Fontaines DC’s 40th anniversary tour: Who will be the legacy acts of our old age?
Upon visiting any of the world’s gargantuan arena venues to see some legacy act from the days before the Berlin Wall fell, a singular thought invariably springs to mind: Who will be filling these arenas in 40 years’ time?
Will each major city across the United Kingdom play host to colossal, decaying buildings frequented only by tumbleweeds, or will a new generation of legacy acts arise to take over the mantle of reunion tours and anniversary celebrations? The answer, of course, is unwritten, but given the state of the pop charts at present, it is difficult to envision those legacy acts forming in quite the same way, least of all staying together for long enough for their audience to become middle-aged and middle-class.
Before the Instagram comments arrive in anger, this is not an article rooted in ageism. There is nothing inherently wrong with legacy acts performing at arenas and stadiums across the globe, nor with middle-aged people using those shows as an excuse to invest in plastic pint pots of £10 lager and a T-shirt to wear on ‘casual Friday’ – without them, in fact, the live music industry would likely crumble.
It is true, however, that the legacy act circuit is self-fulfilling. If you examine music festival line-ups from the past decade, for instance, the vast majority of headline acts are legacy acts that reached the peak of their cultural cache in the 1990s or before. Yet, back then, festivals and major music events were far more often dominated by contemporary acts, albeit there were still a fair few legacy numbers kicking around.
There is an argument, therefore, that if there are few contemporary bands reaching heights capable of knocking those legacy acts off the headline spots, then there will be depressingly few legacy acts in the future. Stereophonics can’t exist indefinitely.
Who, then, are the legacy acts of this current generation’s future? Pop music, of course, is full of candidates, ranging from Charli XCX to Olivia Rodrigo, who have courted colossal mainstream success, seeing them book headline spots at some of the biggest music festivals in the world. Surely, then, it isn’t difficult to envision them continuing to perform when their current audience reaches middle age.
Within the realm of rock music, there are fewer candidates, but still the likes of Wolf Alice and Fontaines DC. prevail as already arena-sized groups who could quite easily continue to churn out a greatest hits tour should they be hit with a hefty tax bill come their 50th birthdays. Nevertheless, all the artists mentioned thus far seem to maintain a strict set of artistic principles rooted in innovation and creativity, making it far more difficult to envision a future in which they set it all aside to re-tread the same ground they did as youngsters.
Then again, you could have said the same about a lot of the groups that made up the 2000s indie rock boom, and already we are witnessing many of those groups resurfacing for anniversary tours, playing to audiences of aged indie kids in their threadbare keffiyehs and fading drainpipe trousers, so perhaps this current batch of successful rock outfits aren’t quite as holier than thou as currently expected.
On the other end of the spectrum, it seems rather probable that pop stars of the ilk of Taylor Swift or Harry Styles will continue their endless run of stadium shows and arena tours for as long as humanly possible. In terms of the everyday acts that have propped up arena-sized venues for decades, though, the music promoters of the distant future might find those artists in increasingly short supply.
