Unlike most of you reading this, I didn’t get into 5 Seconds of Summer by watching their pre-fame days or seeing them on tour with One Direction (#FAKEFAN, I know). In fact, it was writing up an article on their cover of blink-182’s “I Miss You” — followed by falling down a straight-up Alice in Wonderland-style rabbit hole into everything they have ever done on YouTube — that fully converted me into a fan. This new-found fandom was quickly cemented by seeing them live on “Good Morning America” in the summer of 2015, followed by ridic as-close-as-I-can-get-to-the-stage impulse purchases on three dates of the band’s “Rock Out With Your Socks Out” tour. I fell in love with their live performance. I was unabashedly stanning my 27-year-old face off. I was hooked.
TBH, I was used to the whole ~fandom culture~ and "multiple shows per tour" thing thanks to spending the majority of my college years taking planes, trains, and automobiles to get to Hanson shows. Yes, there was a time where now-Old Lady Michelle (I was 19, 20 then) went to 10 shows per (Hanson) tour, traveling all over the country with friends to hit up as many dates as I possibly could, carefully calculating just how many classes I could miss and how to get from New Jersey to South Carolina without ever having flown by myself before. This lifestyle was me.
Needless to say, the second that 5SOS released the North American dates for their “Sounds Live Feels Live” tour, mama knew she was going to as many Northeast shows as she could get her hands on. Which meant that I was on my way to Uncasville, CT two days in a row, Hershey Park, Mansfield, MA, Holmdel, NJ, Madison Square Garden, and Camden, NJ (Luke Hemmings’ birthday show). This, of course, meant endless driving on my end, late-night hallucinations of things on the road that weren't actually there, and approximately an hour-and-a-half every night of uninterrupted bliss as 5SOS sang their way through what is my favorite album of theirs so far.
Full disclosure: I opted to go to most of these shows by myself, choosing instead to get lost in the music and get the best seat possible (#problems) than worry about whether whichever friends I could convince to come were having fun. Still, there’s something to be said about sharing such an experience with others, so shout out to my cousin who spent approximately 7 hours in the car with me to and from Hershey and had a blast at the show.
And ultimately, this isn’t even about 5SOS. It’s about the ones who get it — the fans who know that one show is never enough and the addiction to seeing your faves live should probably be a diagnosed disorder (kidding). Going to so many shows where the setlist is more or less the same is bound to get a little repetitive after a while, but eff it — I’d go to an entire setlist of just “Waste the Night” and “Vapor” on repeat, if I’m telling the truth. (Luke and Calum’s verses in “Waste the Night live = I’LL NEVER GET OVER IT.)
It’s a feeling that’s almost impossible to put into words, but as a metaphor: It’s like a match inside you is lit — and once those sparks ignite, nothing else matters but seeing your band and feeding off of their energy and the buzz from the crowd. You get addicted to that Joker-like grin plastered to your face and the escapism and happiness you feel. That’s why people do seven shows, 20 shows, an entire leg, the whole tour. It’s that moment where we all feel the most alive, the most energized, and maybe even the most like ourselves.
Photo: Michelle McGahan/Getty Images