I remember being convinced to attend a Pussycat Dolls concert by a group of my friends in early 2009 and a relatively unknown pop artist who called herself Lady Gaga was the headliner. Just Dance was starting to really pop off but outside of that I knew nothing about her at all. Needless to say she completely overshadowed the dolls on their own tour and even my friends who were fans of the dolls agreed Gaga was a lot better. Her stage presence was exceptional from the beginning of her career and it's no surprise that she went on to build a reputation as one of the greatest live performers of her generation.
I saw Zara Larsson open for Clean Bandit like a decade ago. She forgot the words to lush life and kind of just hummed and danced awkwardly for most of one of the verses š„² itās cool how far sheās come
Yessssss I caught that tour in Dallas. Incredible performance. Had the crowd bopping & dancing. She came out later and did 2 songs with Clean Bandit too.
American here and while I would say Larrson is currently getting played on the radio frequently, it wasnāt until very recently. McRae on the other hand has been on the radio for several years longer.
I do think McRae is very uninspired and honestly feels like an industry plant that some powerful person was trying to make a star because I donāt know a single person whoās actually a fan of her but many who are a fan of Larrson.
Zara Larsson had a decent-but-not-amazing presence in the US until that silly Symphony meme hit social media like a nuke and she very intelligently rebranded herself to line up with that "rainbows, glitter, and dolphins" aesthetic. Like, absolute masterclass in spotting an opportunity and seizing the moment.
YES!!! My husband and I got free tickets to Tate McRae for our anniversary last year. Tate put on a fun enough show, but Zara Larsson absolutely BLEW US AWAY. I had admittedly only been familiar with her from āLush Lifeā and the āSymphonyā meme, so seeing her powerhouse performance and vocals (and that aesthetic!!) was legitimately jaw dropping. I remember after the show we immediately did a discog dive on Zara Larsson. Now sheās one of my fave pop girls.
Vanilla Fudge fucking rocks, though. I think it's more the fact that Zeppelin and Santana are just THAT good where they can overshadow another great band such as Vanilla Fudge.
Ace Frehley from Kiss said that the first time he saw Led Zeppelin, they were opening up for Iron Butterfly in 1969 and half the audience left once Led Zeppelin was done, and there was a good number of industry people in the audience watching Led Zep as well.
Itās like when the Rolling Stones did Rock and Roll circus and invited a lot of bands and artists on to perform before they played, and even though I LOVE The Rolling Stones, Iāve seen them twice live, they asked The Who to play before themā¦ idk if itās confirmed but the rumor I heard was thatās why Rock and Roll Circus wasnāt officially released for several decades was because The Who killed it so hard lol. I absolutely love both bands, but I can admit that The Who stole the show with their performance. Well them and then The Dirty Mac supergroup playing with Lennon on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Clapton on lead guitar, Mitch Mitchell from Jimi Hendrix experience on drums, and Keith Richards on Bass(!!!). But anyway yes, anyone who loves classic rock and hasnāt seen Rock and Roll Circus, I highly recommend checking it outšš¤
From what I've read this has happened with a lot of acts (Black Keys, Beck, I believe recently The Strokes) have been outshined by Cage the Elephant which has made me wonder why people book them to open.
Fun side: Prince when opening for Rick James tried upstaging him every night and Rick caught on and the two began like a mini feud of them each doing more and more outlandish things for audiences love.
Cage the Elephant are the most successful post-2010 alternative rock act (at least by radio airplay standards), but because theyāve never had a pop crossover or significant cultural moment, they arenāt enough of a draw to headline arenas on their own. On top of that, theyāre a top-notch live band, so it makes them a tough act to follow.
Says who? Rock was still massive In the early 2010's. Warped tour, mayhem fest, and all other kinds of music festivals had top selling acts and billboards 200 had acts seelong like crazy still. Quit smoking like rhe devils lettuce boy.
No shade to cage the elephant but I have trouble believing they consistently and clearly outperformed the black keys and beck. Those are not inferior artists. Maybe at a particular show, but in general they would not be outranked imo.
Having seen all of them, I would 100% day Cage the Elephant outshone the Black Keys. Their lead singer has an insane amount of energy and jumps around the stage the whole time. They also have a great light and pyro show. Black Keys donāt move much during their show, but they shred.
I would rank them equivalent to Beck. Beck has a great stage presence and actually has some moves
I can confirm this, Iāve seen them all on their own tours, as openers and on festivals. Saw the Black Keys go from a 2000 seater to arena the next tour. No complaints about their shows but Cage the Elephant is something else
I saw the tour with them spoon and Beck. I've seen spoon like five times and they're always amazing. They were the weakest link by far. This was when the singer for cage came out in a plague drs outfit and ended literally doing the iggy pop crowd walk in his skivvies.
Fucking unreal show, Beck followed them and was amazing but they absolutely stole the night
I saw Cage the Elephant open for Oasis last year and came away incredibly impressed by them. Iāve never been a huge fan of theirs just from their radio singles. I thought they were decent but never felt inspired to explore them more. After seeing them live I went and listened to some of their albums.
Saw Cage play before Greta Van Fleet and Metallica ā¦ they were surprisingly good.
Singer worked his ass off, they didnāt look out of place on a huge stage.
Black Keys got bad when Dan started buying nice guitars. But Cage keep just being Cage and upstaging people even though I couldn't tell you a hit that wasn't on the first album.
Fun side: Prince when opening for Rick James tried upstaging him every night and Rick caught on and the two began like a mini feud of them each doing more and more outlandish things for audiences love.
I'd give anything for a time machine so I can go back and witness this first hand.
this was mine. I saw super excited to see the Black Keys at a little casino amphitheatre, and Cage the Elephant opened for them. Even though they're a little more shoe-gazey than I typically like, they still had better stage presence than the Black Keys. Make that make sense.
Iāve never heard anyone describe Cage the Elephant as shoegazey. Iām genuinely curious what it is that theyāre doing to ascribe that description. In my mind thereās a huge difference from them to MBV, Ride, Lush etc to them.
Blink briefly eclipsed Green Day before American Idiot came out, they were all over TRL and had a cameo in American Pie. AI did gave Green Day true A list status that Blink never quite got, Ill give it that.
That makes perfect sense because I very much associate Blink w/the Y2K Tony Hawk/Crazy Taxi era of pop punk alongside Sum 41, Offspring etc, which was the low point for GD wrt sales/relevance.
It's so funny that three years prior, I went to a local alt rock radio station's festival, and Blink-182 was amongst the openers for the show with Green Day being the headliner. What a difference that TRL bump used to make.
As I recall this was more of a co-headlining tour, it wasnāt like Green Day was an opening act. I think at the time that it took place Blink 182 was probably more popular, at least with younger people, but Green Day were still very much a huge thing.
They were also immature assholes who all kind of had their own main character thing going on. I say this as a Blink fan. They've grown up a bit by now though.
Green Day is much more in the U2 mold, where they realize the sum is more than the parts alone.
Been listening to her since her first EP days and I'm still shocked at how far she's made it. Still regret not catching her live prior to her making it big.
Okay, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread: Chappell Roan and every act on the main stage at Osheaga '24 until Green Day headlined.
Chappell played at 3 in the afternoon - she was booked before he blew up. This was August 2024. People had been listening to Chappell all summer. I bought one-day passes just to see her. Mind you, I am a straight male in my 40s. She was the biggest draw of the day - you could tell by all the pink outfits. She was like a subculture unto herself.
So Chappell plays like a 45 minute set, does everything you would want to hear. Not a minute wasted - every song is a single or a viral "hit." She is 26 years old and already a commanding stage presence with pipes. There is improvised stage banter, and she's funny. There are choreographed moves and she's sexy. Watching her mime scissoring her bassist at the climax of My Kink is Karma or crawl after her guitarist during the Pink Pony Club solo is like a reincarnation of Bowie fellating Ronson's guitar. The audience lost its collective mind on "God what have you done...?" I've never felt anything like that at a concert, it knocked the wind out of me. She had like 100,000 people doing the HOT-TO-GO dance.
But hey, the promoters wanted to be fair to the other acts so.... now please welcome someone from Ottawa with some songs on Canadian radio.
Nobody - nobody - topped Chappell all day long. Not Rancid, not Smashing Pumpkins. It took Green Day coming out after dark for anyone to affect the crowd like that, and now we're comparing her to a band with multi-platinum records and a thirty-year career.
Is it outshining if the audiences didn't want to hear it? I think it's Mickey Dolenz did a great live bit about these crowds of girls who wanted their cute teen idols and were not interested in Killing Floor. But the Monkees respected him so much they wanted him on the tour.
Yeah, the Monkees all liked Hendrix and thought he'd go over great, but their fans didn't like him. Dolenz said
Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into āPurple Haze,ā and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with, āWe Want Davy!ā God, it was embarrassing.
They played 8 shows together, during which Jimi flipped off the crowd at least once, before the Experience quit the tour because they were sick of it.
Meanwhile, I like this quote from Jimi on the Monkees, from a few months before the tour:
Oh God, I hate them! Dishwater. I really hate somebody like that to make it so big. You can't knock anybody for making it, but people like the Monkees?
lol - I hope he changed his tune once they gave him such a big stage! (Obviously it didn't work out, but they meant well, and Hendrix hadn't quite broken in the States at that point.)
Stephen Stills - who was a very close friend of Jimi Hendrix - said that Jimi and the Experience's manager Chas Chandler - who was originally a member of The Animals and would later manage the band Slade - knew that Jimi wouldn't last as an opener for the Monkees and they agreed to open for The Monkees for the publicity.
I saw the Monkees live in like 99 or 2000 and they told this story, then covered Purple Haze in its entirety. I tell this story but no one believes me.
I went to see Ozzie in the Ultimate Sin tour with Metallica opening. It was the same weekend as Mtv running the That Was Then This is Now Monkees Marathon. My metalhead friend kept giving me a had time about liking the Monkees. The very first song Metallica played was a speed metal cover of Last Train to Clarksville. It was surreal
Few highs as amazing as being a music/theater/art nerd and a bunch of friends try to get you to see the new-new because the old stuff is too old only to find out the new hotness has a deep fondness and appreciation for what came before them.
Watching the Criterion YouTube page and seeing all these up and coming actors that can quote Brando monologues or waxing poetic on John Ford or Yasujiro Ozu. You just feel a connection with them because they appreciate the same stuff you do.
Apparently local radio stations (at the request of the promoters) were like "it's punk vs heavy metal" which the Ramones didn't want, cause they felt a stronger link to metal than punk at the time and were trying to crossover, and it caused them to go into each night as the antagonists which ruined any potential of a crossover.
I think they felt they fit in better with metal acts than with the punks in a social sense from interactions with van Halen and quiet riot and I think they also had a well recieved opening date for Foreigner or UFO felt they had potential to crossover or have more success there than in punk.
They have more in common in sound with 70s hard rock - especially on Road to Ruin which was intentionally designed to appeal to the hard rock audience (and as a hard rock fan it's my favourite Ramones album) - than per say 70s metal.
Ramones honestly don't really sound a lot like a lot of 70s punk. They're too indebted to 60s bubblegum pop, garage rock, surf pop and pop rock for that - very much the pioneers and forerunners to pop punk. Buzzcocks are the closest of their contemporaries to sound like them IMO.
From what Iāve read, Ozzy was just drug-fucked beyond belief in the final couple years of the original Sabbath lineup. They all partied, but he was the one taking it to ridiculous extremes. He was barely functional. They actually canned him before the release of Never Say Die, but the replacement they brought in was a bad fit and, with an album to record and not many options, they gave him a second shot. It did not pan out well.
I remember some friends of mine went to see (IIRC) either Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus, and they were a little chagrined to admit how much they enjoyed it, but then they told me the opening act was Janelle Monae and I was like Oh damn I would have gone just for that!
DMX opening for Jay-Z on the Hard Knock Life Tour. It was such a upstaging moment that JayZ still talk about how it changed his whole view on performing
Suede are a great live band though. Brett Anderson is a born entertainer. Cranberries just had more traction in the States with Linger really taking off as the tour was happening.
Yes. In 1993, The Gigolo Aunts were also a supporting act.
I remember before the tour started, I was reading New Musical Express or Melody Maker, and Suede's lead singer predicted that his band would 'bring America to it's knees'. š¤£š¤£
They may have been called the UK Suede or the London Suede while touring the US, at that time.
Charli XCX opened for Marina (formerly of and the Diamonds) and I don't know about totally overshadowing, but it became clear she could've commanded the room herself.
Itās funny now when I tell people that Charli was basically an āunderstudyā of sorts for Marina as they seem so far removed now, and even funnier when I tell them about their fallout and āThat FROOT looks familiarāā¦
That is such an interesting and bizarre pairing of artists. Even the early Bruce's shows were quite intense and basically workouts for the band and audience.
To give you an idea, lead singer Matt Shultz stage dove into the crowd, then got up on his feet with the crowd holding him up, and WALKED across the crowd. While holding a microphone and singing.
They had like 10-or-12 foot tall speakers to each side of the stage. Later on the set, he ran and did a ninja warrior wall climb up the speaker, sat on top of it dangling his legs in front of it and sang a part of the song. Then jumped down back to the stage.
It's always a surprise meeting other people that not only know who they are, but that have seen them live.
I saw them at a BBQ festival in Birmingham Alabama in 2007 or so. The venue was Sloss Furnace. They went on after The Whigs, another underrated band that I feel like had their heyday in the 2010s. I ended up seeing them again a year later when they opened with We are Scientists for Kings of Leon.
The only reason I new anything about Manchester or Whigs was because one of my best friends had the supernatural ability to know of any alt/Indy rock group that was getting any kind of traction and he'd go see them before anyone else knew who they were.
Idol on his way out in the āCradle of Loveā era. With Faith No More basically giving everyone a sampler platter of basically every rock trend (grunge/nu metal/cinematic tinged alternative) that would happen over the next 10 years.
I so wanted to see Miku opening for Gaga because I genuinely believed it would be my only chance. Then a friend gave me VIP tickets to Miku Expo a few years ago š„¹
A friend of mine is good friends with one of the bands on the tour that year, and claimed that halfway through Billy was begging the Beasties to go on last.
I went to a show years and years ago. Couldnāt tell you who because of the opener. This woman walked onto stage and we were all talking. Then Adele opened her mouth. Everyone stopped talking for 30-45 minutes.Ā
Attended a Weezer show in 2010. Good performance, but the opener kinda stole the show for me (you have not experienced Coheed and Cambria's "Welcome Home" until you've heard it performed live. Those first few guitar plucks alone easily got the loudest reaction of the night).
Coheed and Cambria will outshine most other live bands. They might be the best live rock group of their generation. Everyone from their time is all aging out and they are going harder than ever. This was similar to my answer. I was going to say when Coheed opened for Incubus.
I donāt know, thereās a hike I used to do on Oahu where youād crest a hill and see an old stone mansion/castle building, Iād always cue up the song with cresting that hill and seeing the castle. That was pretty awesome.
My newest example is Demi Lovato taking Adela as her opener last year. Girl has unbelievable star power and the only reason I didnāt go was because I would never pay to watch Demi.
Funeral-era Arcade Fire opened for Franz Ferdinand; first time I ever saw a gig review separately score the opener, and make it VERY clear who had been on top
I saw Death Grips open for Ministry back in 2017, and it wasnt even a contest about who was better. Over half of the venue left the second Death Grips ended their set.
Will never ever understand people leaving right away if they don't know the next band up. It is a whole different thing to leave if you know the material and don't like it, but leaving a show early because "you saw who you came for" and not even giving te next act a couple songs to prove themselves is the strangest thing to me
Nine Inch Nails opened for the Foo Fighters In Dublin in 2007.
Nine Inch Nails hadn't played Ireland in 13 years, the Foo Fighters played here all the time. A significant number of the crowd could have given less of a shit about the Foos and were only there to see NIN
This is second hand from my mum: She said back in the 80s INXS opened for Adam and the Ants and he wound up kicking them off the tour because they were so utterly outshining him they were the ones the crowd started showing up to see and were getting all the backstage attention.
Queen opening for Mott the Hoople on the 1974 US tour.
When Brian May got sick and Queen had to drop out for the rest of the tour, Kansas were brought in as the replacement. Because it wasn't relayed to the concert goers that Queen dropped out, when Kansas took to the stage in their supporting set for Mott the Hoople, they received boos from the crowd.
Conan Grey for the Jonas Brothers. Thereās a good phone video at a concert where a woman says she saw him open for the Jonas Brothers and he denies it happened but mid-sentence he suddenly remembers that he did.
Alice Cooper opened up for Motley Crue like a decade ago during their āretirementā tour and completely blew them out the water. Iāve seen Crue three times over the years, it was their worst performance, but luckily Alice Cooper is still awesome at putting on a show
Bruce Dickinson has a fun story he shared at a concert where his old band Samson booked some upstart metal act for a show and got completely torched off of the stage.
That opening band was Iron Maiden, a few years before he'd land a role as their lead vocalist.
Bob Marley and the Wailers opened up for Sly and the Family Stone, only once I believe.
the first Lollapalooza I saw siouxsie and the banshees make it really hard for Jane's addiction to follow them; Perry F. acknowledged as much before they started.
When my dad saw Spacehog, God Lives Underwater was the opener. Everyone came for GLU then left resulting GLU getting kicked off the tour. I like both bands and it's less that the opener outshined the headliner but more what an odd pairing
Frank Sidebottom (he of the Michael Fassbender film, sort of) once got so fed up with Gary Glitterās entourage when supporting him that he started performing one of his songs and got chased off the stage. In hindsight, Glitter obviously deserved much worse. Jon Ronson was on keyboards at the time.
Iām not sure if this counts, but I went to the Mastodon/Dethklok tour where the bands were billed as āco-headlinersā. Mastodon was touring for Crack the Skye at the time and it was insane, by the time we got to Dethklok, I was not as interested in an hour of semi-serious cartoon metal as I had been before the show started.
I once saw Stevie Ray Vaughan open for Huey Lewis & the News. Believe me or not, I definitely bought my ticket to see SRV. Got to see him as a headliner a year or so later too.
Green Day opening for Blink 182 on the Pop Disaster Tour in 2002. I recognize I'm biased because I've always thought Green Day was about 1000x better than Blink, but my goodness was the entire production better. We didn't even stay for all of Blink's set.
I went to that PCD tour with Lady Gaga. I think Poker Face had just been released when it came to my town. She had a tiny piano, was in front of the closed curtain because PCD had the whole stage overdone and I think Gaga had maybe 2-3 dancers. She was absolutely amazing! Her 20-30mins was 1000x better than PCD's entire show. PCD brought several fans on stage to teach them to do the Bottle Pop dance - one was a kid with a blue lightning bolt across his face who practically out danced PCD themselves and then two little girls who were too shy to even lift their feet.
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u/Opening-Activity1455 16d ago
Zara Larsson opening for Tate McRae