Northeastern put a name to something every honest concertgoer already suspected. In a study published July 9, its researchers asked what actually happens when you leave your phone behind at a show, and the finding was plain: the room comes back. It landed the same week Jack White locked his July 25 Pine Knob show into Yondr pouches and Billie Eilish went the other way, defending filming as the way she keeps the memory. Both of them are right about themselves and wrong about the fight. The phone in your hand was never ruining the show for the person behind you. It was quietly ending it for you.
The Long Take
Why posting the setlist online kills the encore's surprise
On July 25, Jack White will play Pine Knob with every phone in the building sealed inside a pouch. Somewhere in the upper deck, for the first time in years, nobody will know what the encore is until the lights actually change.
The problem with phones at a show was never the filming. It was setlist.fm. A surprise song stops being a surprise the moment the section behind you has already read it off a screen.
Setlist.fm updates in real time. A fan three songs in can pull the night's running order, see the rare cover coming, and spend the next hour waiting for a thing that was supposed to arrive without warning.
An artist spends weeks building a set. The rise, the lull, the song nobody expected at slot nineteen. That architecture assumes the room finds out in sequence.
The Northeastern researchers who studied phone-free crowds this month found the obvious thing: attention pools when the exit is closed. A sealed pouch does not just stop the filming. It restores the one condition a setlist needs to work, which is that you do not already know.
The honest counter is that information wants to be free, that a setlist is only a fact, and that guarding the running order is precious. Fair. But a fact and a gift are not the same thing. The order of songs is not weather data. It is the one piece of the show the artist gets to hand you as it happens, and reading it early is opening the present in the parking lot.
White is not sealing phones to be difficult. He is protecting the only surprise the show has left. Wait for the encore.
Concert Law #6: A great encore changes. A bad encore is on the printed setlist.
“A great encore changes. A bad encore is on the printed setlist.”
This Week in Shows
JAY-Z turned Reasonable Doubt at 30 into a family reunion. The scale was always going to be big: 45,000 in the Bronx on July 10, Beyoncé, Nas, Alicia Keys, his old mentor JAZ-O. The part that will outlast the guest list is Blue Ivy at the keys for "Feelin' It," and her father losing his composure before "Regrets," thanking his mother Gloria Carter out loud. Thirty years as the most guarded voice in the room, letting the room see it.
Bring Me the Horizon played the record they outgrew, on purpose. On July 10 in Manchester, Bring Me the Horizon performed Count Your Blessings front to back for its 20th, the deathcore debut a good chunk of the fanbase pretends never happened, and announced a re-recorded version. Standing behind the version of yourself the newer fans never met takes more nerve than the encore does.
Train's "Drops of Jupiter" turned 25 and the tour is already out. The CD-era summer anthem is back on amphitheater stages with Barenaked Ladies and Matt Nathanson along for the run. Say what you want about the song. Everyone in that parking lot knows every word.
The Venue Report
Ghost Light in Hamtramck made it ten years, which in the current climate is a long time for a neighborhood bar with a stage. Then the rooftop HVAC gave out, the replacement quote came in, and the room announced it will mostly go dark after July. This is how small venues actually die. Not a dramatic final show and a fundraiser, but a single capital repair nobody had the cash for. Somewhere a band is playing its last Ghost Light set right now without knowing it.
50
Then
Ten years ago this month, on July 3, 2016, Carole King stood in London's Hyde Park and played her 1971 masterpiece front to back for the first time ever, to 65,000 people, introduced by Elton John. For the decade anniversary she is putting the full concert film back out, with a Fathom theatrical run that hit U.S. screens July 11. Some records only get performed whole once. That was the night.
B-Sides
- JAY-Z closed the Blueprint night with the verse fans have argued about for 25 years. Eminem came out for "Renegade," traded the bars in person, and stayed for "Lose Yourself," with Pharrell and Slick Rick along for it. Variety has the run of guests.
- Flying across the country for one show finally has a name. New reporting says fans are traveling farther than ever in 2026, with Gen Z driving what the pieces call "groupie getaways" and "show hopping." The trip is now part of the concert, not just the way you get there.
The band asked everyone to put their phones away for one song, and for three minutes the whole room just stood there breathing together, and I have never once gotten that footage but I have never once needed it.
The Bit
Two songs into the Foo Fighters set in Gothenburg on June 12, 2015, Dave Grohl misjudged a jump and snapped his leg on the way to the floor twelve feet below the stage. He grabbed the mic on the way down and told the crowd he thought he had really broken his leg. Then he got carted to the hospital, came back an hour later, sat in a chair while a medic held the leg, and finished the show. He toured the rest of that year on a throne shaped like a giant guitar. The man would not leave.
Put the phone down for one song this week. See what comes back.
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See you at the show. Jake