Banning phones at gigs? That’s a bad call

Pop star Sabrina Carpenter has been considering something drastic. No, it’s not pants and thank god for that. Rather, she’s been thinking of banning phones at her gigs.

She came to this conclusion after attending a Silk Sonic gig in Las Vegas, which was her first mistake. No one should be taking professional advice from Bruno Mars, let alone his side project.

Sabrina Carpenter wants you to stop this. But you have free will.Credit: Getty Images

“I genuinely felt like I was back in the ’70s,” Carpenter told Rolling Stone of the gig, which required concert-goers to lock their phones in pouches before entry. “Wasn’t alive, genuinely felt like I was there. Everyone’s singing, dancing, looking at each other, and laughing. It really, really just felt so beautiful.”

In an age of such technological severity, it’s understandable that a 26-year-old like Sabrina might romanticise the ’70s, an era when everybody – [checks notes] – looked at each other. But she’s wrong: phones at gigs are a gift from god (Steve Jobs).

As someone whose career was built on the virality of her Nonsense outros, those bawdy live clips her fans disseminated across TikTok that first propelled her to stardom, Carpenter should know this. If it wasn’t for phones at gigs, she’d still be locked in a Disney dungeon, trying to fulfil her contractual obligations to Hollywood Records.

While it’s fun to picture Sabrina as a tiny Boomer, yelling at kids to put away their devices and Live.In.The.Moment, she must be aware that her fans already seem to be fully enjoying their moments at her gigs, even behind their little screens?

Sabrina Carpenter’s career took off thanks to viral videos of her bawdy live performances.Credit: (Santiago Meija/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

Anyone who’s been to a gig recently knows the heartwarming sight: a gig-goer, usually a teenage girl, holds a phone up high with the camera turned towards her, recording herself singing along at the top of her lungs, spiritually in sync with what’s going on onstage.

In the old days, people used to point cameras at the artist on stage instead – Flo Rida, for example, or Fall Out Boy – as a sort of keepsake memento, a pop memory to be cherished in perpetuity. What a waste! Who cares what’s going on onstage? The important thing, as these kids understand, is capturing what’s going on in you. I barely know what I looked like at 21, and yet I have a hard drive full of photos of Jimmy Eat World at The Metro in 2003. It’s not right.

There are so many benefits to phones at gigs. The phone torch, for example, is both practical and magical. With the tap of a button, a Gracie Abrams concert can transform into an arena-sized disco ball, glowing Tinkerbells lending a mystical atmosphere to any middle-of-the-road power ballad. In the ’70s, people were probably setting each other on fire anytime a band performed Free Bird, their fumbling Zippo lighters threatening third-degree burns.

With a phone, the inevitable lull during a gig is easier to manage, too. Whenever your favourite legacy act starts playing songs off their “new album”, you can casually check your emails, sports scores or eBay bids without anyone being offended by the glowing light emanating from your direction. Phones definitely help the Dark Matter portion of Pearl Jam’s set pass by quicker.

Sabrina Carpenter is an innocent angel, but there’s a more cynical reason why an artist might want to ban phones at their gigs: exclusivity. Who’s going to buy a ticket to a show when you can already see the thing online?

And so, at a time when concert tickets are $500 for nosebleeds, all those kids recording snippets on their phones are doing the rest of us a public service. They’re giving us a chance to be in the arena with them, to experience what we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, like watching a serial pest attack Katy Perry in the middle of Hot N Cold. For music fans, these amateur videographers are everyday heroes.

It must be said, though, not all videos are created equally. If you’re going to record a video at a show, you should do it right. The era of the 15-second TikTok snippet is dead. We want the connoisseur’s choice: full sets, shot horizontally, and immediately uploaded to YouTube. The ’70s wish they had such benevolent technology.

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