Can I Get an Encore, Do You Want More?

Every show has an encore, right?

Earlier this year, the New York Times published a list of the best books of the 21st century. That list had no books about music. To rectify that, I’ve been polling artists, critics, and fans about their favorite music books released in the last 24 years. I’d love for you to fill out the survey below, so we can find the best books around.

---

Can I Get an Encore, Do You Want More?

By Chris Dalla Riva

Once a month, I take some time to answer musical questions that readers send in. (If you’ve got a question, click here and I’ll try to answer it this month.) These questions are usually fairly straightforward and have definitive answers. But occasionally a question sticks with me even after I compose an answer. That happened this month when the wonderful writer

Monia Ali

asked me a fascinating question: “I’d love to know more about the history of the encore. When did it start? Why is it now standard for encores to not even be a surprise?”

The crux of my answer was that the encore “was a solution to the problem of music not being as readily available in the pre-recorded era.” If you wanted to hear a song again in 1855, you had to ask someone to do it again. Nevertheless, the encore we have come to know — where an artist walks offstage knowing full well they are about to return — didn’t really emerge until the late-1970s. I determined this by gathering setlist data for The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen — three artists that have been playing for decades — and seeing when they started playing encores regularly.

Days later, I felt that this approach was crude. Three artists is a small sample. Could that really tell me anything? I needed to make sure. To do that, I went to Setlist.fm, the world’s largest repository of concert setlists, and grabbed historical data from 17 venues:

• 930 Club (Washington, D.C.)

• Apollo Theater (New York, NY)

• Beacon Theatre (New York, NY)

• Capitol Theatre (Passaic, NJ)

• Carnegie Hall (New York, NY)

• CBGBs (New York, NY)

• Fillmore East (New York, NY)

• Fillmore West (San Francisco, CA)

• Headliner Room at Harrah’s (Reno, NV)

• Hollywood Bowl (Los Angeles, CA)

• Madison Square Garden (New York, NY)

• Metro Chicago (Chicago, IL)

• Red Rocks Amphitheatre (Morrison, CO)

• Royal Albert Hall (London, GB)

• Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel (Dallas, TX)

• Whiskey a Go Go (Hollywood, CA)

• Winterland Ballroom (San Francisco, CA)

I chose these venues for one of a few reasons. They were either open for a long time, had a lot of historical data available, or were generally considered to be a legendary venue. All together I was able to get 27,053 setlists between 1890 and 2024 totaling 366,657 songs performed.