Audience Participation Required

December 21, 2015 11:47 AM

What audio or video recordings are available online of concerts where the lead singer/vocalist stops and the audience takes over to sing the lyrics or chorus of a song without them? Any genre. Kid-safe clips without swearing or explicit lyrics, preferred.
posted by zarq to Grab Bag (41 answers total)

Hey Jude (probably one of many videos)
posted by Beardman at 11:51 AM on December 21, 2015

Zarq, my friend, I have a feeling you may love this video of audience participation in Adam Sandler's Chanukah Song.
posted by bearwife at 11:51 AM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

This sub-reddit has a lot of examples: /r/happycrowds

This is a great one: Slash doing Sweet Child of Mine in Mumbai.
posted by smackfu at 11:55 AM on December 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Blowin' in the Wind. I'm sure there's other Peter, Paul and Mary that does this too.
posted by Melismata at 11:55 AM on December 21, 2015

Probably any recording of 40 by U2 and more recent performances of One, such as this one in Paris. Skip the first 30 seconds if you don't want to see Bono being Bono.
posted by bondcliff at 11:56 AM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, this concert by Snow Patrol of Run is pretty sweet. Here are the lyrics.
posted by bearwife at 12:01 PM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

This isn't exactly to spec because they're singing along with a recording, but this is a multicam edit of a Greenday audience singing Bohemian Rhapsody before the show.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:02 PM on December 21, 2015

A cool one - when the Foo Fighters went to play in that Italian town that did their song "Learn To Fly" en masse, they stopped in the middle of that song in the concert and let the town take over a bit.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:06 PM on December 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Bruce Springsteen hasn't sung all of Hungry Heart in decades.
posted by Etrigan at 12:07 PM on December 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Pete Seeger did this quite a bit, Tom Petty's song Breakdown from his live album Pack Up the Plantation is a really good one.
posted by irisclara at 12:13 PM on December 21, 2015

Elbow, "One Day Like This," Glastonbury. 5:44 to the end.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:14 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Depeche Mode!
posted by cakelite at 12:14 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Warning on the Foo Fighters clip - he does drop the F-bomb a couple times at the very end of the song, due to exuberance.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:14 PM on December 21, 2015

Cowboy Mouth is like one whole audience participation show. Here's their biggest hit.
posted by getawaysticks at 12:15 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

suede's 'trash' starting at about the 1 minute mark until the end of the track... he does it somewhat in the other two tracks in that video as well.
posted by noloveforned at 12:18 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is from a science lecture, not a concert, but my favorite example is Bobby McFerrin's talk on the pentatonic scale where the audience fills in the gaps as he hums notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsO53ydK-yA
posted by joan_holloway at 12:19 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Billy Joel, Piano Man.
posted by mefireader at 12:22 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ah geez, even though I can't stand Ben Folds anymore, this one still makes the hair stand up on my arms. I was in the audience for it a couple times.

Ben Folds, "Not the Same"

Um, the preamble does mention tripping on acid, so if that's problematic, start it at 0:32. The song also mentions someone dying on a water slide. But I really like how it's a song about a religious experience that itself (deliberately?) evokes sort of that feeling.
posted by limeonaire at 12:32 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh! Then there's Peter Gabriel's Biko, which he doesn't actually do in concert any more. But when he did - the very end is a repeated chant of "Ho - ho - hoooooooooooo-oh....." over the music, and he got the whole audience to chant along with him - which of course we did - and then Peter would start calling out names of political prisoners or victims of political murders to chant for ("Sing it for Nelson Mandela!.....Sing it for Aung San Suu Kyi!...Sing it for Victor Jara!....Sing it for Stephen Biko!") - and then he would say "Now what happens next is up to you," and walk off the stage. The rest of the band would keep playing, and the audience would keep chanting. Then after a few more bars, one of the guitarists would stop and walk off. Then a couple bars later, one of the percussionists. And one by one, gradually the band would stop and walk off, leaving the audience to keep going - until the drummer was the last one on stage, beating out time while the audience kept singing- then the drummer would stop too and walk off, and the lights would go out, leaving the audience to keep singing. And the lights stayed off as long as the crowd kept going, and only when the chant eventually broke down did they bring the lights up and bring the band out for their bows.

I saw him do that live in 1986; blew me away. We kept it going for a full 90 seconds.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:20 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sarah McLachlan - Ice Cream - audience goes it without her starting at 1:38...
posted by randomkeystrike at 1:28 PM on December 21, 2015

Pearl Jam does this with Better Man. In the link, they start with the audience.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 1:45 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Even the official, iTunes-downloadable version of Ai Se Eu Te Pego has the audience singing the final chorus, which always made me wonder, how did these people already know the song? If that recording is the recording that hit the top of the charts in Europe and Brazil, how did Michel Teló get the recording of people singing along?

The world may never know.
posted by chainsofreedom at 1:49 PM on December 21, 2015

From this Metafilter post earlier this year, all of our heartstrings were touched when French singer Patrick Bruel was surprised by how popular his song had become when the crowd started singing along with him.
posted by upplepop at 1:58 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow, from /r/happycrowds, this version of "Don't Look Back in Anger" is great.
posted by limeonaire at 2:02 PM on December 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Iron Maiden, "Fear of the Dark" off their Rock in Rio live album.
posted by lilnemo at 2:09 PM on December 21, 2015

Pretty much every time the Indigo Girls do "Closer to Fine".
posted by ApathyGirl at 2:10 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Peter, Paul and Mary have already been mentioned, but I love this version of "Puff the Magic Dragon". There's a small girl at the beginning who's so excited when the start playing.
posted by kjs4 at 2:33 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Band jokingly plays the opening riff of "You Shook Me All Night Long"; crowd sings the entire song.

(On review, there is some swearing, though.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 3:15 PM on December 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but partly because I saw it live and it was awesome, The National doing Vanderlyle Crybaby acoustically in Brixton Academy and getting the audience to sing along - amazingness. [/brag]

Closer to what you asked: Barenaked Ladies - If I Had A Million Dollars
posted by *becca* at 4:06 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Shmuel510's example is Matt Nathanson, by the way. Love that vid. He breaks into classic songs and encourages the audience to sing at almost every concert. That one is unusual only in that Matt himself didn't even begin to sing.
posted by timepiece at 4:32 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Dave Matthews does this a lot. Here's Dancing Nancies (clip is right at the point it happens).

It's more freeform in Everyday.

I'll see what else I can find on YouTube. Those are the two I turned up on a quick google search.
posted by guster4lovers at 7:58 PM on December 21, 2015

Tegan and Sara, Walking With A Ghost, audience sings the full song (Sara Quinn sings along without a mic so only audience vocal is heard)
posted by The Gooch at 8:55 PM on December 21, 2015

As my favorites have already been posted, let me just say that, while it's not precisely what you're looking for, ocherdraco's post from July of last year, “20,000 voices, singing as one,” has some utterly stunning video of the tens of thousands of participants of a Latvian folk festival singing all together.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:01 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Crowded House, farewell concert at the Sydney Opera House. The audience chimes in at 4:50.
posted by killy willy at 10:02 PM on December 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ben Folds does this for the horn part of "Army" these days as he doesn't tour with a horn section anymore. There's supposed to be a spoken swear right before it, but you can't hear the audience do it in this clip. They start singing around the 3-minute mark.

Weird Al typically does this for "Yoda" (it's glorious). They start up around 3:20.

Elton John does this for "Crocodile Rock", around the one-minute mark. Keep listening, as it gets better each time he hits the chorus bit. This was really cool in a packed stadium :)

I don't have any specific examples, but I know Paul McCartney does this a lot on his tours - all I remember though was a blur of awesomeness. I expect you'd turn up something if you have a favorite song of his to search for, for just about any song.
posted by dust.wind.dude at 9:12 AM on December 22, 2015

God this thread rules. Not a huge Hozier fan but this video of the crowd (a plant, but a fan-organized plant) gospel-chorusing his hit from last year is pretty adorable.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:46 PM on December 22, 2015

And of course my guys Dawes used to do this with this song at every concert.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:49 PM on December 22, 2015

Shmuel510, the impromptu AC/DC was fun! Thanks!
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:17 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Bunch of stuff in that Metafilter thread up there including Adele getting Royally co-opted.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:31 PM on December 22, 2015

And this one of the band Boy with a tiny excited crowd in Brooklyn. Singer starts to cry. Gold.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:33 PM on December 22, 2015

I was looking for a different live version of this when I found this:

Crowd singing Cheb Khaled's "Aicha"
posted by limeonaire at 1:35 PM on December 28, 2015