When a Culture Journalist Treats Gigs Like a Personal Inconvenience, the Industry Pays the Price –

There is a perfectly valid kind of culture journalist-penned article to be written about gig fatigue. There is a sharp, intelligent discussion to be had about why some audiences are edging towards comfort, controlled environments and lower-effort nights out. There is room to talk about burnout, social exhaustion, post-pandemic habits, rising ticket prices, booking fees, predatory touring models, poor etiquette and the sheer physical drain of standing in a packed room after a day spent trying to survive late-stage capitalism with a half-dead phone battery and a bank account in mourning. That kind of article could have been useful.

Instead, the Guardian published a piece which basically read: person who hates gigs, hates gigs. A subjective dislike was dressed up as some grand cultural verdict, delivered with the presumed authority of a culture journalist, yet carrying the emotional range of a miser complaining that cinema refreshments begin and end with a coke. It was thin, smug and weirdly damaging at a time when UK venues are already struggling to stay open.

Why publish it like that? Why rub salt into the wounds of an ecosystem already dealing with closures, rising costs and exhausted audiences? Why give space to a take that treats live music as an endurance test while barely bothering to ask why people still go, why venues matter, and why a room full of people choosing mess over sterility might still mean something?

The Opinion Piece That Mistook Preference for Truth

There is a difference between saying “I hate going to gigs” and presenting gigs as a busted cultural format. Personal taste can absolutely drive criticism, but it needs self-awareness. Otherwise, it becomes one person’s irritation cosplaying as public insight.

The article’s biggest issue sits in that strange leap from bad personal experience to sweeping diagnosis. Muddy sound at one Earl Sweatshirt show becomes a wider indictment across every venue that isn’t arena and a thrown drink becomes emblematic of live music itself. How lazy can a ‘writer’ possibly be? He took the most annoying elements of gig-going and treated them as the whole event. In that vein, going on holiday is akin to torture because you have to survive the airport before you get there.

Anyone who goes to live music regularly knows the experience varies wildly. Some venues sound magnificent. Some sound terrible. Some crowds are generous, locked in, electric. Some crowds can make you wish you chose to say in with your cat. But isn’t that the same for everything in life? Nothing is ever a guarantee. And one of the most important variables is what mood you’re stepping into a venue with!

The inference that one muddy room can stand in for the whole live circuit is ludicrous. As though there’s no distinction between a basement punk show, a 400-cap indie venue, or a warehouse rave.

A Smarter Article Was Sitting Right There

The frustrating part is that the idea had potential. The headline could have opened a real conversation about how live music now competes with comfort culture. The cinema comparison could have led somewhere interesting, it could have explored how habits are shifting towards lower entertainment budgets, energy levels, and discomfort tolerance.

For some people, a messy high-energy night no longer feels like release; it feels like labour. A gig can involve expensive transport, late finishes, sensory overload, sticky floors, queues, bad toilets, overpriced drinks, aching feet and an audience that treats phone footage like a civic duty. For people already burned out by the ambient dread of being alive in Britain in 2026, the appeal of a controlled sit-down experience makes sense.

There was space here to discuss accessibility too. Plenty of people love music but struggle with standing venues, intense crowds, poor sightlines or unsafe audience behaviour. Plenty of fans have been priced out. Plenty of artists are also exhausted by touring schedules designed around survival rather than artistry. These are serious issues.

Instead, the piece swerved into the flatter terrain of personal annoyance. It took what could have been an intelligent cultural argument and left it sounding like a diary entry from someone who should probably stop accepting gig tickets.

The Guardian, Clickbait and the Vanishing Music Desk

The most damning part is the job title. When a culture journalist says they are forever inventing reasons to turn down gig tickets, what are we supposed to take from that? Is this an admission that musicians are being denied proper coverage because the person in the chair would rather be elsewhere? Is it a confession that live music has become a professional inconvenience to the very people positioned to write about it?

Musicians already fight for scraps of media attention. Independent artists, grassroots venues, promoters, photographers, engineers and local scenes operate with shrinking resources while national platforms keep narrowing the doorway. If someone with cultural reach frames gig attendance as an ordeal, it lands badly because live music coverage is already far thinner than the scene deserves.

There is also the uncomfortable possibility that this was the point. Outrage works. A headline telling gig-goers that gigs are secretly awful will travel because people love disagreeing with it. The Guardian knows that.

Still, clickbait with a broadsheet accent is still clickbait. There was nothing in the piece that resembled editorial intellectualism. It was not a provocation with teeth; it was a grumble with a media pass. At a time when venues are crying out for support, context and public advocacy, publishing a thin sneer at the live experience feels spectacularly tone-deaf.

Conclusion: Thank God People Still Want the Beer and the Noise

Thankfully, plenty of people are still willing to be showered by “stale beer” and suffer through “muddy sound systems” in pursuit of something cinema cannot give them.

Yeah, gigs might ask more of you, and you’ll stumble into the occasional grim one; everything in life is a gamble; when you stop rolling the dice, you might as well roll over and die.

If someone hates gigs, fine. Stay home. Go to the cinema. Drink the coke. Let the rest of us keep the rooms alive.

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Article by Amelia Vandergast