Last night, I went to a ridiculously incredible We the Kings concert. I am now wearing the t-shirt that I bought. There were a bunch of awesome opener bands I’d never heard of before, and it was in a little tiny theater (the Marquis), so we ended up super close to the band.
It was a really unique experience. It made me think about why we go to concerts. Part of it is for the music, sure. I love We the Kings music. But I think we go to concerts for a similar reason that we go to movies or plays, except concerts are interactive. Concerts allow us to escape reality, or normalcy, at least, and to create our own.
Let me explain. Last night, the crowd was about 90% female. Travis Clark, the lead singer, is a babe. And it’s really not because of his looks—he absolutely oozes charisma. He’s funny, he’s talented, and he owned that crowd like I’ve never seen. He fed us line after line—“I wish I had a girl like that… Who knows? Maybe she’s in Colorado… I just realized we’re a mile closer to heaven.” He played a room full of hundreds of girls, and we didn’t mind.
For a couple of hours, reality was liquid. As he sang romantic song after romantic song, I think pretty much every girl in that place pretended, at least to herself, that he was singing to her. The energy was electrifying. And the great thing about a concert as opposed to a movie or a play is that this was all about audience participation.
I squealed like a little girl. I let myself be strung along on the same string as every other screaming teenager in that room. I swooned over his smiles and believed every word he said. That’s not who I am in real life, but that’s who I got to be for a few hours in a tiny downtown theater with an incredible bunch of performers that had the audience eating out of the palms of their hands. I knew I was under their spell, and I soaked up every minute of it.
I’d never realized that a concert could be a bubble that reality just sort of slides past. Really incredible performances, and performers, can make you forget yourself for a little while. And the best part about We the Kings? Whether in concert or on my headphones, they always make me smile.