The Best Concerts of 2023

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Everyone feels it: It can feel like a chore getting to a show. We all know the routine: dealing with the online ticket queues for bigger concerts, navigating the extra fees at checkout for shows large and small, and then, once you’ve experienced that thrill of victory, remembering that you will, in fact, have to leave the house.

But what jubilation when you’ve run the final gauntlet and settled into a show that, for two hours or so, feels life-changing. (Make that about six and a half, if you were catching all the opening acts on the Eras Tour.) If the ability to make you instantly forget a $50 parking charge isn’t testament to the power of music, nothing is.

Here’s a personal selection of 25 of the most galvanizing shows of 2023: If there’s anything this tour proved, it’s that spoilers really don’t spoil much of anything, when it comes to Taylor Swift.

How many fans didn’t have the setlist committed to memory before the tour hit their town? How many hadn’t already watched at least one fan-shot illicit version before catching it in the flesh?