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Dec 17 2025
Nick Cave on seeing Radiohead at the O2

As part of his answer to the question “I don’t experience anything when I go to concerts anymore, but I still really enjoy music. Do you like going to concerts?”

At the Radiohead concert at the O2, I was sitting among twenty thousand people. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room – people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around. I was struck by the realisation of just how powerful live music is – that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience. I could feel its moral quality – how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness.

I engage in various spiritual activities – I swim in a lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate – but none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay. I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers – the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled.

Emphasis mine.

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