Looking closely at the top tier of popular music stars is a bit like measuring a coastline. What you thought at first was one solid mass that could be measured from A to B is more like an ever-shifting mess of minor variations. Assumed A-listers’ status is rapidly eroding, while newcomers are building up their section of the beach. The only way to not get lost in the fractals of who’s hot and who’s not is to set a standard of good enough and stick to it. In pop music, that standard is stadiums.
Though “arena” and “stadium” are used somewhat interchangeably by fans, the latter is several orders of magnitude larger. Only the biggest names can fill multiple stadiums on a single tour. Olivia Rodrigo plays arenas, Taylor Swift plays stadiums. John Mellencamp plays arenas, Springsteen plays stadiums. Ella Langley is about to break the record for most consecutive weeks with Billboard’s No. 1 song in the US. She still plays venues that are three to four times smaller than those played by Garth Brooks.
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