Earlier this month, the Icelandic singer Björk announced her latest live production. “I will prepare my most elaborate stage concert yet,” she said, “where the acoustic and digital will shake hands, encouraged by a bespoke team of collaborators.” One of the world’s most acclaimed artists promising something new; surely a good thing? Not all who have seen her play live in recent years were thrilled, however. One music writer — and Björk fan — posting on social media, noted: “The really mind-blowing concept for her would be playing the songs that people actually want to hear.”

The nature of the set list — the selection of songs an artist chooses to perform in concert — is problematic. What is it for? To satisfy the performer’s artistic urges? To promote their latest release? Is it simply to provide people who might have paid a great deal of money for a ticket with the most satisfying entertainment possible?

In a new book, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has collected the set lists he handwrites for the band’s rehearsals, and then for shows. At first it was just for fun, Wood tells me; he had always loved calligraphy. But soon his artworks began to serve a practical purpose. “The next thing I know, I come into rehearsals and they’re going round the walls,” he says, “and the rest of the boys are going, ‘Have we played “Fool to Cry?” ’ ‘Yeah, we played it on Tuesday.’ The boys are starting to use it as a reference, which is great, because when I started doing it, Mick [Jagger] used to come up to me and go, ‘Ronnie, stop writing that bloody list, and get on with the songs.’ ”

The resulting book, The Rolling Stones Set Lists, captures the huge range of songs the Stones will bring to life during one of their tours — about 80 for a show of 19 or 20 songs. It also gives the rest of us some clues as to the rules of writing the dream set list.

Set list 44: Rehearsal, Studio Planet Live, Bondy, Paris, February 14 2014

Open with a bang

For the Stones, the purpose of the set list is to offer an enormous number of people the biggest bang for their buck. Regardless of the song selection, the running order follows the same rules every night. The Stones have to open explosively, Wood says. Then “you play for maybe half an hour before you take your foot off the gas. But you don’t ease off for too long — maybe a couple of songs. Then you put it back on and gradually build. ‘Midnight Rambler’ will set the scene for the last explosion of songs. Keith [Richards] is very on-target with pacing: ‘Oh, we can’t do that one there; we’ve got to keep the momentum going.’ And we always have Keith’s two in the middle [a couple of numbers Richards sings]. Then Mick has the chance to have a breather, change his trousers and then come back for the last barrage.”

Don’t forget about your props

At anything bigger than a theatre show, there’s the opportunity to do a few “production numbers”: where confetti cannons explode into life, flame pots ignite or video screens display something specific. These can’t be random: everyone involved in the show has to be certain when and where any extraneous elements will happen. As Wood puts it, “You need to know at what point in the show you’ve got the pyro, because you don’t want your knees blown off.”

The Decemberists’ inflatable whale © Tom Attwater

For the Oregon folk-rock band The Decemberists, props don’t just dictate the placing of the songs but the inclusion of one. “ ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’ is the perennial,” says their singer and songwriter, Colin Meloy. “It’s the one we play every night. But mostly because we invested in a 15ft inflatable whale, and when you do something like that, you’re shackled to it. You’ve ordered in the barrels of helium, people know about it, and they want to see the whale.”

Know your audience

For artists whose set list doesn’t include a “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, there’s a different dynamic. “The very first and most important factor is who’s in the audience,” says Amanda Palmer, the “dark cabaret” singer who, as a solo artist and a member of the US duo Dresden Dolls, plays everywhere from big concert halls to tiny clubs. “If I’m opening for someone else, or playing at a symphony hall where it’s possible lots of the 6,000 people have never heard of me, I have to be a lot more careful about how

I present myself and I have to make a much more convincing case for myself.”

Amanda Palmer, Berlin, November 2013 © Redferns via Getty Images

On the flip side, “If I’m playing to a really small audience of the completely converted I’m way more liberal and experimental with the set list.” Faced with her most dedicated fans, she has been known to indulge herself completely. “I did a concert in Berlin last year that was a standing-room-only show for 1,500 people and I played a four-hour, 10-minute solo piano show, because I could . . . God bless my fans, because they all stood there and cheered me on.”

Set yourself challenges

The Stones, of course, have a number of songs they simply have to play most nights: (“I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Gimme Shelter”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Brown Sugar” and more. The songs that fit around those are what keeps the show interesting for the band, Wood says. “That’s what keeps the whole machine well-oiled, that element of surprise that we inject into the live show. And a lot of it depends on Mick’s voice, and what he’s prepared to do. If he’s feeling particularly adventurous, he might try a song that will catch us all by surprise, like ‘Anybody Seen My Baby?’ [from 1997’s Bridges to Babylon album] ‘What? We haven’t done that for years!’ But it will come out of the pack and send us back to the drawing board. That’s what keeps the interest going. We don’t just rattle it off.”

Be careful with your new songs

This is tricky territory for most artists. Colin Meloy recalls hearing an interview with a member of the 1980s arena rockers REO Speedwagon. “They had a new record out, and he was really excited about it. He said, ‘The fans love the new songs just as much as the old ones.’ And I thought, ‘I love that you think that. But it’s just not true.’” As anyone who goes to shows is aware, new songs — the least familiar material in the set — are often the opportunity for the audience to go to the toilet, buy a pint or text the babysitter.

Set list 79: Free concert, Ciudad Deportiva, Havana, March 25 2016

“The biggest thing about new songs is where you put them,” says Justin Young, frontman of the British rock band The Vaccines. “So on the tour for the Combat Sports album we’ve opened with a new song and closed with a new song. Bookending the set with new music is a good way of making a statement.”

Artists need to play new songs, says Amanda Palmer. “Those are the songs I have just offered the world and are the most immediate and emotionally true to me now. I cannot wait to perform in the Midwest and play my super-intimate, personal songs about abortion. The set list [is] not just a reflection of the album I’ve made, but a direct response to what is happening around me.”

Engage with your audience

Interacting with the crowd can make a gig. And, in the digital age, you can respond to an audience before you even set eyes on them. Spotify for Artists, provided by the streaming platform, has “changed my life”, says Young. It enables him to identify not just The Vaccines’ most popular songs but their most popular songs in any city they are about to play. “It’s obvious why you would pander to crowds,” he says. “Particularly when live music is so important.”

Bruce Springsteen, Rio de Janeiro, September 2013 © AFP/Getty Images

For the Stones, the responsiveness comes from Mick Jagger. Wood says, “He’ll come to me and say, ‘Look, we haven’t rehearsed this but people here really like it. D’you think we can have a bash?’ And we’ll be backstage, but we can run through something and bring it into the set at a few minutes’ notice.”

For Palmer, responses should be more organic. On a written set list, she’ll have some alternative “wild card” songs pencilled in to play if the mood of the room demands it. “I don’t like non-improvisatory rock‘n’roll,” she says. “A show is a conversation with the audience — if you’re a good musician, you’re responding to the room.”

Find new life in old songs

“At the beginning of this touring cycle, the new songs felt fresh,” observes Colin Meloy. “But now they just feel like everything else.” Imagine how it must be for The Rolling Stones, then. Even going by the incomplete records of the website Setlist.fm, they have played “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” at least 1,150 times, “Brown Sugar” 1,120 times, “Honky Tonk Women” 1,090 times. How do they find it in themselves to play something like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” yet again?

“That [song is] forever changing its face,” Wood says. “We might look at each other, but then you look at the people, and you see the enjoyment, and you think, ‘Come on, I have to go in. I’ve got to skinny dip with this one. Jump in the whole way.” The fans are there with their kids, and their kids’ kids — and they are seeing it for the first time.”

Set list 85: Show, Desert trip, Weekend 1, Empire Polo Club, Indio, California, October 7 2016

Young says he could cheerfully never play The Vaccines’ “If You Wanna” ever again at a soundcheck or a rehearsal, but it changes the minute there’s an audience present. “It always gets a reaction, and it takes me back on a journey. Most nights I go back to thinking about our first-ever gig, or sending it to a manager as a demo. It takes me on that journey again.”

But feel free not to do requests

Certain artists will gladly play what fans ask for: at stadium shows with the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen will often perform songs requested from the front rows (and has a roadie searching out lyrics on the internet and feeding them to a teleprompter). “If he thinks he knows something a little bit, or most of it, he will pick that as a request,” E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt told me last year. But for most artists, requests are an embarrassing distraction.

“What’s really tough is when someone messages you, and says they’ve just recovered from cancer,” Young says. “They say, ‘I’m coming to see your gig tonight, and I’d love it if you played such and such a song.’ And you think: ‘Well, we can’t do it at the soundcheck, we haven’t played it for two years, and none of us remembers how it goes. So we can’t.’ You’re pleasing a collective; not a collective of individuals. It’s mob rule.”

Ronnie Wood (with Mick), Indianapolis, July 2015 © Getty

Be sure you can play your set list

It sounds obvious but it’s something fans often forget: there are songs artists simply can’t play, and set lengths they can’t exceed, because their bodies won’t stand it. “I saw Leonard Cohen playing for three hours,” Meloy recalls, “and I thought that was a great show — just give everything you can. So we started doing shows of more than two hours, but I started to blow my voice out.”

For Palmer, “My songwriting process has actually been tamed by the set list and the experience of touring for 15 years. I know that if I have to tour, then I need to write songs that I can actually sing. The album I have coming out next year is by a factor of 1,000 the most singable, playable record I’ve ever written, which is a reaction to my album of 2012 [Theatre Is Evil], where the singing blew my voice out every night.”

And there is one other reason for keeping the set compact. “We don’t want to bore the pants off people,” says Ronnie Wood, laughing.

‘The Rolling Stones Set Lists’ by Ronnie Wood is published in a limited edition by Genesis Publications; genesis-publications.com

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