We've all been there: you're seeing your favorite band in Nashville. The guitarist is ripping an insane solo on the group's biggest hit and the crowd goes absolutely ... mild.
There's a bro in a baseball
cap standing perfectly still with his arms crossed. A girl wearing the band’s merch is filming the entire song for TikTok.
Two blondes in the front row are slurring their speech in a very loud brunch-style catch-up as the concertgoer next to them adjusts their earplugs.
This band has Grammys, people!
As a music journalist at The Tennessean, I've been to hundreds, if not thousands, of shows across Nashville. Spanning genres and venues. One thing remains constant: Most crowds in Music City just don't dance.
And I'm not the only one who's noticed.
"When I first moved to town, someone gave me a heads up that Nashville crowds were the hardest in the country to win over," Seth Rentfrow, the bassist in the up-and-coming rock band Lombardy, told me. "I thought I was a failure the first time. Truly thought I was cooked."
Rentfrow said musicians call the 15 feet surrounding the stage "The Cumberland Gap" in Nashville because audiences often keep their distance.
Taylor Cole, who has booked shows at The East Room for the past decade, has his own name for the phenomenon: "The Half Circle of Hate."
While there are definitely exceptions, like moshes at The Cobra and The End, house shows or Rocknites at Skinny Dennis, "there's just not enough throwing down on the dance floor here in Nashville," Cole said.
So for this week's "Audrey Off Broadway," a column where we dive into the people, places and trends shaping Nashville's culture right now, I decided to harness the power of investigative journalism.
After conducting some rigorous watchdog reporting — an open call on Instagram — I've uncovered the reasons behind this injustice. Here's why so many Nashville audiences are allergic to fun.
1. Nashvillians are overexposed to music.
"The moment you land at BNA, there's somebody playing cowboy chords at an airport bar," said Oliver Pierce, the frontman of the Nashville rock band New Translations (and a madman on the dance floor).
"Music is everywhere you want it, and everywhere you don't want it," he continued.
"You're trying to get a salad, and somebody is playing a song. You're on your way to see a movie at Opry Mills, and someone is playing outside the Dave & Busters."
Pierce's theory? Musical desensitization.
This is a city packed with musicians, songwriters, producers and audio engineers. According to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, the music industry supports at least 80,000 jobs across the region.
A sizable portion of the audience at any given show has probably spent all day making music themselves and could see another concert tomorrow night if they wanted to.
"Music is so readily available," Pierce said. "People just don't respond in the same way."
2. We're all trying to be nonchalant.
Another theory?
"The crowds in Nashville give 'too cool for school,'" said Nikki Christie, violinist in the rock band Flight Attendant.
Unlike most cities, not everyone at a Nashville show is there simply to be a fan. Some are there to network or support a friend. Others are there because their name ended up on a guest list.
At heavily papered shows, the audience can be packed with journalists, managers, publicists and industry insiders. It's hard to fully let loose when you're busy being perceived by colleagues.
I've felt it myself. More than once, I've resisted the urge to shake what my mother gave me because I was worried about running into a publicist I'd been emailing or an artist I might interview later.
Nobody wants to be the most enthusiastic person in the room, so we all turn the dial down together.
3. We don't want to end up on TikTok.
In the same vein, there's data suggesting younger generations are dancing less for one specific reason.
"They are aware they are subject to being recorded at any given time," said Sophie Steele, a music industry strategist in Nashville. It's hard to “dance like nobody’s watching" when everyone's phone is out.
YPulse data shows that 57% of teens and 48% of young adults worry about looking "cringey" because someone might film them. Broader market research has confirmed that phones are killing the dance floor.
While no city-specific academic dataset exists, Nashville's music industry culture likely amplifies that anxiety.
But if we're looking on the bright side ...
I fielded more than 50 responses to my inquiry.
Some said Nashville locals are trying to differentiate themselves from the "woo-girl" tourists. Or that many of the city's performers with singer-songwriter backgrounds never learned how to effectively summon a frenzy on the dance floor.
My favorite theory, and the most hopeful one, is that Nashville is a town full of close observers.
They don't dance because they're busy noticing things the average fan doesn't: the lighting design, the songwriting structure, the individual instruments, a vocal chain.
On a recent date with an up-and-coming music producer (which is hopefully a safer bet than dating a dude in a band, cross your fingers for me), I told him about my idea for this story.
"Oh, I'm definitely part of the problem," he said as we sat outside Ugly Mugs.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"When a band is on stage, I'm locked in watching what they do and how they do it."
He told me he spends entire shows dissecting performances, studying arrangements and figuring out why certain moments work. It's how he gets better at his craft.
He's not dancing, he explained. He's at work.
Maybe that's just the tradeoff of living in Music City.
We're all so busy making music and promoting it, we've forgotten how to be fans. Crazy, unhinged, faint-when-your-favorite-artist-walks-out-on-the-stage fans.
But it's time for a challenge. As our lord and savior Zara Larsson once said, you've just gotta climb that mountain of cringe, baby.
Audrey Gibbs is a 26-year-old music and culture journalist at The Tennessean. This is her brand new column, Audrey Off Broadway, about culture in Nashville.
Have an idea for a piece? Reach her at agibbs@tennessean.com or on Instagram at @audreyraegibbs.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why does nobody dance at Nashville concerts? An investigation.
