration. “I thought, ‘My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid,’ ” Eric Clapton later recalled. For the U.S., the coming-out party was the Monterey Pop Festival, where Hendrix set his guitar ablaze, terrifying the fire marshal while leaving the crowd spellbound. As the Experience toured that year, they played alongside Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens in every type of venue, from theaters to biker bars. “We also did a graduation ball in Paris in March 1967, a really plush place,” Mitchell recalled. “There was an oompah band on before us, and they would not leave the stage. I remember one of our roadies, in a final act of desperation, pushing the trombonist’s slide back into his mouth – blood and teeth everywhere.” When the shows went right, however, Hendrix was a tour de force. His sense of showmanship went back to his years as a sideman with Little Richard; dressed in radiant psychedelic frills, he banged the neck of his guitar, bit its strings and played it behind his head. “With Jimi, it was a theater piece,” Soft Machine drummer and onetime Hendrix tourmate Robert Wyatt once observed. “The drama, the pace, the buildups and drops.” The peak Summer of Love moment came in early June, when the Experience played London. With the Beatles in the crowd, Hendrix opened with the title track from  Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had been released just two days earlier. “1967 was the best year of my life,” he declared later. “I just wanted to play and play.”  Kory Grow

James Brown at Boston Garden

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. In the aftermath, America burned. There were riots in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Chicago; Kansas City, Missouri; and other cities. In Boston, city leaders expected more violence to come. Amid this tension, James Brown, the most explosive African-American musician of the era, pulled off a miracle. Brown and his band were booked to play Boston Garden on April 5th. The city considered canceling all public events that night, but the concert’s promoter, local City Councilman Thomas Atkins, convinced Mayor Kevin White that calling off a show of that magnitude might lead to even more anger and violence. “If [his] concert had not occurred,” recalled local radio DJ James “Early” Bird, “we would have had the biggest problem in the history of Boston since the Tea Party.”

Frustrating to Brown was the decision to televise the show, a way of keeping people out of the streets that would also drive down ticket sales. “But he had an obligation to honor Dr. King,” says Brown’s saxophonist and bandleader Pee Wee Ellis, and after Brown obtained the fee he wanted, everything was set.

“The show went on just as it had in all the other places we had played,” says trombone player Fred Wesley. “It was a regular show.” Of course, in 1968, the “regular show” meant a display of raw energy and dynamic power unlike anything else in music. Dressed in a black suit, hair in a tight pompadour, Brown moved with lightning quickness, his screams rattling the rafters, as he drove the band through his hits. They did “I Got You (I Feel Good)” in a double-time blur, and “Cold Sweat” featured an incredible solo showcase for “funky drummer” Clyde Stubblefield.

Still, Wesley, who had only recently become a part of Brown’s band, remembers a palpable sense of fear among the band members, and tension in the arena: “We didn’t know if there was a war against black people, or if a race war was happening. As we got to the stage, we were still wary about what might happen.”

But what ended up impressing him most was what amazed him about James Brown every night: his ability to hold and command a crowd. As the set reached its climax during Brown’s dramatic “cape act,” young fans began rushing the stage, and white police officers ran in to restore order. Shoving ensued, and the moment of mayhem many had anticipated seemed to have finally arrived.

But Brown quickly interceded. “You’re not being fair to yourself and me or your race,” he told the crowd. “Now, are we together, or we ain’t?” Turning to Stubblefield, he ordered, “Hit the thing, man,” and the band launched into a furious version of “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me).” Brown was even joined onstage by Mayor White, whom he announced as a “swinging cat.” Brown exited the stage shaking hands with the people up front, as much like a political leader as a soul star.

In the weeks to come, requests for Brown to appear elsewhere poured in, including one to travel to Washington, D.C., to speak to rioters. In August that year, he’d release his monumental message record, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.” “I was able to speak to the country during the crisis,” he later said, “and that was one of the things that meant the most to me.” Almost 50 years later, Ellis is still moved by the moment. “I’m proud to have been part of that,” he says. “I’m pleased that it came off the way that it did.” Jon Dolan

Big Brother and the Holding Company American Tour

Like so much of Janis Joplin’s career, the tour to support Cheap Thrills, her 1968 album with Big Brother and the Holding Company, was a triumph wrought from chaos. On the eve of the tour, the ­singer announced she was leaving the band, leading to screaming fights with some of the musicians. Yet that very tension — combined with grueling album sessions that tightened what, as drummer Dave Getz admits, “wasn’t a tight band” — made for a riveting farewell. The combination of her wild-child rasp and Big Brother’s wailing blues rock proved transformative. “By the end of ’68,” says Getz, “I don’t think there was a singer in rock & roll who could touch her.” David Browne

Elvis Comeback Special

“Elvis was hardly ever nervous,” says drummer D.J. Fontana, remembering the NBC special that relaunched Presley’s career after years in Hollywood. “But he was then.” The highlight: an intimate sit-down set with his band, Fontana and guitarist Scotty Moore, that was almost like catching Elvis at the Louisiana Hayride back in 1954. “Performing with Elvis was amazing,” remembers Darlene Love, who sang backup for Presley on the show, “because we didn’t really know what to expect from him.” K.G.

Cream Farewell Tour

Eric Clapton ended Cream in 1968 after only two years, burned out and sick of keeping the peace between bandmates Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. But even as they were breaking up, Cream pushed the boundaries. “It had nothing to do with lyrics or ideas,” said Clapton. “It was much deeper, purely musical.” At Madison Square Garden, they played a wild, nearly 20-minute “Spoonful.” At San Francisco’s Fillmore, they played under the venue’s psychedelic light shows as Clapton, Baker and Bruce soloed simultaneously. As Roger Waters, who saw them at the time, put it, “It was an astounding sight and an explosive sound.” K.G.

Johnny Cash at San Quentin Prison

“I remember walking through two sets of iron gates, and when I heard them close, I thought, ‘Man, I hope we get back out of here,’ ” Johnny Cash’s guitarist Bob Wootton recalls of his visit to San Quentin prison on February 24th, 1969. San Quentin was (and remains) California’s oldest prison, as well as the largest death-row facility in the country.

That day, as Cash stood onstage in his usual black suit, he was greeted by a sight that might have frightened a different performer: 2,000 hollering, charged-up inmates. But Cash, who always felt a special connection to prisoners, seemed to realize the gravity of the moment. “John was very solemn that day,” Wootton says. “We all were. It reminds you how much you take for granted. John connected with [the prisoners] in a way I never saw him connect with another audience.”

Cash had played prisons before – including an earlier San Quentin gig and, famously, California’s Folsom Prison. His show at San Quentin in 1969 was a full-on revue featuring the Carter Family, the Statler Brothers and Carl Perkins, and was shot for British TV. He performed with steely intensity, when he wasn’t cracking jokes to his audience. In a sense, he became one of them.

Cash treated his set list more as a guide than as a hard-and-fast program, but ended up catering to the inmates with songs like “Starkville City Jail” and Bob Dylan’s “Wanted Man.” Cash also wrote a song for the occasion – the twangy, brooding “San Quentin.” Its first line – “San Quentin, you’ve been livin’ hell to me” – prompted hooting and cheering from the crowd. “One more time!” they called out. “All right,” Cash said. “Hey, before we do it, though, if any of the guards are still speakin’ to me, can I have a glass of water?” The crowd laughed, then booed the guard.

One of the show’s standout moments was “A Boy Named Sue,” which made its world premiere before everyone in the prison, including the band. “I didn’t even know he had the song,” drummer W.S. Holland says with a laugh. “Back then, we didn’t have monitors and couldn’t hear all that much onstage. John just started doing it. The first time I actually heard the song was [later] in the studio.”

“A Boy Named Sue” became a Number One country single and crossed over to the pop charts, clearing a path for greater success, much to Cash’s amusement. “I’ve always thought it was ironic that it was a prison concert, with me and the convicts getting along just as fellow rebels, outsiders and miscreants should,” he wrote in his 1997 autobiography, “that pumped up my marketability to the point where ABC thought I was respectable enough to have a weekly network TV show.” K.G.

Ike and Tina Turner American Tour

The Rolling Stones’ return to America in 1969, after three years away – a period that included Beggars Banquet and the death of guitarist Brian Jones – was what critic Robert Christgau described as “history’s first mythic rock & roll tour.” But on the 17-date spin through the States, time and again they were upstaged by their handpicked opening act, old friends Ike and Tina Turner and their combustible R&B revue.

The Stones met Ike and Tina among Phil Spector’s orbit in England. “I’d always see Mick in the wings,” Tina remembered of performances in the mid-Sixties. “I’d come out and watch him occasion­ally; they’d play music and Mick would beat the tambourine. He wasn’t dancing. And lo and behold, when he came to America, he was doing everything!” Jagger later admitted he “learned a lot of things from Tina.”

In the U.S., Ike and Tina won over a new audience with wild, sweat-drenched covers of the new rock & roll canon, including a brassy burst through the Beatles’ “Come To­gether” (“I said to Ike,” recalled Tina, “ ’Please, please let me do that song onstage’ ”). They spun through Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” and a high-octane version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” that, by 1971, would become their biggest hit. Their take on Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” garnered its share of attention too, thanks to an orgasmic bridge that eventually got even raunchier. “I don’t think it can go any further,” Tina said in 1971, “because, as they say in New York, it’s getting porn­ographic.”

At Madison Square Garden, Jop­lin herself stopped by to assist on “Land of 1,000 Dances.” By the tour’s end, writers couldn’t control their enthusiasm. “ Vogue said it best,” said Tina. “ ’They came to see Mick Jagger, but they saw Ike and Tina, and they’ve been comin’ ever since.'”  Christopher R. Weingarten

Led Zeppelin World Tour

Before the private planes, mountains of cocaine and allegations of black magic, Led Zeppelin were four blokes tearing a path through America for the first time. They hit the U.S. in late December 1968, just before their debut LP hit shelves. “I remember pulling up to a theater and the marquee said, ‘Vanilla Fudge, Taj Mahal and support,’ ” Robert Plant said in 2005. “I thought, ‘Wow, here we are: support!’ ”

Everyone knew their name soon enough. A month in, they unleashed a four-hour set at the Boston Tea Party. “We’d played our usual one-hour set, using all the material from the first album,” John Paul Jones said. “The audience just wouldn’t let us offstage.” Over 168 shows that year, as they unveiled new songs like “Whole Lotta Love,” Zep’s live fury and future promise came into view. “This group could become one of the biggest bands in history,” Jones said. “I hope we don’t blow it.” Andy Greene

Black Sabbath American Tour

When Black Sabbath landed at JFK Airport for their first U.S. tour, Ozzy Osbourne scrawled “Satanist” as his religion on the immigration form. Many who saw their shows – opening for the Faces, Alice Cooper and the James Gang – didn’t know what to make of the shaggy Brits. A turning point came at New York’s Fillmore East. “I tore my floor tom off the riser and threw it at the audience,” says drummer Bill Ward. “I was like, ‘Fucking move! Do something!’ Soon everyone was headbanging.” Relentless touring in Europe had turned Sabbath into a brutal assault force. “It was primal,” says Ward of the tour. “There’s a lower self that went onstage, and it was just dynamite.” A.G.

The Who at the University of Leeds

After 1969’s rock opera Tommy , the Who wanted to return to their raw roots with a live album. Pete Townshend hated the recordings they made on their U.S. tour so much he threw them onto a bonfire. But everything clicked back home in England, in front of 2,000 ravenous fans at the University of Leeds, where the band tore through 38 songs, including a nearly 15-minute “My Generation.” Townshend later called it “the greatest audience we’ve ever played to.” A.G.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse Winter American Tour

In early 1970, Neil Young had finally become a star thanks to the huge success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. During a quick break from that band and from recording his third solo LP, After the Gold Rush, Young decided to introduce his new fans to his other band, Crazy Horse – whose garage-rock thrash sounded the complete opposite of CSNY – on a run of clubs, theaters and the occasional junior-college auditorium. “When Neil plays with Crazy Horse, he goes into this other place and plays deep from inside,” says drummer Ralph Molina. “He becomes Neil Young, the real Neil Young.”

It was a sound no one had heard before. While other early jam bands like the Allman Brothers played with virtuosic professionalism, Crazy Horse produced raw chaos. Each night began with a brief solo acoustic set before Crazy Horse came onstage. Songs like “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” sometimes stretched to nearly 20 minutes, Young trading unhinged solos with guitarist Danny Whitten. “Danny had a strong musical presence, probably just as strong as Neil,” says bassist Billy Talbot. “We started doing songs longer, which Neil had never done before.”

In March, Bill Graham booked them at the Fillmore East for four shows in two nights, where they shared a bill with Miles Davis and the Steve Miller Band. Each night, Whitten sang “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” a song about scoring heroin, which he’d started using heavily around this time. One night backstage, Young wrote down the phrase “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done” on a sheet of paper. Within two years, Whitten was dead, and Young’s song about him, “The Needle and the Damage Done,” would appear on Harvest, the best-selling album of 1972. “It was such a loss,” said Young. “[It taught me] you can’t count on things. You just can’t take things for granted. Anything could go at any time.” A.G.

Elton John at the Troubadour

When Elton John took the stage at Los Angeles’ Troubadour for the first night of his six-date residency, he was a little-known 23-year-old pop singer with thick glasses and greasy hair who had only recently changed his name from Reginald Kenneth Dwight. When the show was over, Elton was a sensation. The stakes couldn’t have been higher: His debut LP, which had come out that spring, wasn’t selling. After what he called a “crisis meeting” with his label, it sent him to the States. The label made sure to pack the 300-capacity club with big names like David Crosby, Graham Nash and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. “The second night, Leon Russell was in the front row, but I didn’t see him until the last number,” Elton recalled. “Thank God I didn’t, because at that time I slept and drank Leon Russell.”

Neil Diamond introduced Elton. “I’m like the rest of you,” he said. “I’m here because of having listened to Elton John’s album.”

But those who had heard his album had no idea what they were in for: a poetic singer-songwriter with the flamboyance of a rock star. Album tracks like “Take Me to the Pilot” and “Sixty Years On” were played with a punk-like energy, Elton falling to his knees like Jerry Lee Lewis and knocking the piano bench over. The set also mixed in standards like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Honky Tonk Women.” And the rapturous reception he received encouraged him to experiment with even more adventurous stagecraft. “He seemed like a very quiet, subdued person,” says drummer Nigel Olsson. “All of a sudden, in front of an American audience, he started wearing Mickey Mouse ears and jumping up and down. That’s where all the strange gear started.” Unlike Elton’s debut album, which was packed with lush strings, harp and a synthesizer, he performed that night accompanied only by Olsson and bassist Dee Murray. “We just made a lot of noise,” Murray told Rolling Stone in 1987. “It was new. Elton was experimenting. Plus, we had to make up for the orchestra. We just socked it to them.”

Elton played five more nights as word started to spread around town: “His music is so staggeringly original,” Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn wrote. In the coming weeks, “Your Song” began climbing the charts, eventually hitting Number Eight in January 1971.

Forty-seven years later, Elton still looks back fondly on that first trip to America. “It was just all systems go,” he says. “Nothing was impossible. You’re working on adrenaline and the sheer fact that you’re a success. I still love what I do, and I’m 70 years old. I love it even more.” A.G.

Aretha Franklin at the Fillmore West

When promoter Bill Graham booked the Queen of Soul for his San Francisco venue for three nights in March 1971, no one was certain the matchup would work, including Aretha Franklin herself. “I wasn’t sure how the hippies reacted to me,” she said. As Franklin’s drummer Bernard Purdie recalls, “She’d been doing what you’d call Vegas-type shows. But this was a whole different audience.” No one needed to worry. With saxman King Curtis leading a band that included Billy Preston on organ, Franklin remade pop and rock classics in her own image — turning Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” into call-and-response gospel and reworking “Eleanor Rigby” as a funky stomp. The weekend of shows (portions of which were released a few months later as Live at Fillmore West ) had an appropriately glorious finale: On the last night, Franklin pulled Ray Charles out of the crowd. Though they’d just met that day, the two traded piano and vocal parts on an epic 19-minute version of “Spirit in the Dark.” “She turned the thing into church,” Charles said later. “I mean, she’s on fire.”  D.B.

B.B. King at the Cook County Jail

B.B. King was playing a regular club gig on Chicago’s Rush Street in the late Sixties when he was invited to do a show at the local Cook County Jail. “I knew the inmates would enjoy it,” said warden Clarence English. “And that would be something they’d be beholden to us …  If you give extra ice cream or let them stay up late at night, [they] don’t fight and destroy each other.”

King’s new manager, Sid Seidenberg – who was helping King score a career resurgence by booking him at venues like the Fillmore West – saw an opportunity. He told King to take the gig, and invited press and a recording engineer for a future live album (Johnny Cash had released the successful At Folsom Prison two years earlier). But what began as a commercial move became something much deeper. “I couldn’t help but feel the oppression,” King said later. “My heart was heavy with feeling for the guys behind bars.” With a full big band behind him, King belted burning takes on “Every Day I Have the Blues” and “How Blue Can You Get?” with a fury the loud assembly evidently connected with. The inmates booed when he took the stage, but by the end they were hypnotized. The show was released on 1971’s Live at Cook County Jail, a document of an electric-blues master at the top of his game. “There were tears in people’s eyes,” English recalled. “In mine, too.” Will Hermes

The Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East

The Allmans were still young, hungry Georgia rockers when they booked three nights at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in New York in early 1971 with the idea of recording a live album. “My brother always believed a live album was what the Brothers needed to do, and the record company finally agreed,” Gregg Allman recalled. “The Fillmore was just the logical choice. I don’t think we even discussed another venue.” The LP they made there, At Fillmore East, became their defining statement.

The Allmans were initially slotted into a bill headlined by Johnny Winter. But they came out guns blazing the first night, and when the hall emptied out after their set, they were promoted to headliner. With the band order duly shuffled, the Allmans had time to stretch out on spectacular journeys — “On those long jams, you climbed in and there was no tomorrow, no yesterday,” said drummer Butch Trucks. The gigs were hardly trouble-free. On the last night, a bomb scare delayed the start of the second show until the wee hours (“Good mornin’, everybody!” someone announced before “Statesboro Blues”). That early-a.m. set ended up becoming the keeper: “Whipping Post” sprawled over gorgeous melodic terrain for 23 minutes; “Mountain Jam” ascended for more than a half-hour. Atlantic Records engineer Tom Dowd oversaw the taping; unlike most live albums, nothing needed to be redone in the studio besides a few vocal overdubs. The LP went gold on October 25th, four days before guitarist Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident. “It’s the best-sounding live album ever,” said the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. “It’s just fuckin’ awesome.” W.H.

The Band at the Academy of Music

The Band’s 1978 farewell movie, The Last Waltz, is the greatest concert film of all time. But even that performance didn’t reach the heights of the Band’s four-night stand at New York’s Academy of Music at the end of 1971. The shows, which were released as a box set in 2013, captured the Band at their tightest and funkiest, injecting New Orleans R&B swagger into their harmonious folk rock. It was a period of high morale and expert musicianship for the sometimes volatile group, the result of a decade of hard touring, with Ronnie Hawkins, Bob Dylan and finally on their own. “There was a spell that everybody was doing really, really good,” the Band’s Robbie Robertson told Rolling Stone in 2013. “It was a roll of the dice after that. You just didn’t know what condition somebody was going to show up in.”

It was a moment the Band needed. Three years on from their groundbreaking debut, Music From Big Pink, their two most recent studio albums, Stage  
Fright and Cahoots, 
  had been greeted with 
lukewarm reviews.
 Aiming for some fresh 
energy, Robertson re
cruited veteran New
 Orleans band lead
er Allen Toussaint to 
put together a horn 
section for their holi
day gigs at the Academy of Music. It almost 
didn’t work out. To 
everyone’s horror,
 Toussaint’s briefcase 
full of horn arrangements was stolen on his way from New Orleans to the band’s Woodstock headquarters, where he was forced to rewrite the charts from memory. He wrote them in the wrong keys, and the Band had to relearn their songs in entirely new keys. Robertson recalled thinking, “We’re doomed.”

That anxiety lifted when they took the stage. “A chill ran through me,” Robertson said. “I thought, ‘OK, I’m feeling some magic in the air here. …’ As soon as we kicked off the first song,” he added, “we weren’t even touching the ground.”

The group set the tone with a taut, funky cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It,” and gracefully moved through its canon. The Band played with intensified warmth on “Unfaithful Servant” and “Get Up Jake” and jittery energy on deep album cuts like “Smoke Signal.” “We only did it once or twice,” said Robertson. “Levon [Helm] did an amazing job on it.” They turned “Chest Fever” and “Rag Mama Rag” into the stuff of a Crescent City street party, and returned to their roadhouse roots on Chuck Willis’ 1958 deep cut “(I Don’t Want to) Hang Up My Rock & Roll Shoes.”

The Band saved their biggest surprise for last. During their New Year’s Eve encore, they invited out their old friend Dylan, who had been out of the spotlight for years. Looking like his mid-Sixties self with aviators and a Telecaster, Dylan howled fiery takes of “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” pausing only to talk through the arrangements. “We were being a little bit bold,” said Robertson. (The horns didn’t accompany Dylan, though: “He looked over and saw us, jumped back from the microphone and glared over his shades,” says tuba player Howard Johnson. “I told everyone, ‘OK, let’s just get offstage.'”)

Months later, highlights of those shows comprised the dazzling live double LP Rock of Ages , which critics immediately called one of the best live albums of the Seventies. For drummer Helm, it was simply “the most fun I ever had making a Band record.” D.B.

The Rolling Stones North American Tour

Mick Jagger has a clear memory of being onstage in the summer of 1972, singing “Love in Vain,” the Robert Johnson song the Rolling Stones had recently reworked into a soul ballad. Jagger still marvels at the live version – particularly Mick Taylor’s searing lead guitar, which slowly took over the song and culminated in a minute and a half of mournful, melodic virtuosity. “He was playing beautifully at this point,” says Jagger. “It was chilling. It was so sad and haunting. And the horns were really just subtly there. The beats and stops were usually perfect. That was one of my favorites.”

The Rolling Stones were at the peak of their powers in the summer of 1972: Keith Richards was playing the most fearless rhythm guitar of his career; Taylor stretched out their music to improbable peaks; and Jagger stalked the stage, whipping his belt and perfecting his ability to turn music, as critic Robert Greenfield observed, into a psychodrama.

It was the band’s first North American tour since Altamont, the disastrous, deadly California festival in December 1969. Shaken by that debacle and the death of Brian Jones, the band hunkered down in the studio, recording three masterpieces: 1969’s Let It Bleed, 1971’s Sticky Fingers and 1972’s Exile on Main Street . Their Sixties peers – the Beatles, Bob Dylan – were less prolific, withdrawing from public view. In their absence, the Stones had only grown in stature. “After 10 years of playing together, the Stones had somehow become the number-one attraction in the world,” Greenfield wrote in his chronicle of the tour, A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones . “The only great band of the Sixties still around in original form playing original rock & roll … They were royalty.”

Both Jagger and Richards remember the excitement they felt ahead of the eight-week run. If the prospect of getting back on the road weren’t enough, the opening act on tour was a 22-year-old Stevie Wonder, whom Jagger made a habit of watching side-stage. “It was exciting, the feeling of anticipation – getting back in touch with what it is we did,” says Richards. Adds Jagger, “We were trying to get out of the studio, out of the South of France, and Keith had all these drug problems – so it was kind of good to get out on the road.”

The Stones’ office was overloaded with requests for tickets, priced at $6.50 (some fans sent in as many as 60 postcards each). A Dick Cavett TV special on the tour described the strange new phenomenon of scalping (plus the new concept of groupies). On opening night in Vancouver, 2,000 fans tried to force their way into the Pacific Coliseum, leaving 31 policemen injured – the first of several violent incidents. “That was in the day when people who didn’t have a ticket would show up,” says Jagger, “and be like, ‘OK, we’re here, we’re fucking going in.'”

Unlike the 1969 tour – which featured slow, slogging rhythms – the band played at breakneck speed. “Keith was doing that,” says Jagger. “I’m not trying to blame him for anything. He kept starting it.” Says Richards, “That was probably trying to catch up with lost time.” Songs like “Street Fighting Man” ran several minutes longer than the studio versions as the band ripped away. “We were probably searching for the ending,” Richards jokes.

For Richards, the highlight was playing the new songs from Exile on Main Street, recorded the previous summer. “Playing the Exile stuff for the first time was a real turn-on,” says Richards. After opening with “Brown Sugar,” the band tore through several Exile classics: “Rocks Off,” “Rip This Joint,” “Sweet Virginia.” Unlike later tours, Jagger hung around during Richards’ songs, howling away “Happy” into the same mic. “I always enjoyed doing that,” Richards says.

There were also a few throwbacks, including a horn-fueled version of “Satisfaction,” and “Bye Bye Johnny,” a Chuck Berry song that the Stones had been doing since 1963. According to Richards, they picked the deep cut for its rhythm: “There’s an interesting reverse beat going on that always intrigued us.”

On the road, the Stones encountered an older audience – one that ranged from about age 15 to 30. “There always used to be screamers, and they didn’t seem to worry much about the music,” Bill Wyman told Cavett. As a result, the band played with more focus. It helped that arena sound had improved: “Now you hear everything and you see everything, and there’s so much tension,” said Wyman.

For all the onstage professionalism, the backstage scene was as wild as any rock & roll tour before or since. The band traveled with the largest entourage in rock history up to that point – including a physician, label president Marshall Chess and a press corps Richards compared to a political campaign. The press included photographer Annie Leibovitz, and authors Terry Southern, Robert Greenfield and Truman Capote, who reluctantly joined for a Rolling Stone cover story. “For him, it was a social occasion,” says Jagger, who recalls Capote saying he hated the fact that Jagger wore the same clothes every night. “He would’ve liked it better now – I have such a bigger wardrobe.” (Capote never wrote his piece, claiming it “didn’t interest me creatively.”)

Jagger admits that the traveling party was “a bit distracting.” He had to watch his drug intake in order to perform. “I wasn’t on meth, out of my mind or anything,” Jagger says. “But I was having a lot of fun.” Richards’ favorite story “has got to be Bobby Keys and me nearly burning down the Playboy mansion,” he says. Staying at Hugh Hefner’s home, Richards and saxophonist Keys accidentally set fire to one of the bathrooms. “We were going through a doctor’s bag and we knocked over a candle,” says Richards.

At the same time, Jagger remembers “all these dark moments” on the tour. On the morning of July 17th in Montreal, dynamite exploded beneath one of the band’s vans, destroying equipment. “It was kind of scary because it was during the separatist movement of Quebec,” says Jagger. “I mean, it wasn’t just some random guy trying to blow up a truck.” The show, remarkably, went on that night, but a riot ensued when 500 fans with counterfeit tickets were turned away.

The following day, the band flew to a small airport in Rhode Island. As the entourage cleared customs, Richards took a nap on the side of a parked firetruck. He woke up to the flashing lights of a local newspaper photographer. “I just reacted,” Richards says. “I got up and hit in the general direction of the light and busted the guy’s camera. Things escalated from there. Then the fucking FBI got involved.” The photographer claimed he was assaulted, and Richards and Jagger were arrested and placed in a jail cell, while an unruly audience at Boston Garden waited. Fearing a riot, Boston Mayor Kevin White organized their release, and the band took the stage after midnight. “There was never a dull moment,” says Richards.

The offstage chaos was documented by the legendary photographer Robert Frank, who brought along a camera for a documentary that, as Jagger understood, would be “about playing and about music.” Instead, Cocksucker Blues was a cinéma vérité experiment full of lurid scenes: naked groupies having sex on an airplane, Jagger snorting cocaine, and groupie heroin use. The band blocked its release (though it became a popular bootleg). “[Robert] would initiate things,” says Jagger. “Most documentary filmmakers kind of get you to do things that you perhaps wouldn’t do if they weren’t there.” Jagger cites the famous scene where Richards and Keys threw a TV out of a Hyatt Hotel window: “Robert would probably say to Keith, ‘Keith, throw the TV out the window.’ They probably weren’t going to do that that morning.” But Richards disagrees. “Bobby Keys and I engineered that,” he says. “We called the cameraman ’round when we dismantled the TV. So that scene was directed by Bobby Keys and Keith fucking Richards.”

The tour wrapped with four shows at Madison Square Garden. Though the Stones had played 48 shows in only 54 days, they didn’t hold back. The July 25th show featured a sentimental sing-along of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and perhaps the fiercest “All Down the Line” ever played. “You almost feel like you’re levitating on the energy from the audience,” says Richards. “It’s a strange experience.” The tour ended the following night, on Jagger’s 29th birthday. Wonder joined the band for a raucous medley of “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” and a revved-up, horn-fueled take on “Satisfaction” (Wonder said he wrote “Uptight” with “Satisfaction” in mind). A cake was rolled onstage, and the show ended with a pie fight among bandmates. The afterparty, thrown by Ahmet Ertegun, included Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

It was the end of an era. Afterward, Richards slid further into addiction, and was arrested on heroin and gun charges the next year. In 1974, after only five years, Taylor left the band to go solo. The Stones’ next North American tour, in 1975, featured stage props like a giant inflatable phallus, and little of the ragged charm of the 1972 tour. “There were no sort of guidelines,” Richards says. “You sort of made it up and you went along. It was a good feeling, that tour. A bit frenetic and a little blurry, like an old movie, you know? It was a bit jerky.” Patrick Doyle

David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars World Tour

“I wanted the music to look like it sounded,” said David Bowie, who reigned over the moon-age daydream of his greatest tour as a crimson-haired, sparkly, makeup-slathered rock & roll space god. The music, thanks to the savage elegance of the Spiders From Mars, was even wilder, with an intense symbiosis developing between Bowie and chunky-toned guitarist Mick Ronson. “There was magic there,” says keyboardist Mike Garson. Ziggymania broke out across the world, and even as Bowie moved on, it never really stopped. A.G.

Van Morrison North American Tour

It takes an extraordinary band to top the studio versions of songs like “Domino” and “Cyprus Avenue,” but with the 10-piece Caledonia Soul Orchestra, Van Morrison pulled it off night after night. With horns, strings and blazing jazz chops, the band was ready to “take the songs anywhere Van wanted to take them,” says guitarist John Platania. “Every performance of each song was different.” Morrison was, as usual, lost in the music, getting so into it that he gave himself backaches – the platform shoes he was favoring at the time probably didn’t help. He rarely addressed the crowd, and kept his band on its toes with subtle gestures that sparked dynamic shifts worthy of James Brown. “He had these signals behind his back,” says Platania. “He would flash his hand and spread his fingers out. We knew instantly we had to bring it down and then build it up again.” Morrison was stretching out, toying with his phrasing, elongating syllables like a jazz singer. The band ended when the tour did – but it lives on in Morrison’s It’s Too Late to Stop Now, one of the most essential live albums of all time, recently released in a gloriously extended version. “We were sad to see it end,” says Platania. “But in those days, he would say stuff like, ‘The show doesn’t have to go on.'” D.B.

Patti Smith Group and Television at CBGB

Over a two-month-long residency, the Patti Smith Group went from art project to formidable band – and lower Manhattan’s CBGB was well on the road to becoming one of the most famous rock clubs in the world. Much of the material that ended up on Smith’s debut, Horses, came to life at CB’s, with Smith improvising poetic chants as the band brutalized simple chord patterns. “CBGB was the ideal place to sound a clarion call,” Smith wrote. Television, meanwhile, had just begun emphasizing the guitar-weaving tapestries they would immortalize on Marquee Moon . Rock history was being made at a club with no dressing rooms and an incontinent dog in residence – and the musicians knew it. “I remember one night standing outside CBGB, in the doorway of the derelict hotel next door, smoking a joint,” says Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, “and realizing that this was the kind of gathering of psychic energies I’d always dreamed of when, say, I would read about the San Francisco scene in 1966.” W.H.

Bob Marley at the Lyceum Theatre, London

Bob Marley’s two concerts at the Lyceum Theatre in London in July 1975 were more than just musically transcendent shows: They were the triumphant peak of Marley’s first proper tour as a solo artist and would elevate him from cult act to international icon – in part thanks to Live! , a concert document from the shows that gave him his first international Top 40 hit, “No Woman, No Cry.”

“Lyceum was magic,” recalls Marley’s friend Neville Garrick, the Wailers’ lighting designer and art director at the time. “It was an old theater, so the acoustics were proper. … They took out all the seats, and people were going from the very first song.” Booked in a small room to drive up ticket demand, the Lyceum shows sold out in a day, and roughly 3,000 ticketless hopefuls mobbed the streets outside the venue on Marley’s first night there, along with a phalanx of cops. Some fans nevertheless managed to tear the fire doors off their hinges and rush in, packing the room tighter still, shoulder to shoulder. It was so hot, condensation was dripping from the ceiling, and roof hatches had to be opened to let air in. Marley appeared before the crowd like a prophet in a denim work shirt, dreadlocks bobbing, and few moments in pop are as spine-tingling as the opening of “No Woman, No Cry,” the audience chanting the chorus like a hymn before Marley had even sung a word. Recalled bassist Aston Barrett, “Everyone onstage [got] high from the feedback of the people.” W.H.

Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue North American Tour

Bob Dylan could have played arenas when he toured to support 1976’s Desire . Instead, true to form, he did the unexpected: He booked tiny theaters with just days’ notice, charged less than $9 per ticket and took along a gaggle of friends – including Roger McGuinn, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Joan Baez. Dylan had started hanging around his old West Village haunts with buddies from his folkie days, and he wanted to take that nostalgic spirit on the road. “We all sing and sing and sing and laugh until we pass out,” Baez told Rolling Stone . “For us, it makes no difference if we just play for 15 people or 15,000.” Backed by one of his best bands ever (including guitarist Mick Ronson), Dylan stretched out shows for as long as five hours – with help from McGuinn, Elliott and others, who would do their own sets and join his. New tracks from Desire were mixed with 1960s classics (“It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Just Like a Woman”) and covers (“Deportees”). The shows were full of raw, spontaneous intimacy: Dylan duetted with his ex-lover Baez, did scorched-earth versions of “Idiot Wind,” and pleaded for the release of jailed boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. As Rolling Thunder participant Allen Ginsberg said, “Having gone through his changes … Bob now has his powers together.” A.G.

Grateful Dead North American Tour

“Our second coming,” says Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart of the band’s 1977 North American tour. Everyone knew the Dead could jam out infinitely. But that year they were discovering something new: that tight, songful concision could transport a crowd just as easily. “We had a lot of new songs and wanted to get at ’em,” says singer and guitarist Bob Weir. “And the only way to get at the next song was to finish the one you were doing.” Ironically for a band that had little use or patience for studios, it would be recording sessions that strengthened its live approach. Terrapin Station , the group’s most recent LP, was recorded with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olsen, who’d helmed their self-titled 1975 breakthrough; he forced the Dead to prep and rehearse more than they ever had. “Going in with Keith and having him organize and arrange all this stuff,” says Weir, “that gave us a solidity.” The results of Olsen’s whip-cracking became clear as soon as the Dead went back on the road — they tore into old favorites like “St. Stephen” and tried new combinations, like going from the fast-paced “Scarlet Begonias” into the churning “Fire on the Mountain,” and proved their newly honed chops could help sculpt jams such as the 10-minute “Terrapin Station.”

“We felt like rock gods,” Weir says. It helped that the band was in relatively good shape physically as well. “Jerry was healthy,” says Hart. “That was a big thing.” The high point took place on May 8th at Cornell University’s Barton Hall, regarded by Deadheads as the band’s greatest show ever. In the end, the 1977 tour completely changed the Dead’s sense of connection with fans, and their own musical purpose. “That was an era where it started to creep up on us that people came to hear the songs,” says Weir. “It finally dawned on us: ‘Oh, that’s what it’s all about.'” D.B.

The Ramones European Tour

The Ramones arrived in England with something to prove. The punk revolution had broken out in London in 1977, with the Sex Pistols getting wall-to-wall press and causing havoc. But no one in the nascent U.K. punk scene was ready for the precision-strike arrival of the Ramones. In his memoir, Johnny Ramone wrote that at a Pistols show on their first night in town in December ’77, “Johnny Rotten asked me what I thought of them, and I told him … they stunk.”

Three days later, the Ramones unleashed a furious assault on the audience in Glasgow, opening with “Rockaway Beach” and not taking a break until 26 songs later. Playing to a punk-crazed English audience pushed the Ramones to play their most intense shows. The tour wrapped on New Year’s Eve at the Rainbow Theatre, their 148th show of the year. “Probably the best show the Ramones ever did,” said Johnny. Amazingly, Joey had been singing through incredible pain; he’d suffered third-degree burns on his neck when a makeshift humidifier exploded on him. Said Ramones co-manager Linda Stein, “[Johnny] came to me and said … ‘Put me in a wheelchair and get me on a plane before I go insane.'” He wanted to be sedated. A.G.

The Eagles U.S. Tour

The career-defining two-year stretch of shows that followed 1976’s Hotel California saw the Eagles become a stadium band. Yet in an era in which rock shows were growing bigger and more impersonal, the Eagles’ studio perfectionists, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, found a way to recreate the feel and detail of their albums onstage, with every harmony and guitar lick seamlessly in place decades before backing tapes and Auto-Tune made that process easier. Hits like “Life in the Fast Lane” and “Take It to the Limit” were given almost impossibly pristine treatment. The tour itself was chaotic; at one point, bassist Randy Meisner and Frey got into a fistfight when Frey called Meisner a “pussy.” But you wouldn’t have known it watching their sets. “Some critic said we used to go out onstage and loiter,” Henley said. “I think we accomplished a great deal.” D.B.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band American Tour

It had been three very long years since Born to Run made Bruce Springsteen a national star. A bitter lawsuit filed against his former manager in 1976 left him legally unable to enter a studio for two years before making Darkness on the Edge of Town . “Prove It All Night,” his new single, stalled at Number 33 on the charts. Anything radio-friendly, like “Fire” and “Because the Night,” was held off Darkness to maintain the starker atmosphere Springsteen wanted for his set of songs about the reality of everyday working life. To many, all of this was evidence that Springsteen was in decline. So he did the thing he could do better than almost anyone alive: He went on tour. “With the burden of proving I wasn’t a has-been at 28,” he wrote in his 2016 memoir, Born to Run, “I headed out on the road performing long, sweat-drenched rock shows featuring the new album.”

Springsteen and the E Street Band played 115 shows across North America, the longest series of dates they would ever play in a single year. Even the soundchecks were grueling. “Literally, we would play ‘Thunder Road’ for a half-hour and Bruce would walk around and sit in every section and make sure the sound was as good as possible,” says drummer Max Weinberg. “Look, Bruce took his fun very seriously.” Not everyone thought it was so much fun. “I thought it was a little self-indulgent and a little bit silly,” says bassist Garry Tallent. “We would do four-hour sound-checks and then a three-and-a-half-hour show. We were younger then.”

Sets featured the majority of the new album, a big chunk of Born to Run and favorites off the first two discs, like “Spirit in the Night” and “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).” After so much time off, the band played with a stunning mix of pent-up energy and technical precision. “Anyone can be great on any given night,” says Weinberg. “To really be great every night takes a lot of willpower, a lot of dedication, a lot of self-confidence, a lot of respect for your audience – tremendous respect for the audience.”

Live, the songs completely transformed from their recorded versions. For “Prove It All Night,” the band added a piano and guitar intro that built to a furious climax, and “Backstreets” developed an emotional spoken-word interlude about lost love that eventually morphed into “Drive All Night,” from The River. “Even at that point, the whole thing was ‘You have to see them live – you can’t go by the record,'” says Tallent.

As the tour crisscrossed the nation, with five shows getting broadcast on the radio and quickly hitting the bootleg market, a new respect for the album took hold. “Night after night, we sent our listeners away, back to the recorded versions of this music,” Springsteen wrote in Born to Run, “newly able to hear their beauty and restrained power.”

One particularly great show took place at the tiny Agora Ballroom in Cleveland. Opening with a ferocious cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and wrapping up three hours later with a wild “Twist and Shout,” it became one of the most coveted bootlegs in rock history. “It was really hot,” says Weinberg. “Just sweltering. It was incredibly exciting. Then you just get on the bus and go to the next gig. It was like that about five nights a week with two days off.”

Word of Springsteen’s glorious return prompted CBS Records to mount a huge billboard of his image on the Sunset Strip, advertising the album and tour but making no mention of the band. “It was the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” Springsteen told a radio DJ. One night, Springsteen snuck up to the roof of a nearby building with Tallent and saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Armed with cans of black spray paint, Springsteen hoisted himself onto Clemons’ massive shoulders and wrote “Prove It All Night E Street” across the entire thing. “We didn’t deface it,” says Tallent with a laugh. “We corrected it. That was our way of letting people know to not expect the next coming of Christ. It’s just a rock & roll show.”

Darkness on the Edge of Town still wasn’t a commercial hit by the end of the run, but critics across the country hailed the tour as the best of the year, and the album remained at the core of Springsteen’s set list for decades to come. “[They] are perhaps the purest distillation of what I wanted my rock & roll music to be about,” Springsteen wrote. “[On the last stand of the tour] an exploding firecracker tossed by an inebriated ‘fan’ opened up a small slash underneath my eye. A little blood’d been drawn, but we were back.” A.G.

The Clash North American Tour

They called it the Pearl Harbour Tour, and they opened each night with a slashing version of “I’m So Bored With the USA.” For an English punk band trying to break through in the States, it was an interesting marketing approach. “England’s becoming claustrophobic for us,” Joe Strummer told Rolling Stone . “I think touring America could be a new lease on life.” With a touring budget of just $30,000 from their record label (most of which they gave to opening act Bo Diddley), the Clash stormed the heartland and made converts wherever they went. During downtime on their tour bus, they watched a VHS copy of Star Wars over and over. They hit the Palladium in New York in February, blowing away a crowd that included Andy Warhol and Bruce Springsteen. “Every country has one thing in common, which is they all listen to shit music,” said co-leader Mick Jones. “We’re here to alleviate that.” A.G.

Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ Tour

Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera, The Wall, was their most ambitious album to date, and when they took it on the road the next year they knew a traditional stage show would simply not do it justice. Pushing the limits of concert technology, they built an actual wall during the first half of every show, then played the bulk of the second half behind it, obscured from the audience. “Not much spontaneity,” said drummer Nick Mason, “but we’re not known for our duck-walking and gyrating around onstage.”

The logistics were so daunting that they staged it only 31 times across 16 months, hitting just four cities: Los Angeles; London; Dortmund, Germany; and Uniondale, New York. The most dramatic moment of the show happened near the end, when the wall came tumbling down. “The first couple of bricks would terrify people in the front rows,” said guitarist David Gilmour. “The audience would think they were going to be killed.” A.G.

Talking Heads ‘Speaking in Tongues’ Tour

It was an image that defined Talking Heads for a generation of music fans – skinny, nervous David Byrne on the Speaking in Tongues tour, struggling to dance in a cartoonishly huge white suit. “What I realized years before,” Byrne says, “is I had to find my own way of moving that wasn’t a white rock guy trying to imitate black people, or bring some other kind of received visual or choreographic language into pop music … I just thought, ‘No, no, you have to invent it from scratch.'”

Since forming in the mid-Seventies, Talking Heads had gone from CBGB New Wavers to one of the biggest bands in America. For the tour to support 1983’s Speaking in Tongues, their most popular album to date, they reinvented themselves, growing from a quartet to a nine-piece funk mob that included P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell, Brothers Johnson guitarist Alex Weir and vocalist Lynn Mabry. Byrne also took cues from the experimental visual-art world, projecting abstract slides onto a spare backdrop, creating a stark aesthetic to match the band’s driving, uncluttered funk. The suit was inspired in part by Japanese Noh theater.

What emerged was arty dance-party transcendence. Byrne and drummer Chris Frantz recall the two-night run at New York’s Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in August as a highlight. “Madonna had just released her first record; she was walking around barefoot,” Frantz says. “I saw Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall off to the side of the stage – she was dancing, Mick wasn’t.” The Greek Theater in Berkeley the following month was a similar bacchanal. “We’d begun to get the Deadhead crowd,” Frantz says, laughing.

In late 1983, the band decided to document the tour with a concert film, and teamed up with director Jonathan Demme (who would later win an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs ). “We didn’t want any of the bullshit,” says Frantz of the band’s initial idea for Stop Making Sense. “We didn’t want the clichés. We didn’t want close-ups of people’s fingers while they’re doing a guitar solo. We wanted the camera to linger, so you could get to know the musicians a little bit.”

Shot over three nights at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Stop Making Sense may be the greatest concert movie. It begins with Byrne walking onto a deserted stage with a boombox, setting it down, pressing “play,” then reimagining “Psycho Killer” for acoustic guitar and 808 drum-machine beats. His bandmates and backing musicians join him incrementally, song by song. “It’s cut down,” Byrne notes, comparing the film to the two-hour shows, “but there were no other substantial changes.”

The effect was so real, people actually got up and danced in movie theaters. “I’d never seen that before,” Frantz says. “Or since.” W.H.

Fela Kuti at Glastonbury

If anyone at the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival didn’t already know Fela Kuti, they soon learned why he was one of the planet’s most electric artists. Before his biggest international crowd to date, Fela played big-band Afrobeat that owed as much to James Brown’s funk as to the high life of his native Nigeria. Fela managed just two songs in two hours – but the grooves were so intoxicating, no one minded. “The love the audience gave was fantastic,” recalls son Femi Kuti, who backed him on sax that day. He left a legend in his wake. W.H.

Prince ‘Purple Rain’ Tour

On each night of the Purple Rain tour, Prince and the Revolution huddled backstage for a prayer. “It was a meaningful ritual,” says bassist Mark Brown. “The crowds were so loud, and it was so crazy, that we needed each other because that was the only thing you had: each other for support.” With Prince’s movie Purple Rain  catapulting the singer toward megastardom, the 98 shows he did in support of the soundtrack album were like Broadway productions. Prince began the show ascending from beneath the stage on a hydraulic lift, and went through five costume changes. “He had all these visual cues,” recalls keyboardist Lisa Coleman. “He’d throw a hankie into the air, and when the hankie hit the ground, that’s when we would stop.” At the Los Angeles Forum, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna joined Prince for the encore, which included a nearly half-hour-long version of “Purple Rain.” “He wanted to tower over everybody,” says keyboardist Matt Fink. “He was the Muhammad Ali of rock.” D.B.

Run-DMC ‘Raising Hell’ Tour

“There was no concept of charts and no concept of airplay,” says LL Cool J, describing the landscape for Run-DMC’s 1986 tour, which featured LL, the Beastie Boys, Whodini and others as openers. That underground status changed two months into the tour, when Run-DMC had a breakout MTV hit with their Aerosmith collaboration “Walk This Way,” from their Raising Hell album. “Motherfuckers in the front row started looking like the Ramones and Cyndi Lauper,” says DMC of the new white fans who came to check out their shows. “We got a bunch of Madonnas asking for autographs.” DMC also noticed that cross-cultural appeal working the other way as a predominantly black audience embraced the tour’s beer-spraying opening act, the Beastie Boys, then months away from releasing their debut LP, Licensed to Ill. “The Beasties were crazy,” recalls rapper Ecstasy of Whodini. “They created an illusion that they were happy-go-lucky and careless, but they were on top of their shit. They were the white Run-DMC.” Competition among the artists was fierce. “I wanted to chain-saw the audience,” says LL Cool J, who was 18 years old at the time. Toward the end of the tour, a riot at a show in Long Beach, California, provided fuel for negative media coverage. But Raising Hell’ s positive legacy is undeniable. As DMC says today, “When Obama first got elected, all my white friends said, ‘That’s because of what Run-DMC did.'” C.R.W.

Metallica Damaged Justice Tour

In 1988, Metallica released their pivotal album … And Justice for All and went from thrash-metal renegades to mainstream stars. But when their manager suggested an arena tour to support the LP, the band wasn’t convinced. “I was like, ‘Seriously?'” drummer Lars Ulrich recalls. “We knew we could do L.A., New York, San Francisco, but the American heartland didn’t seem like a great idea. No band as extreme as ours had ever done a full arena tour. So we used Indianapolis as a yardstick. If we were cool there, we were cool almost anywhere. When the tickets went on sale in Indianapolis, we ended up doing 13,000 or 14,000, which in 1988 was an insane victory.”

On the Damaged Justice Tour, Metallica learned just how many authenticity-starved headbangers were really out there. The band got the first taste of its transformative power in the summer of 1988 when it was booked onto the Monsters of Rock Tour, opening for Van Halen and Scorpions. At the L.A. Coliseum, fans responded to Metallica’s set by flinging their folding chairs at the stage to create a football-field-size mosh pit. “It was bonkers,” says bassist Jason Newsted, who had recently joined the band, replacing the late Cliff Burton. “For a kid coming off a farm and jumping into my favorite band, it was very dreamy. I didn’t sleep. Every day was another dream coming true.” He also got a lesson in how to conduct himself on the road. “I’d walk on the crew bus of a big band and there’s a pile of blow on the table in the front lounge,” Newsted recalls. “I look over there at my heroes, all red and swollen, and I’m like, ‘Guess what I’m not gonna do? That!'” The kickoff of the Damaged Justice Tour coincided with the success of Metallica’s anti-war-themed video for their new single, “One,” which quickly became an MTV hit. At the peak of bloated hair metal, Metallica were playing jagged seven-to-nine-minute-long thrash odysseys. But the crowds at their shows kept growing. “The kids know that at the end of the day there’s something very real and honest about what we do,” Ulrich told Rolling Stone in 1989. “You can’t take that away from us.”  K.G.

Madonna Blond Ambition Tour

As Madonna’s career was taking off in the mid-Eighties, most of her tours were relatively straightforward affairs, based around her singing and dancing. But for the stadium blowouts that supported her 1989 classic, Like a Prayer, she wanted to up her game. In the process, she reinvented the pop megatour itself. “I really put a lot of myself into it,” she said. “It’s much more theatrical than anything I’ve ever done.” That year, Madonna had caused a nationwide controversy with the video for “Like a Prayer,” which daringly mixed sexual and religious imagery. Blond Ambition extended that provocation and upped the spectacle.

The show opened with Madonna climbing down a staircase into a factory world inspired by German expressionist filmmaker Fritz Lang. She sang in a giant cathedral for “Like a Prayer” and under a beauty-shop hair dryer in “Material Girl.” And, most infamously, she simulated masturbation while wearing a cone-shaped bustier on a crimson bed during “Like a Virgin.” “The Blond Ambition Tour was what really catapulted her into the stratosphere,” says Vincent Paterson, the tour’s co-director and choreographer.

Madonna took a hands-on approach to the show, working with her brother, painter Christopher Ciccone, to design sets, and creating the costumes with fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. “I tried to make the show accommodate my own short attention span,” she said. “We put the songs together so there was an emotional arc in the show. I basically thought of vignettes for every song.”

Starting out in Japan in April 1990 and hitting the U.S. the following month, the tour grossed almost $63 million. But it didn’t go off without any complications: Madonna had to ditch the blond-ponytail hair extensions she wore early in the tour because they kept getting caught in her headset microphone. And in Toronto, the masturbation sequence almost got her and her dancers arrested in what became a bonding moment for her entire crew.

Madonna’s close relationship with her collaborators would be a major theme in the blockbuster 1991 tour documentary Truth or Dare, especially in memorable scenes where she invited her backup dancers into her bed. Today, Blond Ambition’s over-the-top intimacy is a staple of live pop music, from Lady Gaga to Miley Cyrus. In 1990, it was a revolution. “It was a kind of turning point,” says Darryl Jones, who played bass on the tour. “A lot of young girls were watching.” Steve Knopper

Public Enemy Sizzling Summer Tour

For the tour to support their groundbreaking LP Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy wanted a show to match their music’s combative assault. “OK, if we’re gonna fill a stage, everything’s gotta be moving,” leader Chuck D recalls of the band’s approach. They’d built their live rep on short, explosive sets. Now they packed an hour with Chuck as bullhorn MC and Flava Flav as his firecracker comic foil, leaping across the stage and diving into the crowd. In Houston, Ice Cube joined them to perform his guest verse on “Burn Hollywood Burn,” a song that became each night’s incendiary high point. “We didn’t need to use pyro,” says Chuck. “When I see acts use pyro, I’m like, ‘What lazy fucks.'” C.R.W.

Sonic Youth and Nirvana European Tour

In the summer before they released Nevermind,  Nirvana were still a largely unknown band. They booked a series of European festival dates, opening for their friends Sonic Youth — and witnessed for the first time their power to convert and ignite huge crowds. “It was passionate. It was reckless,” says Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, who also astounded audiences with their New York noise-rock. “[Nirvana] were going on at 2:00 in the afternoon, playing a 20-minute set. But there was this massive amount of pogo’ing going on.” With drummer Dave Grohl on tour with the band for the first time, and the new Nevermind material, Nirvana were received almost like headliners. Kurt Cobain biographer Charles Cross called it Cobain’s “happiest time as a musician.” Recalls Grohl, “Everything was still very innocent.” A documentary of the tour, 1991: The Year Punk Broke, captured Cobain spraying champagne all over a dressing room and Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic gleefully tearing through a backstage cheese plate. The high point for Moore was in Brussels, where security tried to stop Nirvana’s nightly ritual of smashing their gear, and Novoselic had to be pulled down as he tried to climb up the closing stage curtains. “It was,” says Moore, “the most perverse, deconstructed, psychedelic freakout concert I’ve ever seen.” J.D.

U2 Zoo TV Tour

For its first tour of the Nineties, the biggest rock band in the world had one simple goal: to completely reinvent itself as a live act. U2 had just given their sound a full-scale makeover with 1991’s Achtung Baby – a groundbreaking fusion of rock, pop, electronic dance grooves and krautrock – and they needed a tour that reflected their sleek, challenging new music. “We were drawn to anything that was going to give us a chance to get away from the Joshua Tree earnestness,” said the Edge, “which had become so stifling.”

The notion of U2 as the inheritors of rock’s social mission had been central to their Eighties stardom. But as the band was well aware, it was increasingly out of step with an era defined by groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, who cast a skeptical eye at sweeping Joshua Tree– style rock heroism. For the Achtung Baby tour, U2 were ready to loosen up and throw a dance party, albeit a subversive one, packed with multimedia images that were a clear break from the stark purity of their Eighties stage sets. “The tour was being conceived at the same time as the album,” Bono recalled in 2005. “Zoo radio was a phenomenon before reality TV, with so-called shock jocks such as Howard Stern. It was aggressive, raw radio, the precursor to The Jerry Springer Show. The world was getting tired of fiction. … We wanted to make a tour that referenced this zoo/reality phenomenon.”

Extensive cable news coverage was a fact of life by the early Nineties; during the Gulf War, images of Scud missiles raining down on Iraq became dinnertime entertainment. U2 essentially turned the Zoo TV set into a postmodern art installation that reflected the numbing cacophony of the cable-TV era, playing in front of a mosaic of TV screens that mashed up war footage with old sitcoms, cooking shows and everything in between.

Bono, meanwhile, came up with a new, sly persona to match the new stage set. He donned an Elvis-style leather jacket, wraparound sunglasses and leather pants that evoked Jim Morrison. He took this rock star amalgamation and created a character called the Fly. “When I put on those glasses, anything goes,” Bono told Rolling Stone . “The character is just on the edge of lunacy. It’s megalomania and paranoia.”

Zoo TV opened in Florida on February 29th, 1992. If the staging and Bono’s wild get-up weren’t enough indications this was a new U2, the band kicked things off with eight consecutive songs from Achtung Baby. “People went for it,” Bono said to Rolling Stone later that year. “The first show, you just didn’t know. ‘How is this going to go down?’ And they went for it. I think our audiences are smart and that they expect us to push and pull them a bit. They had to swallow blues on Rattle and Hum, for God’s sake! They can take it.”

The tour’s first leg coincided with the 1992 presidential race, and every night from the stage Bono called the White House and asked to speak with President Bush. “Operator Two and I had a great relationship,” Bono said. “She tried not to show it, but I could tell she was very amused, as we rang her night after night.”

Bush never took the call, but a young Arkansas governor was all too happy to talk to the band. U2 met with Bill Clinton in Chicago in September 1992 during the tour and forged what became an enduring relationship. The sitting president was unmoved. “I have nothing against U2,” Bush told a crowd in Bowling Green, Ohio, that month. “You may not know this, but they tried to call me at the White House every night during their concert. But the next time we face a foreign-policy crisis, I will work with John Major and Boris Yeltsin, and Bill Clinton can consult with Boy George.”

For opening acts, U2 chose artists who enhanced the idea of the band as a gathering point for pop music in an increasingly fragmented era – from Public Enemy to the Ramones, Velvet Underground and Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder was initially skeptical about the scale of Zoo TV, but he came around. “[I eventually] understood that these weren’t decisions they were making out of fashion or simply being clever,” Vedder said. “It was like an edict they’d created as a new philosophy for the group, to really explore the avenues of connecting to people on a large level.”

During a break in early 1993, U2 recorded Zooropa, which took the experiments of Achtung Baby further. When the tour resumed, Bono devised a new character: MacPhisto, a devilish figure with white face paint and horns. “The character was a great device for saying the opposite of what you meant,” said the Edge. “One highlight was calling the minister of fisheries in Norway, young Jan Henri Olsen, to congratulate him on whaling, which was forbidden by the European Union but legal in Norway. He actually took the call and invited Bono to come and have a whale steak with him.”

Those phone calls became a major part of each performance – some nights Bono ordered pizzas for the crowd; on another he rang Madonna on her cellphone (she didn’t pick up). As venues got bigger, U2 kept things intimate by adding a miniset to the show, playing on a tiny stage.

The wall-to-wall video screens also set the scene for every pop spectacle that followed, from Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball to Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark Tour. “Zoo TV wasn’t a set piece, it was a state of mind,” said the Edge. For Bono, the experience was life-changing: “I’ve had to stop ‘not drinking.’ I’ve had to smoke incessantly. I’ve learned to be insincere. I’ve learned to lie. I’ve never felt better!” A.G.

Radiohead at Glastonbury

The scene Radiohead encountered at 1997’s Glastonbury Festival looked more like a war zone than a concert. It had been pouring rain for days, forcing the 90,000 fans at the remote field in Somerset, England, to live like refugees in a monsoon. Two stages sank into the mud, and some fans actually came down with the World War I–era malady trench foot. Early in Radiohead’s set, Thom Yorke’s monitor melted down. The lighting rig was shining directly into his face, meaning he couldn’t see in addition to being unable to hear himself play. “If I’d found the guy who was running the PA system that day,” Yorke told a journalist , “I would have gone backstage and throttled him. Everything was going wrong. Everything blew up.”

Weeks after releasing their career-defining album, OK Computer , it looked like Radiohead might flop during a headlining set at the world’s biggest music festival. Instead, the chaos inspired one of the band’s greatest performances. Rage poured through Yorke all night long, giving extra fire to eight songs from  OK Computer, plus nearly all of The Bends —  and even a crowd-pleasing version of their first hit, “Creep.” It was a transcendent performance, even if Yorke didn’t realize it at the time. “I thundered offstage at the end, really ready to kill,” he said. “And my girlfriend grabbed me, made me stop, and said, ‘Listen!’ And the crowd were just going wild. It was amazing.” In 2006, Q magazine voted it the greatest concert in British history. A.G.

Sleater-Kinney American Tour

In early 1997, the most exciting new band in rock was a trio of young women driving their own van across the country, with only their friend Tim along as a roadie. “We’d get to the club,” recalls Sleater-Kinney singer-guitarist Corin Tucker, “and the sound man would be like, ‘Wait. You’re the band? You? You girls?'” But playing songs from its album Dig Me Out, the group bulldozed the staid indie-rock scene with unbridled punk-rock exuberance. “In Atlanta, 10 women got onstage and took their shirts off and danced with us,” says co-leader Carrie Brownstein. “I don’t know if they’d ever felt that freedom before, and I was really proud to provide the soundtrack for that.” J.D.

Pearl Jam American Tour

By the mid-Nineties, Pearl Jam were in serious danger of imploding, thanks to intraband tensions and a self-defeating war against Ticketmaster that had left them almost unable to tour. But they started over with 1998’s aptly named Yield, their most collaborative album yet, and when they hit the road with a new drummer, Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron, the shows fulfilled their promise as one of rock’s all-time great live acts. New tracks (“Given to Fly,” “Do the Evolution”) were instant crowd favorites, and classics like “Alive” sounded bigger than ever. “We’re making up for lost time here,” Eddie Vedder told the crowd one night. “Thanks for waiting.” A.G. 

Phish at Big Cypress

For Phish’s Trey Anastasio, this colossal one-band festival, at a South Florida Native American reservation, was “the culmination” of the band’s first run. “Eighty thousand people came from all over,” he said, “and virtually nothing went wrong.” The fest’s final set began around midnight, and went on for more than seven hours, displaying every side of peak Phish, a singular mix of in-joke quirks and ESP-level improv. Toward the end came an unforgettable take on the “Sunrise” section of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” played as the sun actually rose. “I will never listen to that tape because I know what a letdown it would be compared to what it was actually like,” Anastasio said. “When that sun came up, and the sky was blazing pink, it was an indescribable moment.”  W.H.

Brian Wilson at the Royal Festival Hall

For decades, Brian Wilson avoided even talking about Smile , the psychedelic follow-up to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds he shelved under the stresses of drug abuse and psychiatric problems. At a 2002 Pet Sounds show in London, though, someone said to the promoter, “How can we possibly top this?” The idea of a Smile tour came up. “We all kind of chuckled,” says Wilson keyboardist Darian Sahanaja. But 20 months later, after poring over the old Smile tapes, Wilson walked onstage and finally delivered on his decades-old promise of a “teenage symphony to God,” bringing rock’s most famous unheard album back to life. From the first celestial harmonies of “Our Prayer” much of the audience was in tears. Backstage afterward, Wilson was exultant, shouting, “I did it!”  A.G.

Daft Punk Alive Tour

In the early aughts, electronic-dance live “performances” were rarely more than one or two dudes nodding their heads around laptops. All that changed at Coachella on April 29th, 2006, when Daft Punk unveiled their genre’s most dazzling musical spectacle. In the overheated, overcrowded darkness of the festival’s Sahara Tent, two helmeted, robot-like figures – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – stood inside a 24-foot aluminum pyramid covered in high-intensity LED panels and performed their catalog as a megamix to nearly 40,000 fans. “It was the most synced-up we ever felt,” Bangalter said. What might have been a legendary one-off became a 2007 tour that blew minds across Europe, the U.S., Japan and Australia, inspiring the likes of Skrillex and untold others . W.H.

Leonard Cohen Worldwide Tour

It started as a financial rescue mission. After Leonard Cohen learned, at age 70, that his manager/sometime-lover had absconded with most of his life savings, he realized that his only chance of replenishing his funds was to go on tour. Cohen wasn’t sure how many fans he had left, so he first agreed only to a test run of theater dates in far-flung Canadian towns.

Though he’d never
 much enjoyed touring,
 Cohen was a unique
ly charismatic live performer. Even those first shows stretched past the two-hour mark, mixing elegant rearrangements of 1960s classics like “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire” with more recent tunes like “Waiting for the Miracle” and “Boogie Street.” His voice had deepened considerably, but that only gave it more authority and character. “It’s like he was whispering into your ear,” says longtime backup singer Sharon Robinson.

The shows were spectacular, and word-of-mouth spread quickly. By 2009, Cohen was selling out arenas all over Europe, and eventually he hit 20,000-seaters in America, including Madison Square Garden. The tour eventually ran for 387 shows across five years. Even as he neared his 80th birthday, he kept adding new songs and stretching the running time to three and a half hours, even skipping offstage before the encores. “Leonard was really good at conserving his strength and blocking out distractions and prioritizing his energy,” says Robinson. “He lived an almost monastic lifestyle even though he wasn’t a real monk.”

By the time he played his final show, in Auckland, New Zealand, Cohen had gone from cult favorite to cross-generational icon. After he closed that performance with a sprightly “Save the Last Dance for Me,” he doffed his hat, took a deep bow and walked off the stage, smiling. “I want to thank you,” he said to the audience. “Not just for tonight, but for all the years you’ve paid attention to my songs.” A.G.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert

The idea was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with no less than the most important multi-artist concert in history. “I knew the anniversary had potency,” said Hall of Fame Foundation chairman (and Rolling Stone founder) Jann Wenner. “I thought that we had earned the right and responsibility to do this thing. It was an opportunity not to be missed.”

The organizers were determined to put on a show that was far more ambitious than any of the previous megashows, while capturing the intimate, collaborative spirit of the annual induction ceremonies and telling the story of rock & roll. “[I kept saying], ‘If this is just miniconcerts of greatest hits, I’m bored,'” recalled co-producer Robbie Robertson. “‘What do we have to offer that you can’t get anywhere else?'”

The shows, held over two nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden, were a rock fan’s dream, with all the artists delivering blistering, unforgettable sets, no doubt inspired by the presence of so many of their peers and the event’s grandeur. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, who closed the first night, performed at their absolute peak, turning themselves into a soul revue as they backed Billy Joel, John Fogerty, Tom Morello and Darlene Love. U2 brought Springsteen back the next night, but the biggest moment came near the end of their set, when they kicked into “Gimme Shelter,” and – out of nowhere – an unbilled Mick Jagger appeared onstage to the stunned delight of the crowd.

The first night began with a nod to rock’s origins: Jerry Lee Lewis pounding out “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” Next were Crosby, Stills and Nash (joined by Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and James Taylor), Stevie Wonder (with guests Smokey Robinson, John Legend, B.B. King, Sting and Jeff Beck) and a note-perfect Simon and Garfunkel. On the closing night, Aretha Franklin sang with Annie Lennox and Lenny Kravitz; Jeff Beck jammed with Buddy Guy, Billy Gibbons and Sting; and Metallica backed Ray Davies, Ozzy Osbourne and Lou Reed.

“For a lot of us here, rock & roll means just one word: liberation. Political, sexual, spiritual liberation,” Bono said onstage, before Springsteen interrupted him with the other side of the equation: “Let’s have some fun with it!” A.G.

LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden

“It’s your show,” LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy shouted to a sold-out Madison Square Garden. The raging farewell by Murphy’s beloved group was a Last Waltz for New York’s early-’00s dance-rock scene. “I thought it would be really sad,” recalls keyboardist-vocalist Nancy Whang. “But it was just fun. The energy in the room was really charged.” Fans danced to near-exhaustion as LCD played songs from their entire catalog. With barely two months to prepare the nearly four-hour spectacle, featuring a choir, a horn section and a rickety spaceship, the band tackled a production scale beyond its experience. “It was held together with gum and string,” Whang admits. The night (captured in the 2012 film Shut Up and Play the Hits ) ended in a snowstorm of balloons, culminating the band’s dream of throwing “the best funeral ever.” W.H.

Jay Z and Kanye West ‘Watch the Throne’ Tour

“I’m sorry if this is your first concert,” Kanye West said to a Los Angeles crowd on the Watch the Throne tour. “It’s all downhill from here.” Supporting their triumphal 2011 LP, Watch the Throne, Jay Z and Kanye convened the greatest superstar summit in hip-hop history. The pair performed on giant, rising cubes that projected video, and, when the tour hit Paris, encored with their hit “Niggas in Paris” 12 times in a row. “People just wanted more,” says the tour’s lighting designer Nick Whitehouse. “It made people crazy.” C.R.W.

Fleetwood Mac ‘On With the Show’ Tour

The return of Christine McVie after 16 years brought the Mac’s live show to a whole new dimension. Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar solo on “Go Your Own Way” soared to new heights; Stevie Nicks seemed possessed during the nightly exorcism of “Rhiannon”; and all three voices locked seamlessly on “Little Lies.” It was all the magic of 1977 without the distractions of hard drugs and sexual soap operas . A.G.

Taylor Swift ‘1989’ Tour

“You’re not going to see me playing the banjo,” Taylor Swift warned Rolling Stone at the outset of her 1989 world tour. On her Speak Now and  Red tours, she claimed her turf at the crossroads of country, pop and classic arena rock. But for 1989, Swift made her bold move into full-on dance pop. She turned up the glitz with new material like “New Romantics” and “Blank Space” (“blatant pop music,” as she put it), but she didn’t compromise on her trademark emotional overshares, whether opening up in confessional interludes or torching up ballads (“Clean”). Swift aimed for a glammier look onstage, reflecting the grown-up flair of the music, and she invited high-profile guests: In Nashville, she duetted with Mick Jagger; in L.A., she brought out Beck, St. Vincent, Justin Timberlake, Chris Rock and Alanis Morissette. It all summed up her staggeringly ambitious vision of modern pop. Rob Sheffield

Beyoncé Formation Tour

Strutting in stacked heels across the turf of Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, wrapped in golden bandoleers and flanked by a Black Panther–styled phalanx of dancers, Beyoncé performed “Formation” at the 2016 Super Bowl in a cameo appearance even fiercer than her 2013 Super Bowl triumph. It was the overture to a tour that redefined stadium-scale concert staging. “She had an overall vision of what she wanted,” says Steve Pamon, chief operating officer of Beyoncé’s label, Parkwood Entertainment. “Not only in terms of a business, but in the type of experience we want to give the fans.”

Four days before the tour began, Beyoncé surprise-dropped her instant classic Lemonade. British set designer Es Devlin, who had previously worked with Kanye West and U2, created a kind of spectacular intimacy that fit the album’s personal themes. At midstage was the “Monolith,” a video-screen centerpiece standing seven stories high that projected the show in 70-foot magnification, making every seat feel front-row. On opening night in Miami, Bey burned through “Crazy in Love” and “Bootylicious” in a fire-engine-red latex bodysuit and matching boots, looking like an anime empress. The shows also dialed it down for slow jams like the breakup meditation “Mine,” during which the Monolith split in two to reveal dancers suspended on cables while Bey and a squadron in lace bodysuits rose up from beneath the stage. At the end of the show, a moving catwalk connected the main stage to a huge wading pool, where Beyoncé and her dancers splashed around in a baptismal moment that reflected Lemonade’ s journey from betrayal to rebirth.

The Formation World Tour began around the time of Prince’s death. In Minneapolis, she performed his classic “The Beautiful Ones” before a rapt crowd, honoring a hero and placing herself in his epic lineage. “I would put that tour up against any performance,” Pamon says. “By any artist at any age.” Brittany Spanos  

See Jelly Roll Bring Out Post Malone for Live Debut of 'Losers' at MSG

• friends in low places
• By Daniel Kreps

Watch David Gilmour Play a Stunning 'Comfortably Numb' at World Tour Kickoff

• coming back to life
• By Andy Greene

The Best Things We Saw at Life Is Beautiful 2024: Day 1

• Life is Beautiful
• By Mark Gray

Louder Than Life Cancels Friday's Shows Due to Remnants of Hurricane Helene

• substantial winds

J.D. Souther on How He Helped Write All Those Eagles Songs: The Lost Interview

• The Eagles Whisperer
• By David Browne

Most Popular

50 cent sets diddy abuse allegations docuseries at netflix: 'it's a complex narrative spanning decades' (exclusive), al b. sure calls for an investigation into death of diddy’s ex kim porter , archaeologists solve mystery behind black tombstone found in jamestown carrying an english knight, suge knight claims jay-z, dr. dre, and other industry people were privy to diddy's alleged criminal activity, you might also like, san sebastián film festival award winners (updating live), lebron james does taut tailoring in louis vuitton and wife savannah favors oversize phoebe philo suit for hennessy collaboration launch, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, why has ‘industry’ season 3 been so good its creators needed two seasons to learn their craft, wada seeks suspension for sinner’s failed drug test.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

4 Must-See Concert Films for Every Rock Music Lover

Em Casalena

Concert films in rock music and beyond have become pretty substantial productions in the last decade or so. After all, concerts in general have become massive efforts to entertain thousands of people. However, you just can’t beat the classics . Let’s take a look at four concert films about rock music legends that still hit in the 2020s, decades after they were first released.

Videos by American Songwriter

1. ‘the tami show’.

This 1964 concert film follows James Brown’s attempt to “upstage” The Rolling Stones during the Teen Age Music International concerts that took place on October 28 and 29, 1964. It’s an extremely historically significant piece of work that has since been given a spot in the Library of Congress. 

In addition to Brown and the Stones, the concert also features performances by Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, and more. If you want a quick history lesson on 1960s pop music, this is the film to watch.

2. ‘Gimme Shelter’

When it comes to rock music concert films, nothing beats the 1970 film Gimme Shelter. Where most concert films make the viewer yearn for the opportunity to be at the concert in question, this film will make you very glad you were nowhere near the Almont Speedway Free Festival on December 6, 1969. If you’re not well-versed in Rolling Stones history, we won’t spoil anything. Go in blind!

3. ‘Monterey Pop’

Jimi Hendrix famously lit his guitar on fire at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967, and this 1968 concert film chronicles it all; and more. A ton of incredible performances were captured for this film, notably by the legendary Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Mamas & The Papas, and more.

4. ‘The Last Waltz’

This is the best rock music concert film you’ve probably never seen before… at least if you’re on the young side. The Last Waltz is a 1978 concert film directed by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. 

The film follows The Band on their final farewell tour, but it doesn’t feel like your run-of-the-mill concert film. It feels like an intimate documentary. Even if you’re not a huge fan of The Band, this film features performances from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, and more.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Leave a Reply

Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.

More From: The List

The Meetup Between Willie Nelson and Frank Sinatra That Nelson “Always Regretted”

4 of the Weirdest Instruments Used in Classic Rock Songs

Yacht Rock Essentials: “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight,” the Smooth-Talking Classic from England Dan & John Ford Coley

4 Southern Rock Anthems Every Fan Should Know

Exploring 4 Unique Covers of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”

5 Baby-Making Songs by The Beatles

You may also like.

Where Are They Now? 3 Rock One-Hit Wonders That Owned the 90s

The Story and Meaning Behind “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” a Classic Rock Evergreen from Van Halen’s Killer Debut Album

Here’s Why Keith Richards Says He Dislikes Led Zeppelin

4 Times Rock Stars Promoted Themselves With Weird Products

3 Artists Eric Clapton Dislikes

The Song Prince Thought Ripped Off a Journey Hit

Summer of Sabrina Carpenter: Hitting No. 1 on the Charts, Getting Advice From Best Friend Taylor Swift and What Barry Keoghan Really Thinks About Her Lyrics

Photographs by Matthew Sprout

Counterpoint, a record store in Los Angeles’ Franklin Village, is probably not the first place one would expect to find Sabrina Carpenter on a sunny Monday afternoon — flipping through a stack of vintage Playboys, no less. The chart-dominating singer-songwriter is sipping a Yerba Mate while she oohs and ahhs at the blond bombshells of various yesteryears when a bright-blue cover featuring a pouty-faced model catches her eye.

“I love the faces of the ’60s and ’90s — old Hollywood, flirty and fun,” Carpenter says. “This is definitely the vibe of my album.”

Related Stories

Hollywood’s Next Superhero: Purpose-Led Branding  

Sharjah Film Festival Celebrates Growth, Introduces Palestine as Guest of Honor Country: ‘The Interest in Young Audiences in the Arab World Is Growing’

She’s just returned from a hectic promotional jaunt through Europe, but today Carpenter seems dead set on digging through every aisle of this vinyl emporium. After pausing on Charli XCX’s “Brat” (“Love it!”), Olivia Newton-John’s “Soul Kiss” and Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” she spies Connie Francis’ 1958 album “Who’s Sorry Now?” 

“Connie Francis is amazing and super underrated,” she says, admiring the cover photo. “Oh, my God, she’s beautiful. She’s really serving.” On July 2, 1960, a 21-year-old Francis became the first female artist to land a No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” Almost exactly 64 years later, on June 29, 2024, the 25-year-old Carpenter achieved her first No. 1 with “Please Please Please,” after reaching No. 3 the previous week with “Espresso” (which may have missed the top spot, but on Aug. 5 became the third-fastest song to reach a billion streams on Spotify). The hoped for but unexpectedly stratospheric chart success of the singles has built anticipation for her album to a near fever pitch. 

The songs show a seasoning that comes with experience, particularly “Please Please Please” and its hilarious video, which stars her real-life paramour, actor Barry Keoghan, and is written from the perspective of a woman who loves her man but is just about done with his bullshit. For all the pop frothiness of the songs and the candy-flossed imagery, there’s a savvy undercurrent of sass and grit: Both “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” have prominent f-bombs and innuendos in the lyrics. 

But maybe not that much sass and grit. After a pause, Carpenter preemptively adds with a smile, “I’m not posing for Playboy — just to be clear.” 

While Carpenter was considered a Disney princess for years, her transition from child actor to pop star — a perilous leap that has felled many before her — has been slow, steady and intentional. She admits that she sometimes feels like a new artist, even though she’s about to release her sixth album. 

Born and raised in Quakertown, Pa., Carpenter moved to California with her family as a preteen. Her two older sisters, Shannon and Sarah, attended performing arts high schools and introduced her to an early influence — the 2008 musical “13,” starring a pre-Nickelodeon Ariana Grande (whom Carpenter would open for just a few years later). Carpenter showed precocious talent, and her family began taking her to auditions. 

“I got a manager — the same one I have now — and he was very realistic,” she recalls. “He said, ‘We’ll send you out for things — no promise that they’re even going to see your tape.’ But then, not to brag, I booked one of the first things I ever went for”: an episode of “Law & Order” in which Carpenter played a victim of abuse by a sex-trafficking ring — at the ripe old age of 11. 

“It was such a sad plotline,” she says. “I was just fascinated by all of it. I had spent so much time with adults that I just knew how to talk to them. Now all my friends are my age, but when I was younger, I was always working with adults. I just always knew what to say and how to act.”

At 12, she began a parallel career in music, signing with Disney’s Hollywood Records at the same time she landed the role of Maya in the Disney-produced “Boy Meets World” spinoff series, “Girl Meets World.” Despite the workload that came with pursuing both careers, “I wasn’t, like, grinding and working for hours on end as a child,” she recalls, “but I always felt I had a point to prove.” 

Her longtime friend and vocal coach Eric Vetro says, “Not only did she have a great voice for a 12-year-old, she also had an incredibly mature attitude about what she wanted to achieve in her career and how she was going to accomplish it. I worried that she might burn out from starting so young, but those fears evaporated when I witnessed her working harder than ever year after year.”

After a few middling hit singles like “Thumbs” and “Why,” Carpenter released “Singular: Act II,” her fourth and final album for Hollywood, in the summer of 2019, shortly after she turned 20. Around the same time, she ended a yearlong legal battle with her former managers, who claimed they were owed compensation after she terminated their contract. The case was eventually dismissed, and she followed by releasing a tongue-in-cheek song called “Sue Me” that was certified gold and showed some of the burgeoning cheekiness that is blooming now. 

Lockdown ended the first phase of Carpenter’s career with a thud, quashing her early 2020 Broadway debut in “Mean Girls” after just two performances. But, as it did for many people, the pandemic led her to a restart. She signed with Island Records, her current label, in January 2021 and the following year released “Emails I Can’t Send,” an introspective and honest coming-of-age album filled with lyrics inspired by real-life events and conflicts with famous peers, ex-boyfriends and even family. 

On it, Carpenter references the narrative around a Gen-Z love triangle allegedly involving her and fellow Disney stars Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo. Although the full story has never been revealed, all three singers have released songs inspired by the situation — including Rodrigo’s 2021 breakthrough hit, “Drivers License” — and the ensuing scrutiny from fans and the media. For her part, Carpenter sings in “Because I Liked a Boy,” “Now I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut / I got death threats fillin’ up semi trucks.” (She declines to discuss the situation further.) 

On the album’s title track, Carpenter also touches on the suffering that accompanied her father’s infidelity toward her mother (though the timeline is unclear). “I am a daddy’s girl,” she says. “But my family has just gone through so much that now we’re all in a healing stage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started learning about men and relationships. I’m not perfect by any means, but it definitely makes you look at your parents differently.” She concludes: “‘Emails’ was hard to put out, but it marked the beginning of a really freeing and artistic time for me.”

It also became her highest-charting LP to date, reaching No. 23 and remaining on the Billboard 200 albums chart for 43 weeks and then spawning an 80-date international headlining tour. 

Following that success, however, the media scrutiny has moved to her other relationships, including her friendship with Taylor Swift, on whose “Eras Tour” Carpenter was an opening act in Latin America, Australia and Singapore. One flash point was Carpenter’s ad campaign for Skims, the clothing company owned by Swift’s bitter rival, Kim Kardashian. While Carpenter has maintained that Swift was aware of the campaign and is fine with it, fans soon twisted that information into sentiments like “Asking for permission to do a campaign is crazy,” as one wrote on X. 

The subject comes up in the record store when we notice that Swift’s latest offering, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is filed in the rock section. Without skipping a beat, Carpenter replies, “Well, Taylor is a rock star!” She goes on: “She’s just such a gangster with all of it. No matter what people are saying, everything that I’ve ever seen her tackle, she’s done so with grace. The posts about me having to ‘ask for her permission’ — no . She’s one of my best, best friends, and we grab dinner or text and catch up like you would with your best friend.”

However, she’s more careful in what she reveals about her relationship with Keoghan, although she opens up a bit when asked about the “Basic Instinct”-inspired music video for “Please Please Please,” the lyrics of which say the problematic boyfriend is an actor.

“He loved the song. He’s obsessed with the lyrics, and I’m so grateful for that,” she says. “I don’t want to sound biased, but I think he’s one of the best actors of this generation. So getting to see him on the screen with my song as the soundtrack made the video better and all the more special.”

Later, as we pass an astrology book in the store, she says, “Barry’s a Libra, and so is my sister. They’re very different, but they have similarities. I tend to gravitate towards Leos as well.” Her smile fades before she adds, “My dad’s a Capricorn, so maybe that’s not the direction for my future.”

Carpenter describes her upcoming record “Short n’ Sweet” as “the hot older sister” of “Emails.” “It’s my second ‘big girl’ album; it’s a companion but it’s not the same. When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult, I would consider this a sophomore album.” 

That maturity and professionalism is co-signed by her collaborators. “She was always 10 minutes early to every session and still is,” says co-writer Steph Jones. “It was just a matter of timing for her [success], because everyone she’s worked with describes themselves as an instant fan.”

“Sabrina has become a sister to me,” adds Amy Allen, who co-wrote “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” (as well as Top 10 hits this year for Tate McRae and Justin Timberlake). “We spend hours on end talking about any and everything. She makes me laugh ’til I cry. She truly makes me a better writer every time I’m in the room with her.” 

The effort has paid off. “Espresso”’s indelible hooks and nonsensical catchphrase, “That’s that me, espresso,” have been quoted and memed by everyone from Cardi B to Brooke Shields — and even inspired an ad for the Paris Olympics. The song, along with stellar performances at Coachella and on “Saturday Night Live,” effectively launched “Sabrina Summer,” which Swift proudly predicted in the first week of June. 

However, Carpenter says, “I was completely alone in wanting to release ‘Espresso.’ Not so much from my immediate team. But when it came to ‘the powers above,’” she air-quotes, “there was a lot of questioning behind whether it made sense. But they trusted me in the end, and I was happy that I believed in myself at that moment.” 

“It’s no accident that everything is falling into place the way she always wanted,” says Island Records co-CEO Imran Majid. “Sabrina’s instincts and creative vision are incredible. She’s always thinking 10 steps ahead of the market.” Co-CEO Justin Eshak adds, “She’s an inspiration for her fans, collaborators and all of us — she’s one of this generation’s most important artists.”

“It feels easier to write about things that happened in the past, or that haven’t happened yet,” she says. “My producers tell me I’m beating a dead horse because I’ll write a song three years after I last spoke to the person who inspired the lyric. Also,” she adds with a laugh, “and this is my ego talking, but I would be honored to find out someone wrote a song about me, even if it was bad. Like, ‘I triggered you enough to write a song? Go off!’” 

Although Carpenter’s music focus has meant an “unwarranted break” from acting, she’s always looking at scripts in the hopes of securing a spot in a musical or an original film, although she says “a lot of them sound like five other already released movies.” She’s waiting for one that feels right. 

“I’m 900 inappropriate jokes away from being a Disney actor, but people still see me that way,” she says. “I’m always extremely flattered to be grouped in with the other women and girls who I’ve idolized and looked up to who came from that, but I feel very distant from it.”

By the time we exit the store, Carpenter is clutching a bag full of records: two Beatles solo albums — “Ringo” and Paul McCartney’s “Red Rose Speedway”; an old Island Records promotional compilation, “because it’s my label”; several randos because she liked the artwork; and, finally, a $100 copy of Interview magazine with Keanu Reeves on the cover for her sister. She gushes about the forthcoming vinyl edition of her own album, which includes a non-streaming bonus track (there are also cassette and CD variants with alternative covers). The retro-inspired package was designed by herself, her sister Sarah, Dannah Gottlieb and Chase Shewbridge. “I spent so much time working on the vinyl; I think it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made,” she says. 

Sarah is coming to pick her up, but first we decide to venture to a neighboring Van Leeuwen ice cream shop. At the entrance, Carpenter stops dead in her tracks when she sees what’s taped to the door: a blown-up poster of her own face, advertising the brand’s limited-edition “Espresso” flavor. 

“Oh God,” groans the singer who has been coasting unrecognized (or at least not approached) in the closed-up record store. “How embarrassing is that?”

Additional reporting by Jem Aswad

Styling by Alex Badia; Sr. Market Editor, Mens: Luis Campuzano; Senior Market Editor, Accessories: Thomas Waller; Fashion Market Editor: Emily Mercer; Fashion Assistants: Ari Stark and Kimberly Infante; Set Design: Viki Rutsch/Exposure NY; Makeup: Carolina Gonzalez/A Frame Agency; Hair: Danielle Priano/Kalpana; Manicure: Naomi Yasuda/Forward Artists; Look 1: Coperni suit, Jimmy Choo pumps, Calzedonia tights; Look 2 (cover): Sydney Evan cuban link necklace, Suzanne Kalan stacked diamond necklaces; Look 3 (laying down, long coat): Harbison coat, Falke tights, Coperni kitten heels;  Look 4 (leather jacket): Willy Chavarrria jacket, Jimmy Choo pumps

More from variety.

‘Spider-Man 4’ Eyes ‘Shang-Chi’ Director Destin Daniel Cretton

How Celebrity Reps Are Fighting the Flood of Unauthorized AI Content

Lloyd Lee Choi’s Feature Adaptation ‘Lucky Lu’ to Begin Filming in New York City Later This Year

The Postwar Streaming Market: A Special Report

More from our brands, nintendo is finally letting its princesses be people.

Home of the Week: Aerin Lauder’s Idyllic Hideaway Along Panama’s Lush Pacific Coast

WADA Seeks Suspension for Sinner’s Failed Drug Test

The Best Loofahs and Body Scrubbers, According to Dermatologists

Jeff Glor Says Farewell to CBS Saturday Morning: ‘I Hope to See You Again Real Soon’ — Watch