The Cure’s Tour Merch Is Fantastic, and Other Musicians Should Follow Suit
When it comes to concert souvenirs, t-shirts with the dates are second only to ticket stubs — and I mean actual, physical tickets, practically nonexistent in post-COVID events.
Concerts tee are pretty much a staple of musicians’ merchandise, almost always with a photo or logo of the artist on the front and a long list of cities and dates on the back. For avid concertgoers, they’re a must-have, a way to signal you were there. And while some argue wearing a band’s shirt to their show is tacky, it can be really cool to see a sea of fans donning decades-old tees for acts that have been around awhile.
Typically, the options are limited to just a few different styles, if that. But for their recent Shows of a Lost World Tour over the summer, The Cure took a different approach, offering a different shirt for each stop — and the results were amazing, must-have souvenirs for fans.
The band partnered with numerous artists to create art and therefore, merchandise, unique to each show — cities with more than one show got variations in design, like different colors — only available online as pre-orders and only revealed the day of the show, making it that much more exciting for fans at each show. The result is a wide variety of art available on shirts, posters, etc., featuring different interpretations of the band, their logos, themes in their music, and more, and the limited quantities paired with the designs specific to each show make the merch the ultimate collectors’ items for fans. One of the coolest items is a trading card featuring the art on the front and that show’s setlist on the back.
It’s a brilliant idea, and it would be amazing if other musicians would follow The Cure’s lead.
It’s pretty easy to imagine why this isn’t common practice — it’s logistically difficult. First, it likely means the band is approving every single design, which on the business end also means contracts, payments, etc. It’s also easy to understand why the shirts are available as a pre-order and why most artists don’t take this approach. To sell them at shows would require a certain number available each night, which would require they arrive with the rest of the merch and wait for their night to shine or that they be sent separately, and a standard design for the duration of the tour makes it much easier to restock if numbers get low. Even the pre-orders weren’t without hiccups. While orders initially indicated merch would be shipped within six to eight weeks, some were delayed by up to an additional several weeks.
Still, the end result was worth the wait. And with the way some musicians have fiercely loyal fanbases, it’s easy to imagine that plenty would have success doing the same.
It’s fun to imagine that the next time The Cure hits the road, that sea of tour shirts in the crowd might include a variety of artwork from a number of different tour stops, for other fans to both envy and admire.
