When you are a pop star on the scale of Harry Styles, you have the glorious luxury of opting out of normal touring, requesting that the audience come to you instead. As part of his Love on Tour 2022 “tour” this autumn, he set up camp at Madison Square Garden in New York for 15 nights, and then at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles for a fortnight.
Styles isn’t the only musician at it: this summer, LCD Soundsystem planted themselves at London’s Brixton Academy for five nights; Hot Chip did four at the same venue in September. Next spring, Bono will take root at New York City’s Beacon Theatre for eight nights in support of his memoir. (It’s happening in comedy, too: Peter Kay’s return to live performance sees him giving a show a month at London’s O2 Arena until November 2023, zipping between national venues in between.)
Of course, then there’s Adele’s infamous Las Vegas residency, which is finally under way after she pulled the original dates planned for January 2022. The allure of the Vegas residency for superstars has been clear since Céline Dion revived the form in 2003, turning them from a graveyard for dwindling artists into a lucrative and convenient second act. There is no between-dates travel, with the performers either staying put in luxury accommodation or zipping in and out to Los Angeles by private jet, and they offer acts the chance to seize creative and economic control. But now smaller artists are starting to make the model their own in response to the challenges of today’s touring industry.
Steve Homer, CEO of AEG Presents UK, was involved in LCD Soundsystem’s Brixton residency. There were, he says, considerable cost savings to be made when booking in multiple nights. “When it comes down to venue rent, if you’re guaranteed a set number of nights, they [the venue] will look at that in a more favourable light than just doing one show,” Homer says.
The economic benefits of doing a residency meant that Hot Chip were able to pass on the savings to their fans, capping ticket prices at £20. “We never wanted music to be this elitist thing,” says Sam Denniston of Verdigris Management, who represent the band. “You don’t price out your audience and dictate who is in the room by the price of the ticket.”
Acts can view a multi-night residency in a mid-sized venue as preferable to an arena show. “Brixton Academy has a sloped floor and amazing lines of sight,” says Denniston. “You feel close to the artists no matter where you are. That was something that was very important to Hot Chip.”
LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy had a similar motivation. “He’s always been averse to playing in an arena set up because he feels that’s not the experience that either him or the audience want,” says Homer.
So many recent tours/shows are being cancelled for economic reasons (Animal Collective) or for mental health reasons (Arlo Parks, Sam Fender, Justin Bieber). In light of that, a residency becomes increasingly attractive. Not wishing to travel to multiple cities or countries was arguably a key factor in Kate Bush choosing to restrict her Before the Dawn live return to 22 nights at the Hammersmith Apollo in London in 2014.
“It’s like you’re going to work that night from a hotel or an apartment where you’ve got a family hub together,” suggests Homer. “It’s like a familiar pair of shoes that you put on.”
A long run of shows may reduce ticket touting where supply is stretched to better meet demand, plus acts enjoy the validation that they can squeeze in multiple nights in a city. “It was a real triumph for [Hot Chip] and a real reaffirmation,” says Denniston. “As each night went on, they relaxed into it more and enjoyed it more.”
Some acts choose to exploit the creative challenge of a long run: in summer 2008, Sparks took over London’s Islington Academy to play their entire back catalogue, one album a night for 20 nights, and then decamped to the Shepherd’s Bush Empire for a finale in which they premiered their new album, Exotic Creatures of the Deep. A golden ticket cost £350 for entry to every night.
“We are proud of our entire catalogue, even the albums that had gone under the radar,” says Sparks singer Russell Mael. “When we presented them in that context, it was a great leveller of everything.”
For Sparks, however, the residency didn’t come with cost savings: their upfront expenses were huge as they were in full band rehearsals for four months. “Good economics has never been synonymous with Sparks!” says Mael with a bleak laugh. “We tend to do whatever is the right thing creatively and then worry about how much of an economic suicide we’re committing by doing that.”
Mael says that Sparks were fundamentally opposed to the idea of the residency as a proxy for “a cushy tour, where you can sit in one place and not have to travel”, opting instead for the high-wire act of each night being unique.
But what does this mean for fans? A residency might mean greater profit margins for acts but, unless everyone copies Hot Chip’s lead, these cost savings are not always parlayed into cheaper tickets. Many fans will have to factor in extra costs for accommodation and travel to go to the show, meaning the ticket itself is only a fraction of their outlay. If the shows are in more intimate venues, that might be an acceptable tradeoff; but if they are in arenas or stadiums, where the tickets are going to be sky high anyway, this could be seen as a stealth tax on their fandom.
At any rate, residences are no longer where musicians go to cash in when they have creatively atrophied: they are where acts maximise their earning and minimise their touring discomfort while at the peak of their market value. Abba Voyage, meanwhile, hints at a whole new kind of residency, where virtual versions of pop stars perform in a custom-built venue for eternity. They never age, their voices don’t deteriorate, their bones will never creak.
Not all pop stars will want a perma-residency, but you can bet the live music business does. Identical shows each day with no need for breaks makes the machine highly lucrative. Just call it a Groundhog payday.
