Audience Participation Failure

The band is rocking, everyone's cheering. They get to the call-and-response part of the song and.... nobody responds. The song's not famous enough, or the audience isn't feeling it, or what have you, but suddenly the whole vibe is ruined — or possibly made funnier.

A subtrope of Audience Participation

Examples of Audience Participation Failure include:

• Joan Baez once led her entire audience in a "repeat-after-me" version of "Amazing Grace". It didn't work so well when she tried it at Live Aid. That crowd wouldn't start singing along until she segued into "We Are the World".
• During their concerts, DragonForce get the crowd to sing a part of their song, "Through the Fire and Flames". While performing a different song, "Operation Ground and Pound", in Ohio, the crowd just laughed and cheered when ZP Theart held out the microphone. He then went on a short tirade about this.
• On an episode of Family Guy, Gene Simmons of Kiss holds the mic out to Lois for the chorus of "Rock and Roll All Nite"...and she gets the line horribly wrong, exposing that she'd lied to Peter about being a KISS fan and embarrassing him in front of the other concertgoers.
• John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is famous for haranguing a notoriously shy indie rock crowd into singing along with a number of closing numbers, including the Ace of Bass song "The Sign". Best Quote: "Time was when I had to harangue people to sing that one and I spent the entirety of the time between the first chorus and the second verse singling out the people who hadn't sung. I can't even see the people who hadn't sung this time, but I know you're there, cause I couldn't fucking hear you. I need to hear you. I will come out there! I have witnesses that will tell you that I will come out there and make you extraordinarily uncomfortable, standing in front of you with my guitar where you'll go 'damn, I'd like to beat a hasty retreat to the exit but I just, there's something about a guy talking right to you that you can't just turn around and walk away.' So, what I wish you'd do is sing and save us both the embarrassment and the pain and the years of the therapy!"
• There's a Foo Fighters concert video where Dave Grohl tried to get fans to sing the chorus of "Everlong" with him, and they become dead silent. Considering that the audience was cheering him on once they heard him play the intro, it strikes this troper as pretty damn ungrateful.
• Slipknot's live album, 9.0 Live, includes a good deal of Audience Participation - including one (Spit it out) where the audience flubs it.

Singer: Let me hear your fucking voices as one, motherfuckers!
Audience: *general roar*
Singer: Way to go *does verse*
Audience: *chanting* Fuck me! I'm all out of enemies! Fuck me! I'm all out of enemies!
Singer: Now that's exactly what I asked you to do 15 seconds ago!

• There's an ad for a credit card (I forget which) where the band on stage screams, "GOOD NIGHT CLEVELAND!" and the crowd falls dead. The bassist leans over and whispers, "Cleveland was last night."
• The first stage performance of Peter Pan had a contingency plan for this: If the audience didn't clap when it was time to save Tinkerbell, the orchestra would do it. Fortunately, this wasn't necessary.
• During the dark days of WCW, Rowdy Roddy Piper tried to get a "Warrior" chant going, but failed. This happened a few times with him actually.
• There's the joke that goes:

Performer: ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?
Audience: GIVE US FIVE MORE MINUTES!

• At the end of Flight of the Conchords "Mutha'uckers":

Bret: Everybody come on!
Everyone: Silence
Bret: Yeah!

• • Invoked, then subverted (Audience Participation Failure Failure?) here (from about 3:50):

Bret: When I say "ooh!" all the ladies say "ooh, Flight of the Conchords, you're so big!"
Bret: Ooh!
Audience: Ooh, Flight of the Conchords, you're so big!"
Bret: ...Oh.
Bret: Wow, thank you. Wow.
Jamaine: *scratches head* Thank you ladies, you didn't have to say that...

• Tim Minchin does this intentionally and hilariously in "I Love Jesus". He starts out singing, "I love Jesus!" with the audience repeating. Then he sings, "I hate faggots!" and the audience cannot bring themselves to respond in turn.
• Invoked by a classic Steve Martin routine where he calls upon the audience to recite with him the "Non-Conformists Oath": I promise to be different! (audience repeats) I promise to be unique! (audience repeats) "I promise not to repeat things other people say! (audience starts to repeat, breaks off about halfway through) Good!"
• An inversion in Mounted Animal Nature Trail by The Arrogant Worms. The animals are all dead, and should not make any noise, so the appropriate response to the audience participation prompts is not to respond, but everyone faithfully makes the noise the stuffed animals' living counterparts would. Intentional, because this is what drives the humor in the song.
• Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach is infamous for his inability to scream live the way he can in studio. So your average Papa Roach show is made of him randomly holding the mic at the audience at unexpected intervals, hoping for them to fill in the blanks. During their performance at Ozzfest 2001 , Shaddix shouts "Thanks for singing along with me!" during Bloodbrothers.
• One skit on Mystery Science Theater 3000 had Tom Servo, dressed as a cheerleader, doing the whole "give me an S!" routine. Mike and Crow are slow to cooperate, but eventually concede and give Servo "an M, an R, a small x, and one L," leading to Servo chanting about "MRxL."
• As a joke, Bill Bailey often gets the audience to sing along to La Bamba. Needless to say, it dissolves into gibberish quite quickly.
• Arlo Guthrie, at the end of "|Alices Restaurant", trying to get the audience to join in on the chorus. The first attempt causes Arlo to say "That was awful" and try again with more success.
• Weird Al has a contingency for this on "Dare to Be Stupid". At the "I can't hear you!" part, he expects the audience to shout back "Dare to be stupid"...and if they don't do it loud enough, he'll keep saying "I can't hear you!" until they do.
• Whose Line Is It Anyway, Greg Proops attempted to get the audience to sing along with him as a response to improvise in the style of a pantomime. When he only got a few responses, he yelled out: "SING, DAMN IT!" He got them to sing.
  • In the game Hoedown, the audience typically claps in tune to the music. During one episode, however, the audience simply could not clap in sync for a good 20 seconds. The audience had to stop clapping and start again for them to finally get it right.
• Invoked for laughs in Ugly Duckling's "Opening Act." Despite the increasingly desperate pleas for the audience to shout "I wanna rock right now," the only response is a single "YOU GUYS SUCK!"
• I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC has Deadpool ask the audience to clap their hands to make new bullets appear in his guns. When this fails he calls the audience a bunch of amputees.
• Played for Laughs on a live album by Michigan-based a cappella group Three Men and a Tenor. When singing "Drift Away", the encourage the audience to sing along on the chorus. Then just the men. Then just the women. Then, for a laugh, the tenor singer asks everyone to sing in Spanish... cue dead silence.
• Australian satirical duo Shortis and Simpson have a song called "Don't You Hate It When They Make You Sing Along?" which is based around performers attempting to badger the audience into singing along when they don't want to.
• In With Strings Attached, Paul drunkenly plays "Long Tall Sally" for a barfull of skahs warriors. When he's finished, he screams "ARE YOU HAVIN' A GOOD TIME?" The bar falls silent for a few moments, and then a dozen people call out, "What's a 'gud time'?" Turns out the word "good" is not in their vocabulary. (Nor is "evil," for that matter.)
• In Bo Burnham's live performance of "Oh Bo", there's a point where he goes silence expecting a response from the male audience, but since he's been singing that part himself throughout the song, he gets no response.
  • He also has a similar moment in "What's Funny":

Bo: Welcome to the show/It goes a little something like this:/Joke *points to the audience*
Audience: *silence*
Bo: Exactly.

• There's a story, possibly appocryphal, about a U2 concert. Bono starts clicking his fingers, encouraging the audience to join in. He says 'Everytime I click my fingers, someone in Africa dies', to which one wag responded 'Well stop f***ing doing it then'.