Over the summer, I went to three festivals: All Points East, Edinburgh Summer Sessions, and Leeds Festival, and all three had one thing in common – phones!
I’m guilty of it too; I go to festivals and concerts and record hundreds of 30-second videos – but what’s the point?
The Nostalgia Factor
I saw Lorde perform at two festivals over the summer; she has been one of my favourite artists since early high school, so it makes sense that screaming Green Light and Ribs with my friends would take me back to being 13 and listening to Melodrama for the first time. These are moments that I’ll want to look back on in 10 years when I’m craving nostalgia, so it makes sense to keep a digital record of them, and therefore I recorded videos of her set at All Points East, which was the first time I saw her over the summer.
On the other hand, ensuring that your video is in focus and that you are keeping your phone steady can take you out of the moment, you aren’t able to completely focus on the performer in front of you and feel the beat of the music flow through you.
When I saw Lorde headline Edinburgh Summer Sessions the following week, I chose not to record, and the show hit me so much harder when I focused all of my energy into watching and feeling the performance.
Effects of Social Media
Since the COVID pandemic, here’s definitely been a change in the way we present ourselves online. It’s clear in the popular TikTok trend that is circulating at the moment where people show ‘photos I posted on my story in 2019’. There’s a huge difference between the Instagram polls and Snapchat filters that were once popular 7 years ago compared to the overly aestheticised things we upload today – staged photos with matcha and props from our handbags or clean girl selfies.
Where once we used to be more honest and raw online, we now create versions of ourselves specifically for our online presence, rather than showing who we really are.
This ties in with concerts and festivals, trying to get a really good, clear video of the artist, or a photo with perfect lighting to put on your Instagram story later. We keep our phones up and record entire songs and sets because we might miss a really good moment that would make a perfect post.
Backlash Against Phone-free Gigs
Recently, some artists have toyed with banning phones at concerts using Yondr pouches. A notable example is Phoebe Bridgers, who is currently on the first leg of The Lost Tour for her brand-new album Lost Weekend. She announced this along with her tour announcement by very bluntly saying, ‘I’m going on tour no phones.’
This received mixed opinions online, with some fans saying that it was a great way to stay in the moment, and make and arena show feel more intimate, while others asked questions about safety and ability to contact family and friends, particularly after the 2017 Manchester Arena attack.
It is definitely interesting to see such a large-scale tour go phones-free, and it begs the question of whether this is the future of concerts and festivals.
Conclusion
In the digital age, it is no shock that at almost every concert and festival there is a sea of phones recording every moment of the show in order to relive the moment or post online, but it has definitely gotten to a stage where we are rejecting dancing and singing along to our favourite songs to prevent our video from getting messed up, so next time you’re at a concert or a festival, let loose a little! Dance and have a fun time with your friends – those memories are worth a million more than a well-shot video of an artist will ever be.