This past October a crowd video from pop artist Steve Lacy’s concert in New Orleans on his “Give You the World Tour” made the rounds on the internet – unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. The clip shows a fan in the front row tossing a disposable camera on stage, striking the artist in the leg and causing him to promptly stop the show. “Don’t throw sh*t on my f*cking stage,” he agitatedly tells the audience before smashing the camera and walking off stage.
This was not an isolated incident. It seems like every other week, social media feeds me another video of performers being disrespected on their own stages. Some incidents are more publicized than others – for instance, rapper Kid Cudi made headlines in July when he stormed off stage at Rolling Loud’s Miami festival after being pelted with a water bottle by a heckler.
These occurrences have become so common and normalized in recent months that they rarely receive much attention, such as when an audience member at Denzel Curry’s show in Minneapolis threw their phone at the artist in hopes of getting a picture with him. At the Denzel Curry show that I had attended just a couple days prior, opening act AG Club cut off their set after someone threw a beverage onto the stage. In a concerningly similar incident, last year I witnessed rapper Midwxst stop his show at Lawrence University in my hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, after being struck with a stray bottle thrown from the crowd.
The polarized responses on social media following the viral Steve Lacy video left me with complicated feelings. While many showed empathy for the artist and denounced the act of disrupting concerts by throwing projectiles at performers, a vocal minority claimed that Lacy overreacted in the heat of the moment – and that performers should expect this to happen, as they should be ready to deal with an unruly crowd. The audience allows the artist to make a living off of touring and creating art, so dodging the occasional disposable camera shouldn’t be that big of a deal – right?
This mindset frustrates me. It’s very much rooted in the outdated idea that artists must face adversities and suffer in the public eye in order to be successful in the music industry. On-stage harassment is viewed as “just another tribulation” that a musician must face to advance to the next level of their career. This attitude only serves to make live music far less enjoyable for everyone involved. After a concert-goer interrupts a performance, everybody at the show has a worse experience. There’s more tension in the venue, there’s the heightened possibility of conflict between crowd members, and the artist themself is thrown out of their element – which often results in a subpar performance. No one wins.
The act of disrupting a performance is nothing new, but it really does appear as if it has been happening on a much more regular basis over the past year. Obviously this can be partially chalked up to the hyper-visibility that social media can give these instances, but I also believe that it has a lot to do with the aftermath of the pandemic.
It took nearly a year and a half for most concert venues to re-open and return to (somewhat) normalcy. Upon the return of concerts en masse, two crowds formed: the avid concert-goers who had been deprived of their favorite pastime and were ready to release all of their energy in the pit once again, and the pandemic-raised teenagers who were finally old enough to cut their teeth in the crowd. Both these parties came back to live music with warped perceptions of appropriate behavior, and it seems like the general concept of ‘concert ethics’ has been lost on a lot of people.
I understand that the main draw of live music for many is the catharsis of releasing energy in the company of others. Especially in recent years, a growing sub-sect of rap (nicknamed “rage rap”) has come to mainstream fruition – whilst being almost solely focused on eliciting moshpits and controlled chaos in a live setting. But in order to maintain an environment where that release of energy can still be beneficial to all, safety and general regard for other human beings must come first. The best experiences that can be had at concerts are inherently communal, and placing respect on the performer and your fellow concert-goers is the first step in upholding the sanctity that live music holds in our lives.
It’s no secret that the world has changed a great deal between the start of the pandemic and now, and many of those changes are reflected in the world of live music. From disrupting a performance solely for one’s own entertainment, to ignoring the well-being of others in the moment, there are so many ways that a concert experience can be ruined for everyone by one or two selfish crowd members – and subsequently be broadcasted on social media to endless discourse. It gets tiring, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who wants to completely tune out from the conversation. However, it’s an important talk for concert-goers to have, and I think that we can all benefit from being more open about the value that we place on ethics in the crowd. Respect the artist, respect the audience and respect the artform that is only meant to bring us all closer together.
I, for one, strongly agree with this piece. People need to stop disrespecting these musicians as throwing things at them is a crime that should be enforced to the highest degree. In the future, as a self-defense mechanism, these musicians should have the right to throw back these objects at their “fans”. Only then will we as a society start to learn that this can go both ways. Good day.