Different stages, same show: why won’t big rock bands change their setlists?

KoçFest, which has reached millions of university students since 2006, returned to campuses after a six-year break in the 100th year of the Koç Group, the Turkish industrial conglomerate. On 13 October I was at Gaziantep University to see Athena, along with 10,000 students. I had not seen Athena live for a long time, so I was curious about what kind of performance the band would give these young people and which songs they would play, because Athena is one of those bands that always manage to be good on stage...

• Gökhan Özoğuz’s voice is strong despite his illness, and the musicians on stage play their instruments with real skill. But deep down, this concert has a problem: the setlist...

Their most-streamed songs on Spotify, “Kafama Göre”, “Ben Böyleyim”, “Arsız Gönül” and “Her Şey Güzel Olacak”, are on the list. Even though we are not at a sporting event, they also make room for songs like “12 Dev Adam” and “Holigan”. Yet for all their excellent catalogue, they do not feed their repertoire enough with the songs that show their musical strength. It is as if these good songs have been swept under a rug...

When I looked through the setlist.fm database, which lists the songs artists play at their concerts, I found that the band’s 2024 and 2025 concerts had almost the same setlist as the performance I saw, give or take a song or two... Sadly, when it comes to choosing songs for their concerts, Athena, like many of Türkiye’s established rock bands, cannot step out of their comfort zone.

Established rock bands do not leave their comfort zone on stage

Why do bands fall into a routine when they are not releasing new songs? And doesn’t performing with the same stage set-up and the same setlist year after year eventually leave a musician mentally worn out? When Billy Joel was asked why his joint tours with Elton John, which had run for 16 years, came to an end, he said he was tired of doing the same show over and over again.

For the past five years or longer, Türkiye’s established rock bands have also been taking the stage with the same backdrop videos, near-identical setlists and the same arrangements. There are no surprises. The musicians I am talking about are the ones who actively play big stages and whose ticket sales are always high...

Yes, in this political climate and economic crisis, giving concerts is hard, both financially and emotionally. Sometimes large productions, lighting, video synchronisation and stage transitions can also make it difficult to change songs. But pop singers in Türkiye can still spend serious money on arrangements tailored to the venues where they perform. They seem more open to novelty… Türkiye’s established rock bands, on the other hand, instead of developing a different stage concept each year, keep facing their fans with similar productions and largely unchanged setlists, as they have for years.

Have you ever thought about how much care a band puts into the songs it plays live? If I have seen a rock band I love at a festival, I always make an effort to catch their own headline show too, because the setlists of the two concerts will differ. I saw the American band Turnstile at their own show in June 2025 and at a festival in August 2026, so that I could witness how their stage changed… Even though they had released no new songs in the year between, there were big differences between the two stage shows and setlists.

In a 30-year career, they never played the same setlist twice

The band with the most unpredictable setlists in music history is Grateful Dead. According to one study, the band almost never repeated the same setlist across the roughly 2,300 concerts they played between 1965 and 1995. After playing a hit one night, they would leave it off the setlist for at least 3 to 5 concerts. A song that normally lasted five minutes might be stretched to 20 minutes of improvisation at another concert.

According to another study on Setlist.fm, R.E.M. never played “Shiny Happy People” live. The two concerts listed as featuring the song were a television broadcast consisting of just two songs. In interviews, Michael Stipe has explained why he hates the song, in words to this effect:

It is overly cheerful, artificial and bubblegum pop in feel, as if it had been written for children.

According to a 2019 study, the band that most often plays the same setlist is Iron Maiden. At about 80 per cent of the 2,188 concerts logged on Setlist.fm, the band played the same setlist as at the previous show. The Rolling Stones gave the most repetitive performances of their entire career on the 1982 “Tattoo You” European tour. AC/DC, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi are also among the acts who, despite playing a great many concerts, rarely change their setlists.

Even if you follow the whole tour, you won’t hear the same setlist

Since deciding to write this piece, I have watched hundreds of concert videos filmed by fans of the leading bands of the Turkish rock scene in 2026 on social media. Large venues, small venues, festivals... I pulled the statistics for the setlists logged on Setlist.fm. I am now certain that, despite their broad catalogues, they keep circling around the same songs. And that they have been using the same stage production for almost five years...

Some bands may not want to change anything because fans want to hear all the hits in return for the price of their ticket. At a time when streaming platforms bring every unusual song in an artist’s catalogue to huge audiences, this repetition may sometimes also be a deliberate artistic choice. None of this, however, stops us from questioning a repertoire that barely changes for years. And how many times can we listen to the same setlist and watch the same stage set-up?

At a Cure concert I met a fan who told me about having been to 27 of the band’s concerts in summer 2026. The tour itself consisted of 31 concerts. When I pulled the statistics on Setlist.fm, I saw that The Cure kept 75 to 80 per cent of the backbone of their setlist throughout the tour. The concerts opened with “Alone” and closed with “Boys Don’t Cry”. The band had a rotation slot of three to six songs that they changed for each concert. In some cities, Robert Smith took rare tracks that had not been played for years down from the dusty shelves. At the Paris concert I attended, for instance, they did not play a single song from the Pornography era, while at other shows they included tracks from that album. Go to two Cure concerts in a row and you will not hear the same setlist, and the band always plays a few rare songs especially for each city.

Knowing exactly what will happen at a concert does not stop you from enjoying it, and may even add to the pleasure of obsessive fans. But not knowing what to expect is a far more magical thrill. In an age when everything is recorded, that unpredictable moment means much more to the audience. There is an indescribable joy in seeing that your favourite band is as aware of the breadth of its musical archive as its fans are. It is a measure of how much time, money and effort people put into going to a concert today. And change in art is always a positive step. Perhaps one day our rock scene will create excitement again, not only with symphony concerts but with thoughtfully conceived shows that open new doors for their audiences.