Have you ever seen people at concerts and they have their phones up the entire time? What's the point of being there anymore? This is probably my biggest old man opinion. You truly lose something trying to capture a performance from behind your screen. That's not to say we can't try to preserve the experience. However, we should absolutely be taking in the moment. You miss something trying to clip things for social media. For Eric Church, he argues a lot of the controversy around his Stagecoach performance in 2024 was because of this.
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Recently, the country crooner spoke with Rolling Stone in service of his latest album Evangeline vs the Machine. There, he talks about a litany of things, one of which is his Stagecoach performance. He's already on record for comparing it to Bob Dylan's during the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Now, Church is arguing that his true fanbase would've understood what he was going for. However, since he was at Stagecoach, the influencer crowd never would've appreciated the art.
Eric Church Says The TikTok Crowd Would Never Understand His Controversial Stagecoach Performance
"I knew I wanted to do a one-of-a-kind show, and I knew maybe the worst place for the presentation would have been Stagecoach. But I also knew that it would have been the biggest megaphone, that there were going to be 30,000 TikTokers who were there to be seen. The show wasn't for them," Church says.
"If we did that [performance] as a one-off at [one of Church's usual] shows, people would have tore their clothes. It would have been a revival. But [at Stagecoach] I knew I was getting a casual thing where they're wanting to hear "Drink in My Hand," and they're wanting to hear what they want to hear. And I'm giving them none of that," Church adds.
He's not off base here. Usually, people save their big ambitions for a crowd that might appreciate it a little more. But at a big festival, people love bombast and they love the hits. Clearly, though, Church had other plans.
