I used to be in a band called The Kicks. In that band, we had a song called Let Me Love You (you can listen to it HERE), and it always went over really well at the live shows. The song goes back and forth from pretty chill to wild and raucous a few times before really lifting off at the end. So by the time we were done with the song, we had definitely hit a climactic moment.
The audience would be engaged, the band was engaged, the groove was good, the guitars were blazing, big vocals. This was it.
Naturally we tried putting the song at the end of the set list because it seemed to be this energy filled, uplifting, rock n roll moment to close with.
But it didn’t work.
To this day I can’t explain why Let Me Love You wasn’t the right song to close with but it just wasn’t. Every time we’d close a show with it, we’d get off stage and know it wasn’t right.
So we started putting it right after the acoustic portion of our set. We’d play a couple down songs in the middle of the show and the thought was to pick the energy back up with Let Me Love You.
This worked. Everytime. 5 people or 5,000 people, it worked.
Again, I can’t totally explain why, but anyone or anything, any energy that we’d lost up to that point in the set, we would gain back when we played this song.
And this presented a new problem. Here we were 30mins into a 45 minute set and we feel like we just blew the roof off. We just played the ace up our sleeve. What now?
What in the world do we do with the final 15 minutes of the show? How can we create an even bigger moment to end with?
For artists and bands, these are the questions. The ebb and flow, the story of your set list, the place you’re leading people to and why you’re leading them there.
I think the best shows The Kicks ever played were when we solved the little riddle of the above situation. It took a lot of tinkering, some failing, some fighting, some new songs, some old songs, but once we nailed it…
I say all this to say, keep paying attention, keep looking for a way in, keep listening to your gut, keep pushing for a better way.
