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I want to talk about the ultimate downer at a concert. It’s not the drunk guy spilling beer on you, your sore feet from saving a spot at the barricade, or the late start time. It’s the encore.

It wasn’t always like this—“this” being predictable, routine, and expected.

Encore is a French word meaning “again.” The idea dates back to 18th-century orchestral settings: if a piece won the favour of the concert hall, it was asked that the performer repeat the arrangement so that the audience could hear it again. In the era of its origin, the spontaneity of this musical phenomenon was paramount—artists met the demand of their audiences based on their roars. An encore was never scheduled.

If an encore was entirely organic and unplanned, it would be truly special. It would be tied to a time and place, experienced only by a lucky few. These days, though, encores are often built into the setlist, and are repeated each tour stop with the same songs. This ignores a unique opportunity to create an unreplicatable memory. For me, it feels like a loss in our collective musical culture.

November 2023 was when I first heard an artist come out against encores. I felt seen that night at the Biltmore when Katie Munshaw, lead singer of Dizzy, took her mic to confidently say, “We don’t do encores.” More recently, I attended the Evanescence concert at Rogers Arena; celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the band’s album Fallen, it was one of the most hotly anticipated Vancouver shows of 2024. Evanescence left its heart on that stage, and by the time the clock struck 11 and the noise curfew kicked in, no tune was left unsung. Demanding “one more song” would have been superfluous. In the true spirit of metal, they had already given us everything, and they knew it.

Concert setlists are often structured with an electric opening salvo, softer deep cuts in the middle, and then the big hits to close things out. This order of songs creates a gradual build in feeling. But you know what really interrupts the perfect flow of a show? Prompting an encore in which the artist exits the stage, the set gets blacked out, and the audience members must labour with stomps and screams for five unnecessary minutes—all while the artist already knows that they’ll be coming back out for the rest of their pre-scheduled songs.

Wanting to know if I was the only one feeling this way, I reached out to a few local artists to get their thoughts. Uncle Strut members Tyson McNamara, Simon Tejani, and Quincy Flowers share that “as long as the break isn’t too long, we think encores are great. It allows the crowd to get fired up.” On a similar wavelength, Brandon Wolfe Scott of Yukon Blonde adds, “I love an encore if you’ve earned it! If you have a room full of paying customers who are having an amazing night cheering and wanting more from you, you better have a dang good tune up your sleeve!”

There are a few things I can understand about the intent of encores—the first being the desire to end the show with a bang, as understood here by both Uncle Strut and Scott. But I’d argue that the impact of this “bang” is reduced because encores are now more often routine than special.

Encores can also be seen as expressions of flattery from audience to performer. But doesn’t the ticket purchase, and inevitable applause and hollering, already convey this? To some degree, local artist Amanda Sum agrees with me, answering that “encores can certainly lean towards being self-indulgent for the performer.” Yet for her, the answer is a bit more complicated. She adds, “I do think with the right intention they can be a wonderful gift. I just finished quietly taking in the work you put into a show, and now at the end, I get to release my energy and express gratitude by clapping my hands as if to say, ‘Thank you.”

Fellow artist Kate Yahn shares a similar outlook, believing that one! more! song! can feel unnecessary. But, she explains, “as an emerging indie artist, an encore can be validating.” I agree with both Sum and Yahn that sharing our gratitude for performers is important, but I’d argue that the authenticity in this exchange would be strengthened if encores returned to their spontaneous state.

Encores may also be perceived as an act of generosity in which the performers give their audiences a few extra tunes. But couldn’t two more songs fit comfortably into the time allocated for the artist to go offstage and then come back? Acknowledging these timelines, indie-rock band Post Modern Connection shares that “we at PMC are definitely pro encores. They’re always a little stressful for us, though, because we never have an encore song unless we shorten our set ahead of time. Does that make it less spontaneous? Maybe.”

Reflecting on these sentiments, I think my local music peers and I can agree that in the right context, encores have potential to prompt a fun and memorable concert experience for both the fan and performer. The problem is that encores today are not experienced the way that they’re truly meant to be. With our current concert culture, encores are already dead. Now it’s time to banish the ghost.