The New Golden Age Of Opening Acts

This January, Gracie Abrams announced a new opening act for a string of European tour dates: bedroom-pop singer Dora Jar, who would warm up crowds at venues like London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena. While it would mark a momentous occasion in the career of any budding indie-pop artist, some of Abrams’s followers were so disappointed in the choice that they sought vigilante justice online. “Many fans, including myself, are baffled by the recent announcement that Dora Jar will be the opening act,” read a Change.org petition started by one fan. “We are perplexed as we do not recognize her, and with less than two weeks till the tour, it’s virtually impossible to familiarize ourselves with her slowpaced songs.” Abrams swiftly defended her choice, boldly reaching into the hornet’s nest of stan culture and setting off a weeklong news cycle. “Just hearing about this absolute ridiculousness,” she commented on Stereogum’s Instagram. “So wildly uncool and bizarre.… I couldn’t be luckier or prouder to share a stage with this talented wonder.”

Five years ago, this level of scrutiny over the opening act of the European leg of a pop tour might have been unfathomable. But since live music returned to full capacity in the wake of the pandemic, these shows have experienced a paradigm shift that has redefined the opening slot. Young fans, now more energized by concert-going than ever, are applying the same enthusiasm — and criticism — to openers that was once reserved for the headliners. In turn, the opening slot has become an essential platform for rising musicians, with the capacity to help launch them from a state of light buzz to a new stratosphere of pop stardom. “The tours themselves have become newsworthy in a way where, even if you’re not there, you’re aware of what is happening,” says Avery McTaggart, one of the founders of the music-management agency TBA. “These opening slots have become much more impactful, because the tours themselves are repeatedly covered, newsworthy events.”

Like most things in the post-COVID pop universe, all roads lead to the Eras Tour. It is no coincidence that, after releasing five studio albums with middling success since 2015, Sabrina Carpenter’s breakout moment with Short n’ Sweet arrived in the wake of opening for Taylor Swift. Carpenter did more than just show up and punch a time card. She created regular viral moments by singing city-specific, innuendo-laden outros to her song “Nonsense” each night. She and Swift also used the Eras Tour to bolster the public narrative of their friendship, sharing the stage for special duets and creating a constellation of warm and fuzzy “moments.” “I will cherish this taybrina era (and all the eras) till the end of time,” Carpenter wrote on Instagram last March. Just a few weeks later, she unleashed “Espresso,” the defining pop single of the summer.

“These opening slots have become much more impactful, because the tours themselves are repeatedly covered, newsworthy events.”

In the minds of pop audiences who approach fandom like detective work, Swift’s choice to bring Carpenter on tour could even be interpreted as a subliminal chess move against Olivia Rodrigo. (Rodrigo and Carpenter share an ex, and Swift and Rodrigo have been at odds over songwriting credits in the past.) In today’s golden age of opening acts, Rodrigo has been equally as influential as Swift. For her 2024 Guts World Tour, she picked openers like alt-rock legends The Breeders as well as her friend Chappell Roan, who had been toiling in the industry for the better part of a decade. The buzz around Roan’s flamboyant pop anthems and drag-inspired live show was already outgrowing the rooms she was playing, like the 1,100-person Showbox in Seattle. Rodrigo’s tour put her in front of 15,000 fans nightly. “There was a scarcity in Chappell tickets, and there was a scarcity in Olivia tickets…so there was this frenzy,” says Nick Bobetsky, who managed Roan until late last year. “Everyone in those rooms felt like they were a part of something special.”

Days after her tour run ended, Roan released “Good Luck, Babe!” which became her first Billboard Hot 100 hit. “The tour was incredibly impactful to catapult awareness,” Bobetsky says. “But we worked it: We had a content person out there, so we were doing show recaps, building that world out there. We really just amplified it every day. I don’t think the Guts Tour was the make-or-break moment, but it was a really important part of the puzzle.” By the end of her six-week run of dates with Rodrigo, Roan’s monthly Spotify listeners had nearly doubled, to just over 3 million. By August, she had over 40 million.

The opening-act renaissance has not been strictly limited to blue-chip pop tours. Last year, the drone-pop artist Ethel Cain was riding the wave of her breakout record, Preacher’s Daughter. She had already been on her own headlining tour, but she booked some shows opening for Mitski. “Even just doing a handful of dates can create the same effect in terms of fan excitement and engagement on both sides,” says McTaggart, who manages Cain. “The influence that a headliner has with who they are, who they want to be associated with — it’s received at the shows themselves, but that’s really only half the story. Simply the announcement of who a headlining artist is really interested in, both musically and personally, is important.”

Especially when it’s coming from a famously hands-on artist. For her eight London shows last year, Swift had a different opening lineup each night. “The fans feel that deep connection with the headliner, to the point where they’re like, ‘If Taylor loves this artist enough to put them on a show, I think I’ll love them, too,’” Bobetsky says.

“The reality is that real-life engagement with fans, whether it’s through support tours or on billboards, is still the most effective way to build an artist.”

Influence and world-building were certainly on Dua Lipa’s mind in 2021 and 2022 as she pro - moted her disco-reviving Future Nostalgia album. She had already reached a new echelon of commercial impact with songs like “Levitating” and “Don’t Start Now,” and she also set about building softer but equally powerful forms of pop-cultural prowess. In late 2021, Dua announced Service95, a newsletter and podcast network in which she shared book recommendations and interviews, establishing her as not just a performer but a person communicating a set of tastes. Around this time, she also added Caroline Polachek — the former Chairlift frontwoman and solo artist on the more avant-garde fringes of the pop world — to her 2022 tour.

Polachek, who was in her mid-thirties, was in between album cycles for 2019’s Pang and 2023’s Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, and her biggest headlining show back then was around 5,000 people. She was not the obvious choice for an artist of Lipa’s magnitude. “I would infer that asking Caroline to open was a reflection of her taste, and not just a shrewd business move to sell tickets,” says Mookie Singerman, Polachek’s manager of 11 years. “Caroline was a big live draw herself, but I also think she does represent a level of cool in the broader culture.” The artists did have a connection: Singerman is part of TaP Music, the management company that represented Lipa until the beginning of the tour. But as a Top 40 diva reaching out to a Pitchfork darling, Lipa was able to amp up her hipster appeal — and help pave the way for Polachek’s own transition to a capital-P pop act with Desire. “Caroline was riding that line in between indie pop and more mainstream pop, and opening for Dua was a very good way to lean more into this big pop world,” Singerman says.

If you pay attention to the blizzard of headlines around the habits of Gen Z, it’s easy to assume that young people are so antisocial and focused on digital interactions that the very enterprise of live music could come under existential threat. In fact, there is a greater premium on in-person experience, and live music has become even more central to fandom than in previous generations. “What I really notice with these TikTok artists, or younger crowds, is when they come to a show, they’re lined up before the opener starts,” says Patrick Coman, a marketing manager at music agency Red Light. “They want to be there for the entire experience.” (And perhaps get their money’s worth as ticket prices spike — according to trade publication Pollstar, the average ticket for the top 100 tours of 2024 cost $135.92.)

“During the pandemic and coming out of it, the only marketing ideas labels tended to have were TikTok-related,” Singerman adds. “The reality is that real-life engagement with fans, whether it’s through support tours or on billboards, is still the most effective way to build an artist.”

Of course, another tenet of show business holds true: All press is good press. If Gracie Abrams fans weren’t familiar with Dora Jar before the tour announcement dustup, they certainly are now — and they’ve been given ample motivation to study up before the shows. “That’s the most amount of press and attention that I think an opening act could possibly ever get, even if it’s couched in this negative attention,” Singerman says. “I think it serves Dora Jar’s purposes really well.”