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Taylor Swift fans aren’t the only ones to suffer setlist envy

Setlist.FM raises expectations of what a show will be like – and sometimes it dashes them too

Surprise songs: Taylor Swift performs onstage at Wembley Stadium, London, on Sunday night. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS
Surprise songs: Taylor Swift performs onstage at Wembley Stadium, London, on Sunday night. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS
Laura Slattery's picture
Laura Slattery
Tue Jun 25 2024 - 06:00

“Liverpool took everything from me,” one social media user wails. “Edinburgh won. Every. Single. Thing,” laments another on X. The phrase “this is a personal attack” is a recurring one, signalling, as ever, that this is not a personal attack.

What’s happening here? Yes, it’s a Taylor Swift thing. On every night of her Eras tour, the music industry’s number one artist performs two “surprise songs” – often four songs divided into two mash-ups – during her otherwise fixed set list. Among future attendees, this triggers surprise song envy whenever social posts confirm that some other undeserving city has got to hear your absolute favourites from her 274-song back catalogue, so there goes that dream.

The hyperbole is intentionally funny – I think – and yet when I saw Wembley got to hear Out of the Woods, ruling it out of contention for Dublin next weekend, “LONDON PUBLIC ENEMY” seemed an appropriate reaction, not over the top at all.

This process-of-elimination game for surprise songs might be specific to Swifties, but the business of pre-gig intelligence-gathering is not. The gig-goer’s primary resource? Setlist.FM.

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For such a behaviour-altering website, Setlist.FM is relatively unsung. Maybe that’s because it is chiefly used by music nerds, or maybe it’s because it has been around for so long – it was founded in California in 2008 and acquired by Ticketmaster owner Live Nation Entertainment in 2012 – that nobody remembers what they did before it existed.

Setlist.FM, which calls itself the set list wiki, is an easily searchable database of more than eight million set lists played by more than 360,000 artists at 370,000 venues. If artists have been touring before they arrive in Ireland, it yields a solid bank of data to help you work out if the ticket price is worth it, where any song familiarisation homework lies and the degree to which the show is locked down.

And then there are the practicalities. Am I going to make the last bus home? When is the optimum time for a toilet trip? The site, when checked mid-show, offers valuable pointers that become especially useful in outdoor concert season.

During Pulp’s gig in St Anne’s Park in Dublin last June, for instance, the Setlist.FM entry for the band’s preceding show suggested a natural break for bladder relief. Ideally, I would avoid a mid-set Portaloo interlude, but if I must take a voyage to a remote outpost run on blue chemicals and rubbery flush mechanisms, I’d rather not miss Do You Remember the First Time?

As it happened, Pulp mixed up their set, and my friend and I were only just sorted for wees and sanitiser when they slid into the sublime Sorted for E’s and Wizz. But then that’s precisely the problem with a Setlist.FM habit. It helps manage expectations, but it also creates them, making its information the benchmark against which a gig will positively or negatively surprise.

When you truly love an artist, you’ll rock up to hear them sing the terms and conditions on an insurance contract. That is the case for me with the American indie-folk singer Laura Veirs, who played Liberty Hall last November. Setlist.FM indicated she was no longer doing Another Space and Time, a repeat-play of mine from 2020, but she did have a nightly audience request slot. Thanks to Setlist.FM, I was ready to shout.

Alas, sluggish after a spot of emergency-exit drama the night before, I was beaten to the draw by an ultra-quick request nemesis with an alternative pick. Another Space and Time – ironically, a song that imagines the peace of mind we might enjoy if the internet died – went unheard.

Streaming platforms give paying subscribers total control over how they listen to music. Maybe that alone explains some impatience when artists have their own ideas about how their live shows should unfold. But for me, the curating urge has only really sharpened since the pandemic. My desire for set lists to be wholly tailored to my preferences, and my regret when they aren’t, is much keener now.

The psychology of this is obvious. If you think something might be taken away from you – and if you have fresh experience of that happening – you will be extra-anxious for it to be perfect. For the same reason, I find myself fuming more than ever at the Worst Gig People in the world: the talkers, the lurchers, the territory usurpers and the yo-yo pints fetchers.

Some of the best shows I’ve been to have been the least predictable ones, and I don’t believe that’s a coincidence. The logistics of staging the Eras mega-tour might demand that surprises only occur within the confines of a single segment, but Swift understands that fans don’t want 100 per cent certainty, even if they think they do. Uniqueness has its own virtue. As long as the delight of the masses outweighs the disappointment of the picky, it’s been a great gig.

But sometimes, if the evidence points to an evolving, semi-fluctuating set list, the hope still kills. When Gorillaz played the 3Arena in August 2022, the atmosphere was one of grateful post-Covid exuberance from start to joyous finish. So why was I yearning for the night to be capped by Damon Albarn singing the beautiful, downbeat Souk Eye?

I blame the internet and the lingering vestiges of pandemic trauma, in that order. Thanks to Setlist.FM, I knew Gorillaz had performed the song at their most recent gig in Finland. This knowledge, once sought, couldn’t be unlearned. The solution, as ever, is an online detox. In the meantime, there’s only one way of saying this: Helsinki, you took everything from me.

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