Should Openers Go as Hard as Headliners?

1 week ago 20

A recent online discussion on the age-old question of whether openers should go as hard as headliners has inspired us to take a deeper dive into the matter.

It’s a timeless debate, and you’ve probably weighed in on it yourself. What is the role of an opener? Should they warm up the crowd with restraint and leave the heavy lifting to the headliners? Or are they there to knock people’s socks off and contribute fully to the event people paid for?

From time to time, the conversation resurfaces, typically after an artist or attendee complains that an opener played “too hard” before the headliner took over the decks. This year, it was LUCATI who posted on X, “a little reminder: the opener should never go harder than the headliner.”

Many weighed in on the matter, including Levity and Chris Lake. But beneath all of the online discourse is a bigger question about what club culture stands for: protecting the status of touring acts, or creating the best possible experience for the people in the room?

In my opinion, openers should be able to play whatever they want — within reason.

It’s obviously important for an artist to consider the event they’re playing. Nobody is defending a DJ playing out peak-time festival weapons to a handful of people when the doors open. But there’s a major distinction between mindful set curation and the growing expectation that openers should deliberately hold back to maximize the headliner’s impact.

If the headliner comes with a specific vision for how they want the night to progress, shouldn’t the responsibility fall on the talent buyer or promoter to book accordingly? You wouldn’t enlist a riddim artist to open for a tropical house headliner and then act surprised when the night doesn’t flow. If there’s a misalignment in the atmosphere, it’s just as fair to question the people who curated the event as to criticize the opener for playing the music that got them booked in the first place.

An outside factor that many uninitiated ravers might not even realize is how sound engineers often keep the volume low until the headline time slot. This subtle detail gives a subconscious impression that intensity is increasing, and that the way the lineup is curated is meant to follow suit. Has this longtime industry norm limited public perception of how a night of music should play out?

And who’s to say these perspectives can’t meet somewhere in the middle? Most conversations about art don’t have one right answer, and this one is no different.

Some of the best events I’ve attended were the ones where I wanted to show up early because the bill was curated intentionally. Each act was a crucial piece of the night’s overall statement, not just a vehicle for ticket sales. The flow of a night like this feels intentional. Every set builds naturally off of the last, eliminating pressure on artists to water down their performances.

Wrapping up these thought bubbles nicely, let’s revisit the question of what club culture stands for. It’s rooted in creating a safe space for connection, community, and freedom of expression. And that’s partially why the debate about opener etiquette gets so heated. It touches on a deeper-seated tension between art as a collective experience and art as a managed branding. At the end of the day, shouldn’t the point be to enable freedom of expression for everyone, including the openers?

In reality, club culture can survive by containing both ideas simultaneously. The scene needs the ebb and flow that stems from each: structure and spontaneity, curation and individuality. So before you judge an opener for not playing the way you thought they should, remember there are many other more important factors that contribute to a show’s success.