Audience Participation Song

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    Sing!


    "When I say 'we', you say 'suck'! WE!"
    "SUCK!"
    "WE!"

    "SUCK!"
    —Mindless Self Indulgence, "Backmask"

    When Audience Participation and Music meet, this is the result. A song, especially a live one, where the audience is expected to sing part of the lyrics. Follow the Bouncing Ball may come into play here.

    Usually accomplished by having a repeated part in the song, which is first sung by the band and then they signal for the audience to repeat it. The artists will often hold their microphone toward the audience. Responsible for the Other Stock Phrases "All together now!", "I can't hear you!", "Make some noise!", "Gimme a(n) (Letter)! Gimme a(n) (Letter)! Gimme a(n) (Letter)!" and "When I say A, you say B! A! (B!) A! (B!)". Most of the time, used with Ear Worms.

    Sometimes it leads to Audience Participation Failure. See also Call-and-Response Song.

    Parodied/lampshaded/subverted

    • Kiss is a band based around theatrical shows, pretty much all their songs are written for this. It's parodied in Family Guy, where the singer holds the mic out to Lois for the chorus of "Rock and Roll All Nite"...and she gets the line horribly wrong.
    • Tim Minchin's song "Hello" parodies the concept, leading the audience to question why he's making them sing, calling him a "self-indulgent wanker," and demand he get on with the show.
      • Playing it straight through pure awesome, Tim also asks the audience during "Canvas Bags" to repeat the refrain while he runs off-stage to get the fan so he can do the flapping shirt in the wind effect.
    • Robbie Williams's audience participation, especially "Angels" (at Live 8, the audience sung pretty much the entire song), was parodied by Lee Mack in December 2007 on Live at the Apollo

    Lee: Could someone tell Robbie Williams that this doesn't constitute entertainment? [struts along looking smug] "Come on Glastonbury, you know this one" [holds mic to the audience] "Yeah, we know it, Robbie. It was 150 quid to get in. Any chance you could sing it for us?"

    • Subverted by Scroobius Pip in "Thou Shalt Always Kill": "When I say Hey, thou shall not say Ho; When I say Hip thou shall not say Hop."
      • "When I say 'he say she say we say Make Some Noise' ... kill me."
      • Ironically enough, the audience does tend to participate in the "Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music" sequence.
    • Subverted in Mounted Animal Nature Trail by The Arrogant Worms. The song (as explained by a long preamble) is about a nature park where all the animals are dead, stuffed, and mounted on sticks. It seems that the audience should sing along during the chorus, except, as the band will eventually point out,

    Bear in mind the animals are dead! This inhibits their vocal talents!
    It's a funny funny joke! I got it, so can you!
    ...Do you have a school here? Like, even one would be good.

    Oh - one more thing. One of the more important aspects of public folk singing is audience participation, and this happens to be a good song for group singing. So if any of you feel like joining in with me on this song, I'd appreciate it if you would leave - right now.

    • From Saul Williams' Niggy Tardust:

    "When I say 'Niggy', you say nothing. Niggy."
    "Nothing!"
    "Shut up."

    • The folk artists Molly & The Tinker perform "The Anti-Singalong Song", getting the audience to sing about how they won't.
    Examples in music/real life:
    • Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)" and "Wake Up"
    • The chorus of Bowling for Soup's "Come Back to Texas"
    • The entire Folk Music genre of call-and-response songs.
    • Similarly, Responsorial Psalms.
    • Most famously: "Hey Jude" by The Beatles. Say it with me now...Naaaaaa na na NA-NA-NA Naaaaa! NA-NA-NA Naaaaaa! He-ey Jude!
      • At the 2002 Golden Jubilee celebrations, the entire audience repeated the chorus several times.
      • When Paul McCartney performs it at concerts, he frequently stops during the chorus and just lets the crowd sing it. He'll also kind of conduct it by calling out "Now, just the men! Now, just the ladies! Everybody!"
    • Also, if you're a hardcore vocalist and you have a lyric which ISN'T tailor made to be shouted back at you, that lyric needs replacing.
    • In the live version of Manzo's "My Pace Daioh" (the theme from Genshiken), the audience, rather than the band, does the "Ay ay ay!" shouting.
    • Billy Joel took this to its logical extreme when he ended his sets with "Piano Man". Honestly, the only words he sang were, "It's 9 o'clock", and then the audience proceeded to sing the remainder of the song themselves.
    • Morrissey's fan-base could undoubtedly recite every lyric the man has ever wrote, but the uniting torch song appears to be that of There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.
    • When those Beasties ask the time... it's TIME TO GET ILL.
    • Strong Bad's "Everybody to the Limit" live remix on the Homestar Runner CD "Strong Bad Sings" includes two parts like this.
    • On the Dire Straits live album Alchemy, the audience singing along is audible over the music. On every song.
    • The Angels' "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again?" - audiences invented the response "No way, get fucked, fuck off!"
    • "Addicted" by Simple Plan-when Pierre sings "How long will I be waiting?" the entire audience will bellow back, "Until the end of time!"
    • The "fuck you" parts of the Irish pub song Bugger Off.
    • The same goes for what is probably Overkill's most famous song, "Fuck You".
    • Of course, Queen's We Will Rock You. The clapping rhythm through the song was intended to get the audience to clap along.
      • In fact in the London stage production the actor playing Gallileo will often specifically try and get the audience involved if they aren't making enough noise when 'We Will Rock You' starts up.
      • Radio Ga Ga is just like that. Try to listen to it and not clap, is almost impossible. Freddie Mercury once stated that having the audience to take a part in their song was exactly what he wanted.
      • Queen would have the whole audience singing along to "Love of My Life" in their live concerts - usually the song would be performed mid-show as just a vocals-and-guitar duet between Freddie Mercury and Brian May, and as the audience sang all the lyrics together Freddie would stop singing now and then & let the crowd carry the song. One gets the impression that this was to give the band (except Brian) a bit of a break.
        • And then there's the vocal contest-type things Freddie Mercury would do with the crowds, singing sequences of notes at the crowd and getting them to try and match his vocals. The crowds were surprisingly good at it.
        • On their Live in Montreal Album, they had a bit of trouble getting the crowd to sing along with certain songs, which were widespread in Europe but not so much in French Canada.
        • When George Michael performed "Somebody To Love" at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, he managed to get the audience to sing the long, descending "love" near the end. Brian May's reaction is worth seeing.
    • Thin Lizzy gained part of their reputation or being the 'world best live hard rock band' by including this in at least one song per gig. Phil Lynott's banter and rapport with the crowds was well documented- the most famous example(s) preserved on the "Live and Dangerous" album, in particular the song "Baby Drives me Crazy".
    • Barenaked Ladies' fanbase is very into audience participation; the band briefly stopped performing "If I Had $1,000,000" live, because the song mentions Kraft Dinners and they were sick and tired of having boxes of macaroni thrown at them when they got to that line. In the live version that sometimes plays on radio, you can actually hear them complaining "Aren't you going to eat it?" after the line.
      • "Pinch Me" also has Audience Participation written into the real lyrics - Ed Robertson remarks "I can hide out under there." There's a pause, and his next line is "I just made you say 'underwear.'"
        • Primus famously had a similar problem when they performed "My Name Is Mud" at Woodstock '94 and got pelted with mud.
    • German bardic metal band Blind Guardian have such a rabid fanbase that they incorporate this into their songs- they record their songs with layered choral parts that the crowd sings live, turning every song into Audience participation. The most impressive examples are "The Bard's Song," which live is sung almost entirely by the audience, and this version of "Valhalla," where the crowd keeps going after they finish the song.
    • One of the people who worked on Spamalot admitted that there was one song that they couldn't stop people singing along to: Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life. (Not Lyrical Dissonance in context, trust me.)
      • In fact, the curtain call reprise of the song includes follow-the-bouncing-ball lyrics projected on stage.
    • Comedian Stephen Lynch does this in his song "Superhero," asking audience members to suggest hero names. (Results include Valtrex Boy and Buttsex Man.)
    • Judas Priest - Rob Halford has been known to let the audience sing the entirety of the song 'Breaking the Law'.
    • Every Iron Maiden album has at least one "Woah-woah" bit that the audience can sing along to. If you don't get what "woah-woah" means, and I won't blame you, "The Trooper" is a perfect example.
      • Iron Maiden fans will sing along to everything, especially in well-known "anthem" songs. This includes not only choruses but verses, riffs, and even solos. Biggest example is probably, though, "Fear of the Dark". The band could pretty much stay silent for the first minute or so and nobody would notice. Here, for example.
        • During the song "Run to the Hills", singer Bruce Dickinson has always had the crowd sing the second half of the line "Out on the plains...we gave them hell".
      • Rush is very similar. At one point in Rush In Rio, the crowd sang along to "YYZ"...which is an instrumental.
        • The did the same for "La Villa Strangiato"—another instrumental—letting out a "Yeah/Hey!" every time a certain riff comes up.
    • In his live shows, Jonathan Coulton has the audience sing (badly, by his instructions) "All we wanna do is eat your brains!" during "Re: Your Brains". Inevitably, one or two people throw in random shouts of "Brains!" immediately afterward.
    • Paul and Storm have audience participation aspects in several of their songs. "The Captain's Wife's Lament" is probably the best-known (and often takes it Up to Eleven by going Off the Rails; a ten-minute performance of this two-and-a-half minute song is considered short), but "A Better Version of You" also has this.
    • Rammstein played with this in their song "Ich Will", the song is about being misunderstood, and the "audience" responses during the chorus are muddled shouts to illustrate this.
      • Bilingual Bonus: the shouts are actually "Wir verstehen euch nicht!", which is German for "we don't understand you", and other variations of the sentence immediately following Till's lyrics.
        • Actually, the shouts are "Wir hören dich", "Wir sehen dich" and "Wir fühlen dich"(We hear you, we see you, we feel you). The singer is the only one to say "Ich verstehe euch nicht"(I don't understand you), not the audience.
      • By no means the only song that fills this trope. During live performances of "Du hast", Till Lindemann falls silent and lets the audience sing the chorus by themselves.
    • The Arrogant Worms play it straight with some versions of the song "Jesus' Brother Bob":

    Worms: There were a thousand people/Right outside the door
    Audience: Help us, Jesus, help us!
    Worms: Came the cheering from the mob...

    • Five Iron Frenzy's "Handbook for the Sellout": Not only would the fans sing along, but vocalist Reese Roper would remain silent and stick his microphone into the mosh pit for the first four lines of verse one.
    • Joan Baez once led her entire audience in a "repeat-after-me" version of "Amazing Grace". It appears on her live album "From Every Stage", and it's quite good.
      • 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."
    • "Minnie the Moocher"
      • Many of Cab Calloway's songs invoked this trope, the songs were often written so that his orchestra and/or the audience could repeat his scat talk. Every once in a while he'd surprise and confuse everyone by breaking out in very rapid, hard-to-repeat gibberish in place of his typical "hi-de-hi-de-hi-di-ho", just for laughs.
    • There's also "Living Next Door to Alice" (Alice! Who the fuck is Alice?) by Smokey.
    • One of the odder and more extreme examples was during a live performance by In Flames. Before the next song the lead singer Anders Friden just picked some guy from the audience and made him do vocals for the next song "Bullet Ride". The results were poor but it was an interesting variation on this trope.
    • Certain performers have actually admitted to using this when they forget the words to a song. They'd just point the microphone at the audience and let them take care of it.
    • The album version of "Stay Beautiful" by Manic Street Preachers has a deliberately placed guitar lick in place of words at the end of the "why don't you just..." part of the chorus.. It's the audience's job at the gigs to shout out a hearty "FUCK OFF" in its place.
    • They Might Be Giants' song "Battle for the Planet of the Apes" consists entirely of sections of the crowd alternatively calling out "Apes!" or "People!".
      • The live version of "She's Actual Size" featured on the Dial-a-Song compilation features an audience participation drum solo.
      • Live performances of "Hide Away Folk Family" generally feature John Flansburgh commanding the audience to "scream as if they are in hell" during the instrumental bridge.
    • "Weird Al" Yankovic uses pretend audience participation in the recordings of small parts of two of his songs: "Dare to be Stupid" and "Albuquerque". When he performs "Dare To Be Stupid" live, he has the audience sing along in those segments (doing the "I can't hear you!" part at least half a dozen times). He doesn't perform "Albuquerque" live very often because it's basically 11 minutes of non-stop rambling and screaming and it hurts his vocal chords to do it all at once during a show. He performed it in a concert in Albuquerque because he said he pretty much had to, but was too worn out to sing anything else afterward.
      • He has since adopted "Albuquerque" as his encore. Probably the best place to put it.
    • My Ding-A-Ling, by Chuck Berry.
    • Oasis, "Don't Look Back in Anger". Taken to its logical conclusion in July 2009, when Noel Gallagher stayed silent and let the crowd sing the whole song.
    • Brazilian band Raimundos has at least two songs: "Eu Quero Ver o Oco" (people scream the title not only in the chorus, but during the intro as well), and "A Mais Pedida" (since a part was recorded with a guest female singer).
    • During Woodstock, Country Joe and the Fish got the crowd of 500,000 to sing along to a song ("Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag") that starts with, "Give me a F! Give me a U! Give me a C! Give me a K! What's that spell?!".
    • During their concerts, Dragon Force (video game) get the crowd to sing a part of their song, "Through the Fire and Flames". While performing a different song in Ohio, the crowd just laughed and cheered when ZP Theart held out the microphone. He then went on a short tirade about this.
    • Strapping Young Lad pretty much made a career out of Audience Participation. According to Word of God, "Hey folks, the places where YOU sing are in CAPS. We expect you to know your parts when we play live..."
    • Dream Theater used "Take The Time" as a major Audience Participation moment in early tours, with a call-and-response in the chorus, and a clap-along section at the end of the instrumental section.
    • Potter Puppet Pals. "When I say Avada Kedavra, scream like you're dying (starts at 2:53)."
    • Northern Irish band Therapy? have played one of their oldest songs, Potato Junkie, at just about every gig for the past 16 years or so, because if they didn't, their fans'd kill them. Why? Because throughout the (always extended) middle eight, the audience chants "James Joyce is fucking my sister".
    • Rihanna's "Umbrella". No matter who is actually singing it.
    • Rage Against the Machine-"Killing in the Name" ends with the repeated line "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" which seems tailor made for audience participation.
      • This was a problem when Biffy Clyro tried covering the song for a live performance that was being broadcast on a national radio station at lunchtime. The band agreed to just sing the melody during that line and so make it expletive free. The audience didn't.
    • Mindless Self Indulgence, quoted above, have great fun with this - often the audience will be called upon to sing (or rap) an entire song for the band.
    • Pete Seeger's take on "Guantanamera".
      • And every other song he's ever done.
    • Fall Out Boy have "This ain't a scene, it's an arms race", which has a choir part somewhere near the end of the song. When live, the audience sings this with much enthusiasm. (The fact that it's basically one sentence helps.)
    • 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!"
    • Bruce Springsteen has a ton of these, most notably Hungry Heart, where the audience traditionally sings the entire first verse and chorus.
      • And his cover of I Wanna Be Sedated, which was an audience request in the first place.
      • Don't forget "Waitin' On A Sunny Day"; when the audience on VH-1's Storytellers wasn't singing along with the chorus, he admonished them by saying in a good-natured voice, "Well, you know what these songs are for! Come on you bastards, earn your keep!" They started clapping and singing immediately.
      • "Born To Run" and "Rosalita" both have the audience sing along to the instrumental.
      • In his "Live from New York City" DVD, the audience sings along with the opening saxophone lines from "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out". Later in that song, when Bruce introduces the band before the third verse, he gets the audience to chant "CLAR-ence! CLAR-ence!" in anticipation for his introducing Clarence Clemons.
      • And of course any time Springsteen plays "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".
    • The Hold Steady: Craig Finn writes a lot of singalong choruses, like "Massive Nights".
    • "Once In Love With Amy" from the musical Where's Charley.
    • Monty Python did "The Philosophers' Song" this way in their live performances.
    • JAM Project did this with awesome effect with their live performance of Skill. "MOTTO MOTTO!"
    • The live version of Worm Quartet's "What Your Parents Think All Your Music Sounds Like" has the audience singing the chorus of "SEX, DRUGS, SATAN."
    • "Der Tanz der Vampire" from the show of the same name was not written to be like this, but its relatively rock concert atmosphere compared to the rest of the show has given it this kind of status. The audience participation probably began with the "We Will Rock You"-esque chant at the end, but it spread to the whole song. Check it out!
    • Sage Francis - Escape Artist features the lines:

    "When I say Hip, you say- shut the fuck up, I ain't sayin' shit -and I respect it"

    • "All Right Now" as sung by Queen + Paul Rogers.
    • Keane often gets crowds sing the chorus to "Somewhere Only We Know". Sometimes Tom Chaplin will pick up the whole mic stand and hold it to the crowd to get them to sing it.
    • Sing "The Old Dun Cow" in a room full of filkers or Rennies, and when "somebody shouted MacIntyre," everybody shouts "MACINTYRE!"
    • In pantomimes (the British use of the word, not the American usage) an audience participation song is practically a requirement.
    • Edwin Starr's Protest Song "War" seems built for this, as the chorus starts out "War -grunt- / What is it good for? / Absolutely nothing!"
    • In keeping with its folk nature, Don McLean's "American Pie" designs its final chorus for audience participation by having a "soloist" chorus after the last verse leading into an "everybody sing along" final repeat.
    • Since Kid Rock's friend Joe C. died, his brief parts in the songs have become Audience Participation moments.
      • Not to mention any time his song has the "radio, edit" sound clip, there's about a 50/50 chance of the audience screaming out that, or screaming out the words that it obviously and intentionally cropped out.
    • Prog-reggae-ska band RX Bandits used to have a horn section, all of whom have now departed the band. However, during their older material, the crowd will regularly shout the horn lines along to what they're playing. Completely spontaneously.
    • The entire genre of "Jodies," Military Cadence songs, is Audience Participation by nature. They are written to have a hard beat to keep your running at a constant pace (your left foot should hit just as you sing one).

    "I don't know but I've been told..."

    • During Goo Goo Dolls concerts, John Rzeznik has the audience sing the chorus to "Iris".
    • Andy Kaufman was fond of leading his audience in sing-alongs, most infamously "The Cow Goes Moo" (a self-penned song). The end of his 1977 prime time special features another frequent selection, the Fabian song "This Friendly World", presented with bouncing ball graphics on the screen.
    • Meat Loaf gets the audience to sing along in concert, occasionally haranguing them if they don't/won't (an example can be heard on the live from Melbourne version of Bat Out Of Hell)
    • Mandy Patinkin doesn't let concert audiences leave without doing the hokey-pokey.
    • Swedish television program Allsång på Skansen is entirely based on this trope. It tends to get insanely high ratings and sometimes... Surprising artists show up. It's often REALLY strange to look at the audience.
    • In live performances of "Army", Ben Folds tends to organize sides of the audience to mimic the horn section break from the studio version.
      • He also lets the audience sing the "God please spare me more rejection" line.
      • Also, in live performances of "Not The Same", he teaches the audience to sing the three-part harmony "aaahhhh" parts during the chorus.
      • During solo live performances of "You Don't Know Me", the audience sings Regina Spektor's part.
    • In the live At Budokan version of Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me", every time Robin Zander sings "Didn't I didn't I didn't I see you cryin'?", the audience responds with "cryin', cryin', cryin". This was completely spontaneous on their part, they were imitating an echo effect used in the studio version of the song. And since this live version then became much more popular than the studio version ever was, it continues as a tradition.
    • The band Coheed and Cambria has several songs that require audience participation in order to work properly. Claudio's voice sometimes falls out, but you sometimes don't notice because the audience simply goes right on. In particular, the songs "No World For Tomorrow", "Blood Red Summer," and "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3" stand out. The last two have sections specifically for a crowd chant. The latest live album, rather a box set, had the track "In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3"'s chant section sung entirely by the audience with Claudio letting them sing his part of the chant too. It was completely electrifying.
      • Also, subverted in "Wake Up" and a few other songs, at least on some live performances, when Claudio has(or maybe just does, because you usually CAN hear the audience in the background) to sing all his vocals, which must be pretty difficult when he sings songs where his vocal track OVERLAPS itself...
      • Played straight again during a few live playings of "A Favor House Atlantic", where the audience sings the chorus ("Good eye, sniper/I'll shoot, you run")
      • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxw77OIRuU0& yeaaah
    • When REM performs "Man on the Moon" in concert, the audience is cued to join in on the "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" refrain in the verses and the second use of the title phrase in the choruses. This is only appropriate considering the song's subject.
    • Rock Band adds these for many of the songs on-disc and even has crowds singing along to instruments in some cases (such as the solo of "Say It Ain't So" in the first game and the intro riff of "American Woman" in the second). It also occasionally shows up in downloadable songs (such as "Losing My Religion" but, disappointingly, not in "Don't Stop Believing"); "Pick Up the Pieces" even has the crowd singing along to the horn section.
    • Many songs with "woah"s in them are these, especially Love in an Elevator by Aerosmith.
    • Pearl Jam's "Better Man"; sung along so much by fans at concerts that Eddie Vedder doesn't sing the first verse anymore, as the crowd handles it. Also, any live recording of "Even Flow".
    • Bad Religion's "Raise Your Voice" is tailor-made for this, but it was also popular with their earlier song "Generator". On Tested (their live album), pretty much the entire first verse is sung by the audience.
    • Jambands have more unusual audience participation because people see them so many times. Reactions can evolve over the years as fans see them again and again. Phish are the most extreme example. Sometimes it's just singing along ("and we love to take a bath," the "Whooo"'s in "Twist", the "Oh yeah!" in "Fluffhead", the "Wilson" chant in, well, "Wilson") but a few more involved reactions are the audience clapping along to the drum fill in "Stash." Fishman hasn't played the woodblock fill since the early 90s since it just gets drowned out by the clapping, but everyone still does it. At the 1996 Red Rocks show a fan created flyer was handed out asking people to scream, "Hood," after the band sang, "Harry," in "Harry Hood." 13 years later, fans are still doing it. The band also got into the game. They had a secret language for the fans. Certain riffs could be played in the middle of a jam that would mean various things. "The Simpsons Theme" was a cue for the fans to scream, "D'oh." A series of falling notes means that everyone should fall down. "Turn Turn Turn" would lead to everyone turning around and facing the soundboard. The language hasn't been explained since 1992 and signals have become rarer and rarer, but they were played as late as 2000 and fans still responded to them.
      • A non Phish jamband example - Widespread Panic had people throw lighters at the band after the line, "Somebody throw me a fire," in "Big Wooly Mammoth." They actually had to stop singing the line for their own safety.
    • Sonata Arctica's lead singer, Tony Kakko, usually leads the crowd in a sing-along in the middle of concerts to give the rest of the band a rest. Sometimes this is a rousing Old McDonald Had A Farm and other times he assigns each section of the audience a drum sound to mimic and proceeds to play "We Will Rock You" on the crowd. He also leads the crowd in singing the 'ohhh-oh-oh' bits in songs such as "My Land" by pointing up or down depending on where the pitch goes next. It is also absolutely required for the audience to shout 'Run away! Run away Run away!' during "Fullmoon".
      • Not to mention that he closes every single show by getting the crowd to sing with him "We need some vodka" to the tune of Hava Nagila
    • Pretty much every AFI album begins with an anthem song. Except for The Art of Drowning's, which is an instrumental.
      • THROUGH! OUR BLEEDING! WE! ARE ONE!
      • "Torch Song" isn't really an Audience Participation Song but it's sort of joined the ranks of their crowd anthems anyway since they've opened every Crash Love show with it. (If nothing else, everyone will sing the "Anything!"s)
    • Metallica's "Master of Puppets" is usually performed with the audience singing part of the chorus.
      • Recently, as can be seen on Français Pour Une Nuit, they've started singing the melodic instrumental section as well.
      • The "Exit light, enter night" bit of "Enter Sandman" is invariably sung as a call and response. Yes, even in the cello ensemble cover.
      • The Ominous Chanting from "The Memory Remains".
      • And, lest we forget, "Creeping Death". DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!...
      • Hetfield: Searchin'! Crowd: Seek and destroy! Rinse, repeat.
      • The middle section in their instrumental 'Suicide and Redemption'.
      • SHOW! YOUR! SCARS! in "Broken, Beat, and Scarred."
    • Similar to the Rock Band example above, Sony's Singstar makes players do this for the opening synth part of Europe's "The Final Countdown".
    • Audience participation is common in wizard rock, probably because the first big wrock band, Harry and the Potters, employs it overwhelmingly. "When I say wizard, you say rock! Wizard!...Wizard!...WIZ-ZARD!"
    • The Living End does this for "Second Solution" near the end when the title lyrics are repeated several times.
    • Moosebutter does this with their song "I Hate Mosquitoes", first having the audience sing the repeated line "I hate mosquitoes" during the chorus, then the "BAM!" that follows each repetition. ("And if you sing it really loud, no mosquito will ever bother you ever again, your whole life...")
    • Dutch band Blöf always gets a response in their song Wat zou je doen (What would you do). Roughly translated: "Would you laugh, would you cry, would you say that I am an asshole?" "YES!"
    • The performance of "Hey Jude" from Party At the Palace. The entire Mall and back garden of Buckingham Palace all packed to bursting with people ALL singing along to an extended version of it.
    • Depeche Mode's Everything counts is a classic example. They used to play it at the end of their concerts. The audience would repeat the chorus for minutes on end after the song was over ("The grabbing hands grab all they can / Everything counts in large amounts"). You can listen to a live recording of this on the album 101.
      • The choruses of "Enjoy The Silence," "Walking In My Shoes," and "Stripped" also fit this trope, as does the opening verse of "Never Let Me Down Again." Especially since all of them other than "Stripped" (which was missing from the first 1.5 tours of the aughts) have been played on every show of every tour since their release.
    • Joe Dolce's song "Shaddap You Face" wasn't intended as one of these; in concerts, the audience picked up on the "Hey!" sung only after the first line and started inserting them after every line, and singing along with "Ah, shaddap you face!" at the end of the chorus. The music video fully embraces this trope, with Dolce singing alongside a sign with the song's lyrics written on it for the audience.
    • Foo Fighters concerts are basically 2 and a half hour invocations of this trope. Oftentimes the audience sings louder than Dave does, especially during "Best of You", "Times like These", "Rope" (during the "CHOKE! On a kiss, save my breath for you!" part of the chorus), "Learn to Fly", "Arlandria" (Dave does a stop and go portion in the middle of the song, encouraging the crowd to yell along with the guitar chords) and of course "Everlong".
    • Selena often invited audiences to sing along with her. For example, on her album Live, she has them sing along with two refrains of "Ven Conmigo."
    • The Frames function on audience participation, especially on 'Rent Day Blues' ("Kool and the gang play on the radio" "Celebrate good times, come on"), 'The Blood' (the harmony), 'Star star' and 'Fake' (most of the song). They've also traumatised many a venue's health and safety officer by encouraging the audience at seated gigs to get up and dance.
    • The live version of Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love", as featured on the album Tourism. Credits: Vocals and piano: Marie Fredriksson. Backing vocals: 40,000 Chilean fans.
    • Arashi's Lucky Man is not far off the example for this trope.

    "When I say Lucky you say Man!"
    "Lucky Man Lucky Man!"

    • Korn's "Y'all Want A Single" live with the audience screaming back "Fuck that, FUCK THAT SHIT!" in reply to Davis' "Y'all want a single say..."...Mass Cluster F Bomb.
    • On one Black Sabbath live album, War Pigs has Ozzy sing a line (example: Generals gather in their masses...), the crowd sing the subsequent line (...just like witches at black masses), and repeat.
    • Paul Rodgers often allows the audience to participate in performances of "All Right Now," originally by Rodgers' former band Free.
    • Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Tom doesn't sing 'Breakdown' anymore. At all. Just lets the band play and the audience sing, with an occasional snark if they're too stoned to remember the lyrics.
    • "Alice's Restaurant" has an audience participation part at the end, complete with chiding by Arlo Guthrie.
    • ZP Theart of Dragon Force (video game), Tobias Sammet of Edguy, Marco Hietala of Nightwish and Tarot, and many other vocalists have admitted to using calls for audience participation to hide spots where they've forgotten the lyrics.

    Singer: KINGDOOOOM! FUKKEN!
    Audience: Gone!
    Singer: KINGDOMFUKKEN!
    Audience: Gone!
    Singer: KING DOM FUKKEN!
    Audience: Gone!
    [Band proceeds to play "Kingdom Gone".]
    [Band finishes song, feedback squeals.]
    Singer: KINGDOMFUKKEN! KINGDOMFUKKEN! KINGDOMFUKKEN!

    • Linkin Park sometimes has the audience sing the last verse of "In the End" in addition to Chester's brief parts during the first two verses. Not to mention that live versions of "Bleed it Out" feature a singing contest between the two vocalists with the audience's help.
    • The main verse to Disturbed's "Stupify" seems tailor-made to a call-and-response relation-ship between the band and crowd. The singer shouts "All the people in the left wing ROCK" to the response from the left section. After that is the right wing (right section), the high rise (the upper gallery or higher seats), the underground (lower front area or mosh-pit) all shouting "ROCK" back to the band. The lead singer, David Draiman, encourages this.
      • Their cover of "Land of Confusion" requires a chorus of voices shouting "wha-oh!" inbetween verses (otherwise bassist John Moyer has to somehow fill this place alone). It's also customary to raise one's fist in the air during the end of Ten Thousand Fists' chorus (the lyrics are literally shouting "Ten Thousand Fist in the air!").
        • Customary? It's mandatory. Draiman actually orders you to do it.
    • Part of the chorus of Kate Miller-Heidke's "Politics in Space" is one of these call-and-response things.
    • SHOT THROUGH THE HEART! AND YOU'RE TO BLAME!
    • Green Day have several, either "Basket Case", or from American Idiot. If songs from the latter are played abroad, Bille Joe makes a point of saying that the audience participation is so much better than in America.
    • Great Big Sea has long had audience participation. Their live (recorded in different cities) album Road Rage features several, a notable one being "Excursion Around the Bay" where part of the audience (initially one small group) lets rip a enthusiastic "Hey!" after the chorus, which grows and grows as more people join in (clearly with band encouragement) until the last chorus, which the band lets the audience sing, and ends with an enormous roar.
    • Muse's insanely dedicated fanbase ensure this is a phenomenon found in almost every song they play live, but "Knights of Cydonia" (with epic bellow-along moments throughout pretty much the whole number) tends to invoke particularly enthusiastic audience response, which the band play up to by showing the lyrics on the light show screens. It probably helps that it's often played as an encore.
    • Paramore is fond of this trope. They have "My Heart" ("Sing us a song and we'll sing it back to you"), "Born For This", "That's What You Get", and "Where The Lines Overlap" ("Now I've got a feeling if I sang this loud enough you would sing it back to me.")
    • The first few lines of the Arctic Monkeys song "When The Sun Goes Down" is traditionally sung by the audience at concerts.
    • Mad Magazine once lampshaded this, in a list of things that suck about concerts, calling the singer lazy for making the audience sing for him.
    • Tori Amos' "Big Wheel"

    Tori: I-I-I am a M-I-L-F!
    Audience: Don't you for-get!

    • "Revolutions" or rather its more recent version "Revolution, Revolutions" by Jean Michel Jarre whenever played before a UK audience. Come to think of it, it was Jarre's only piece of music with lyrics before the end of 1999.
    • The Rocky Horror Show as a whole takes this trope to the extreme. Even The Rocky Horror Picture Show, despite being a movie.
    • The Leningrad Cowboys subverted this whenever they played "Kasakka" live. First they got the audience to sing the song, then the band started to play along.
    • The German comedian Otto Waalkes got the audience to sing along with "Nasdrowje Womm" at the end of his earliest shows?and then sometimes left the stage while the crowd continued to sing.
    • When Udo Lindenberg sung "Jonny Controletti" in his early years, two guys disguised as Mafiosi would jump out of hidings with fake machine guns at the end of the song and "mow down" the audience who always played along.
    • 30 Seconds to Mars developed a rabid fanbase/street-team after the release of the first album, called the Echelon. Singer Jared Leto (yes, he of Requiem for a Dream and Lord of War and other films fame), would often get the crowd to join in on songs during touring for the second album. This was then followed up by inviting a thousand people to form choirs to sing on every song of the third album. Most fans will happily join in with singing along during their parts for songs. Logic dictates that the fourth 30StM album will consist entirely of the fans singing.
    • The song "Rise, Rebel, Resist" (during the tour of the same name) was directly stated to be this at an Otep show I saw this year. When Otep sang the line "Perfect little spouses in perfect little houses", she then asked the audience to sing the next line ("It's family fun time - let's commit a hate crime!").
    • "Because We Want To" by Billie Piper.
    • 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!

    • Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls has made an art form out of this. She sees absolutely no use for a difference between herself and her audience, and treats her shows as fun get-togethers, asking random fans to sing with her, hold up her props, or come bring her wine in her hotel room for a makeshift party. Her absolute Crowning Moment of Awesome was when, during a vaudeville tour across Europe, her crew got stuck in a different country because of the Iceland volcano. Instead of using her crew, she pulled two fans onto the stage to stay there throughout the show and play the theme from Clue on her keyboard, while she ran around the stage between the songs acting out the theatre parts by herself "Tim Curry style".
    • In their most recent tour to promote The Hazards of Love, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists leads the audience in a spontaneous song, with each third of the audience doing a different melody or sound. After teaching each section their part, he conducts their specific volume and tempo.
      • Even before the Hazards of Love tour, The Decemberists would incorporate audience participation in one of their most popular live songs, "The Mariner's Revenge Song." Meloy gives the audience a signal at which they must scream as though they are being swallowed by a whale to coincide with the same event in the song. He suggests "screaming and crying for your mother." The song is often performed as an encore or finale.
    • Blue Öyster Cult's song "Dominance and Submission" features an audience participation moment so popular with fans that many compilations will include a live version over the original studio version. DOMINANCE! ...and submission. DOMINANCE! Submission. DOMINANCE! Submission. DOMINANCE! Submission [epic guitar]
    • We say Hillshire, you say farms! Hillshire! (Farms!) Go meat!
    • Joe Satriani Crowd Chant
    • Red Hot Chili Peppers were trying to sell some executives on making "Under The Bridge" their next single. The executives agreed to attend a live performance of the song so they could hear it. When the vocals were supposed to start, however, Anthony Keidis wasn't paying full attention and missed it—at which point the audience started the song for him. When he went up to apologize to the executives for "fucking up" later, they said something like "Fuck up? What do you mean fuck up?! When the entire crowd sings your song for you, that's our next single!" Audience Participation Song taken to a bit of an extreme.
    • From Touhou there's the COOL&CREATE song Help me, ERINNNNNN!!, which contains Beatmario yelling Touhou-related phrases and the audience imitating him.
    • U2 often closes its concerts with their song "40," and it's a tradition for audiences to keep singing the chorus "How long to sing this song" along with Bono—and continuing to sing after he leaves the stage. And continuing to sing after the rest of the band leaves the stage one by one. And continuing to sing until the house lights come up after the show.
      • U2 fans have even given this treatment to songs that have not technically been released yet. Here's an example.
    • Peter Gabriel did something similar; he used to close his concerts with his song "Biko", and at at the very end of the song, audiences would join him in a repeated "Whoa-oh-ohhhhh" chant, throwing fists in the air. Peter turned the moment into a call-and-response, naming various civil rights leaders the audience should "sing for" -- "Sing it for Martin Luther King! Sing it for Nelson Mandela! Sing it for Stephen Biko!" Before finally saying, "What happens next is up to you," and leaving the stage - leaving the audience to carry on singing.
    • In some benefit concerts, Phil Collins has done an acoustic version of "In The Air Tonight," featuring just him and a piano; the moment where the drum break usually comes in, he just pauses for a few seconds' silence. A few times, however, the rest of the audience has joined in with their own "vocal drum break" by shouting, "BA-BUM BA-BUM BA-BUM BA-BUM BUM BUM!"
    • T.M.Revolution (pictured above) loves this. He will very often have the audience sing all or part of a line in a song, or have them sing the backing vocals. Other times he'll just demand "Utae!!" ("Sing!") and hold his mic up as they sing multiple lines, sometimes even the entire chorus, of a song.
    • "Diamonds Aren't Forever" by Bring Me the Horizon.
    • Hatebreed's dedicated fanbase does this quite a bit, especially on the song "I Will Be Heard," which this troper feels was built around audience participation. Look up the performance of this song on their Live Dominance DVD if you're curious.
    • Imogen Heap on her latest tour will divide the audience into 3 groups for "Just For Now", and sings the lyrics "hide and seek" while the audience loops "ransom notes..." under her.
    • Jack's Mannequin concerts in which "Holiday From Real" is played will usually have the audience shouting the "fuck yeah."
    • Def Leppard usually has the audience sing the chorus of "Pour Some Sugar On Me".
    • In most live performances of Cobra Starship's "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)", Gabe Saporta will bring an audience member up on stage to do Travis McCoy's rap.
    • A presentation about Touhou at an animé convention demonstrated that "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing" is such a song, apparently.
      • On a related note, who doesn't get the urge to swing their arms while yelling "ERIN! ERIN!"?
      • The equally ear-wormy song Usatei now has a band version, also done by COOL&CREATE. This trope is practically a given.
    • The live version of Captain Ahab's "I Don't Have A Dick" as it appears both on film and in "The Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" features several crowd members shouting the first part of the chorus after the opening stanza.
    • The band VNV Nation requests that audiences sing along to Solitary (because "this song is our hymn and our anthem"), and (at least in the Pastperfect recordings) Harris will complain during various songs that they aren't singing along loud enough.
      • Perpetual is also notable for the crowd (and vocalist Ronan) singing "nananaNANAnana!" along with the instrumental intro, and chanting the repeated closing line "let there be/let there always be/neverending light" (sometimes long after the instruments have faded out)
    • Some live recordings of Ants Marching has him let the audience sing/shout for a few lines before picking it up again.
    • At one of the Live 8 concerts, Will Smith turned the theme to "The Fresh Prince Of BelAir" into this—granted, he was performing IN Philly. But reportedly, all he said was, "okay, let's see how many of you remember this one -- 'iiiiiiiiin WEST Philadelphia, born and raised'....." and then just stood, grinning, as 20,000 people finished the entire rest of the song for him.
    • Epica usually lets the audience sing the 'FOREVER AND EVER!' part of the Cry for the Moon's chorus.
    • In his Tinselworm tour, Bill Bailey encourages anyone who goes to see The Killers to sing the equally logical "I've got ham but I'm not a hamster" when prompted by the band to sing "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier".
    • Garth Brooks: his Signature Song Friends in Low Places contains a secret live-only "third verse" that the audience chants.
      • "Unanswered Prayers" became one on the Double Live album as a result of his Corpsing over the volume of the audience singing it.
    • James' lead singer Tim Booth resented the fans turning "Come Home" into an anthemic audience participation piece - he wrote the song from a dark place as a critique of his own life ("After 30 years I've become my fears / I've become the kind of man I always hated"). He came to terms with it though, and eventually came to embrace it. And stopped being so miserable.
    • KT Tunstall tries to prevent this, after the audience worked out how her loop pedal worked and realised that if they shouted an obscenity loud enough at the right moment, it'd be repeated through the whole song.
    • Chicago with the "We can make it happen" refrain of "Dialogue."
    • A recording of Foreigner's Hot Blooded includes the audience being invited to shout the words "Hot blooded!" at the appropriate time, with the invocation: "Now listen up! You gotta be louder than we are! We got the amps; you got the numbers! There's strength in numbers!"
    • Nile has quite a few of these, as the songs often feature repeating chants, which lyricist Karl Sanders said was an attempt to call to mind a semi-ritualistic nature in keeping with the Egyptian sounding music. During some songs, particularly "4th Arra of Dagon," and "Black Seeds of Vengeance," the band will actually step away from the microphones, and simply chant along with the crowd (which is often just as loud as the band itself). Lots of songs also feature sections where the audience is encouraged to chant rhythmically to the beat of the music, usually just some form of shouting. The result is quite cool.
    • The Flemish group Clouseau has a ballad, "Laat Me Nu Toch Alleen" where they give the audience the chance to sing the starting verse. Only, the song has a part where it sounds as if it goes over to the bridge but actually starts another verse. This part is consistently sung wrong by the audience, the lead singer will then correct the audience and start the song over again, this time singing himself. By now, it's anybody's guess whether this is so because the audience always gets it wrong, or whether everybody knows that Clouseau expects them to sing it wrong.
    • About a year after A Very Potter Musical went viral, Team Starkid were at the Azkatraz convention. A bunch of them (Darren Criss, Joey Richter, Matt Lang, Brian Holden, and Dylan Saunders, namely) were hanging out in the lobby, playing songs from it for the fans. Cue up "Get Back to Hogwarts", Joey telling everyone to sing along, and Darren being all verklempt that people know the lyrics to his songs. The Crowning Moment of Funny is at 5:09 when the entire crowd yells "BITCH I AIN'T CHO CHANG!".
    • In Pippin, Pippin's grandmother Berthe asks the audience to sing along with her in the choruses of "No Time At All" (except for the last one, which she insists on taking by herself).
    • Name a Kaizers Orchestra song, any Kaizers Orchestra song. If it's performed live and has been released previously, the band will leave the refrain over to the audience, and they will sing along.
    • Korean Pop groups such as SHINee, Super Junior, Girls' Generation, etc. have designated fan-chants that the fans and audience sing along to. Fan-chants may include singing the members' names as an interlude in a song comes along.
      • Fridge Brilliance: fan-chants were actually made to keep the audience's noisy singing down and organized.
    • Hail The Villian's Take Back The Fear has several parts. The audience is meant to back up the chorus and also sing the titular line.
    • No love for Duran Duran? SWITCH IT OFF!
    • Pulp's "Common People". Even on the mastered versions of this performance that they've released, you can still hear the crowd's voice better than Jarvis'. It fits the song though.
      • Glastonbury is well known for hosting massive moments of audience participation.
    • Blur's "Tender". When the band performed the song at the Reading Festival in 2003, Damon Albarn requested that the audience sing Graham Coxon's "Oh my baby/Oh my baby/Oh why?/Oh my" lines since he was no longer in the band. When Blur reunited (with Coxon) for a brief festival tour in 2009, the audiences were still keen on singing those lines, even continuing the tradition after the song ended and during the encore breaks.
    • The iconic song "Are 'Friends' Electric?" is a mainstay of Gary Numan's live performances. Gary often vocalized along with the soaring synthesizer breaks in concert, until the audience began doing it for him. The audience also tends to supply the titular line of the song. "You know I hate to ask..."
    • Mark Donnelly sings "Oh Canada" at Vancouver Canucks home games. After the first stanza, he turns it over to the audience for the second.
    • This is Dashboard Confessional's entire shtick, to the point where the audience starts singing the first verses the moment Chris Carrabba starts playing. It's really the only reason to attend his solo shows where he just shows up on stage with his guitar.
    • The Protomen do this with a few of their songs at live shows, most notably the song from Act II "Give Us the Rope" where the entire song is audience sung.
    • In the stage adaptation of Aladdin, the beginning of "Friend Like Me" uses call and response audience participation.
    • The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain encourages both joining in and a call-and-response in its most-requested cover, that being Wuthering Heights (oh, Heathcliff... HEATHCLIFF!) They too have been known to leave out the chorus and let the audience sing it themselves occasionally.
    • The Veronicas most of their live show features audience participation
    • Frank Turner's entire repertoire is basically this. At gigs he will invite the audience to sing along from the first song and most of his songs have an "and now you sing" moment
    • Coldplay has many, most notably "Viva La Vida" and its "ooooh oooh oooh" chorus.
    • Delta Goodrem, by design, A Little Too Late, Innocent Eyes and You Will Only Break My Heart have sing along bits.
    • Little Shop of Horrors has the song "Dentist!" which becomes this when Orin instructs the audience to "Say ahhhhh!"'
    • Taken to it's logical extreme by Sound Horizon's "The Glory Kingdom", a live-only song that's sung entirely by the audience at the end of each concert.
    • The German Punk-Band "Die Aerzte" (The Doctors) has a song called "Geschwisterliebe". When they weren't allowed to perform the song live, they just played the instrumental part and let the audience sing.
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