A Colorado Concert With 85,000 Other People, Here’s What I Learned

Live music is a special thing. For the artist, performing live is a very vulnerable thing to do. Standing on a stage showing your talents, with an audience staring at your every move and critiquing every sound.

Last weekend my daughter and I were in attendance at the Ed Sheeran concert at Empower Field at Mile High, still often called Broncos Stadium. This was an attendance record-setting event. There were over 85,000 people there. That's more attendees than at Taylor Swift, due to the stage configuration.

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When artists are popular enough to do an arena tour, the show is big. This is where you see cutting-edge stage production of sound, video, pyrotechnics, and things like a rotating 360-degree stage like the one Ed Sheeran is using on his current tour.

Here are a few things I learned from attending a concert with 85,000 people:

THE CHEAPER SEATS ALLOW A GREAT VIEW AND MORE AIR

Perhaps you don't always want to be super close to the stage. The stage setups at these arena shows are meant for...an arena. There truly are no bad seats. Being seated a little higher up allows for a better view of the whole production. All the bells and whistles can be seen. Also, the higher up you are, the more air can blow through, which is nice when you feel like you're breathing the air of the other 85,000 people.

THE WHOLE CROWD STOMPING MAKES THINGS SHAKE

People stomp when they are excited. People stomp to the beat of music. When most of 85,000 people stomp at the same time, it's a bit of an earthquake. In fact, just last month the Taylor Swift concert in Seattle caused seismic activity equivalent to a 2.0 earthquake. At the Ed Sheeran concert, there was a rain delay and people were stomping as a way to say "Let's get things started, already" and the stadium showed its structural build. Not in a bad way, but you do become aware of the structure in which you are crowded into.

THERE ARE WAY MORE CELL PHONES THAN THERE EVER WERE LIGHTERS

Holding up lighters at concerts really caught on in the Woodstock days as a way to honor a musician who had passed away. Nowadays, the cell phone is the lighter. The occasion to hold up your cell phone flashlight is with any slow, love-type song. Ed Sheeran encouraged this at his show and since all 85,000 people had cell phones, it was bright!

It was a lot of people, no doubt, but it was one of the most impressive concerts I have ever been to. The amount of people in attendance just added to the impressive nature of the night.