Unless, that is, the crowd truly demands it.

Mt Smart Stadium was a sea of colour and noise last week. Handwritten signs, screams, singalongs and hollered appreciation of the main attraction via the chant, “Harry, Harry, Harry [contd]”. Puzzlingly, however, when Mr Styles departed the stage after 70 minutes or so, waving goodbye with a polite thank you, the crowd went mostly quiet. There were smatterings of applause, a whistle and squall here and there. But compared with most of the show that had gone before, it was a library. 

A few days later at Western Springs, something similar went down. I wasn’t at My Chemical Romance, but according to a giddily effusive review by “maybe their biggest fan on earth” on RNZ, this is what happened: “They hadn’t played ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ yet, so when they left the stage nobody chanted for an encore because why would we? We know they’re coming back to deliver the emo anthem of our time. So everyone just waited and chatted and cried for a couple of minutes.”

Why would we? You would because the very essence of an encore is a crowd demand – the exhortation for more. The alchemy of a live performance is kindled in the interplay of audience and artist. And the encore roar is its summit. If everyone has scrolled Setlist-dot-fm and knows exactly which songs have come in which order across the last 20 dates, has committed to memory the main set and the encore, and so decides to treat it like an intermission, taking a break, waiting and chatting, wiping away mascara or picking bits of feather boa out of each other’s hair, an important part of the magic is gone.

To which you may roll your eyes, I know, and say: come on sad Gen X man, the whole encore thing is a masquerade. That magic is obvious illusion – everyone knows what to expect. Some smaller venues aside, the script is exit-cheer-encore, then the house lights flick on and we all go home.

True, yes, fine. But it is, after all, called a “show”. It is theatre, performance, an act of complicity, of delight and suspended disbelief. The critical thing is we all go along for the ride.

Some bands forswear encores. The likes of Foo Fighters and The Strokes, for example, routinely go without, in favour of an unbroken blizzard. Others, Bruce Springsteen or Fleetwood Mac, say, like to serve up what seems like several thousand encores in a single night, as if in pursuit of the long distance runner’s euphoric high. 

Either approach works. Good for them all. But if there are to be encores, they must surely crest on what Maggie Rogers calls the “crowd as a tide”. Otherwise the whole glorious connivance comes tumbling down. Something, you know, must be done. And that means putting the onus on the artists. Yes, you, Harry, and you, the various Chemicals Romance (thanks for reading this far, by the way) and performers all – I wholesomely hereby entreat you not to do an encore unless the crowd noisily craves it. For the greater good. It’s the only way. 

At least the encore has not been hollowed everywhere. “Big strong encore chant from Backstreet Boys crowd,” attests a colleague who went to Spark Arena last weekend. Thank you, Backstreet Boys crowd.

I have another couple of paragraphs to write but if there’s no one … No? … Nobody?  Ah. There’s the house lights.