The 100 Best Tours of All Time

Welcome to Live Music Week, Consequence’s extended celebration of one of the most magical experiences life has to offer — you guessed it, live music. To kick things off, we’ve compiled the definitive list of the 100 Best Tours of All Time, updating our ranking originally published in 2019. Stay tuned this week for more lists, essays, interviews, and more.

“Oh, yeah, I caught them on tour, actually.”

The ultimate flex of a music fan. Beyond ultra-rare vinyl or signed memorabilia, top listener awards or awkward selfies from chance encounters, no claim carries with it more cultural cachet as a music fan than casually dropping the fact that you caught that artist on that tour. In fact, just reading that sentence, your own greatest live music brag almost certainly popped into your head, didn’t it?

So, in the spirit of celebration and one-upmanship, we’ve pulled together the 100 best tours of all time. Why not?

Well, for one, because it’s nearly an impossible task. There is quite literally an unknowable amount of tours that various artists undertook just this past year, let alone in the history of popular music. Some of the greatest runs ever likely took place in basements and barrooms, featuring artists who’d never ‘make it’ beyond their local scenes playing to small but engaged audiences.

Then, there’s the highly personal relationship each individual fan has with live music. What we look for in concerts varies, how we feel in different spaces varies, hell, which tours we were even around for varies. Every staffer at Consequence has their own, very distinct list, and each reader undoubtedly has their own as well. (In fact, we encourage you to share with us what might have made your list.)

That being said, let’s give it a shot. We love live music too much not to.

So, without further ado, Consequence presents the 100 Best Tours of All Time. We considered factors like setlist strength, performance prowess, cultural impact, and more. Above all, though, we looked for tours that either brought back troughs of good memories or feelings of seething jealousy. No matter how different each of our individual lists may look, we can all agree that each of these 100 tours absolutely, positively, unquestionably fucking rocks.

Editor’s Note: You can relive all of these iconic tours for yourself by checking out our recommendations of live albums, concert films, and more memorabilia here.