Elvis Presley would have turned 80 years old this week. He may actually have turned 80, depending on your tolerance for conspiracy theories, but regardless, we celebrate the King's birth in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Elvis had plenty of distinctive hallmarks that would come to define his legacy, more than perhaps any other popular musician. The lip, the hips, the pompadour, Hawaii, Vegas, the sequined jumpsuits, the chops, the "thank you very much," Graceland, dying on the toilet, that voice. And then there's "Elvis has left the building," a phrase that has persisted well past its subject's death and become part of the cultural lexicon.

But how did the phrase become so popular in the first place? It has to do with Elvis never playing encores. Initially used by promoter Horace Lee Logan to keep fans in their seats instead of seeking out Elvis after his set ("Please, young people. Elvis has left the building. He has gotten in his car and driven away. Please take your seats."), it was later adopted as a sign-off by Elvis's stage announcer to let hysterical, encore-hungry fans know that the performance had ended irrevocably. "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building," he would say as Elvis stormed off the stage. No, he is not coming back out. You have seen the performance and it is over now. Have a good night. See you next time.

Elvis's refusal to play encores was integral to his mystique. He was a showman, and this was a classic showman's trick, initially insisted upon by his longtime manager Colonel Tom Parker in an effort to leave the crowd pleading for more. Deliberately withholding the very thing the audience wants is a prescription for drama, and drama lends entertainment at least the appearance of significance. It makes it memorable.

Years later, Seinfeld hilariously appropriated this principle when George Costanza becomes obsessed with exiting on a high note. After he tells Jerry about his struggles to leave a good impression at work, Jerry suggests "saying goodnight and walking off" as soon as George makes a sharp comment or gets a laugh from his coworkers. "That's the way they do it in Vegas," he says. George's experiment backfires, of course, when his comically incompetent boss Kruger entrusts him with a huge project based on his suddenly dazzling office presence. "I don't know what it is, I can't put my finger on it, but lately you have just seemed on," Kruger explains. "You always leave me wanting more."

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But for performers, especially those whose catalogs we have unlimited access to over the Internet, there can be real value in holding something back in a live setting. So why is it now such a faux pas for a band to refuse playing an encore? Why do we consider an artist leaving the stage, waiting an indeterminate amount of time, and then coming back out to play a few more songs such a staunch requirement of the concert experience? If a band today, even or especially a well-known one, decides to pull an Elvis and "leave the building" after their initial set, they're labeled either curmudgeons, as the Pixies' Black Francis was last year, or entitled assholes. How dare they deprive us of our precious bonus material?

The encore as we know it has lost its intended meaning. It's too often a perfunctory charade rather than anything organic or inspired. Of course plenty of live sets will elicit genuine exuberance and an almost primal desire to see more of the powerful thing onstage that has moved everyone so. But just as many sets—sets that are simply good and not mind-blowing—will be followed by a polite upswell in applause that quickly settles into a tepid, prolonged clapping session from an audience forced to wait out a totally unnecessary intermission. If the band takes too long to come back out, they're pricks. When they do return, they'll play three or four songs, at least one of which is a crucial piece of the performance as a whole. The artist therefore must emphatically bring home (at least) two sets. But what if instead all of their energy throughout the night was in the service of one dramatic conclusion? What if they were to leave the audience to process their set as a single, uninterrupted piece of art? To leave the audience, as Colonel Tom Parker insisted in the case of Elvis fans, wanting more?

Part of the problem is that nowadays we don't take so well to anything being withheld from us, because we have unfettered access to pretty much all the entertainment we could ever ask for and more. During a concert, whatever is transpiring on stage is rarely enough. We must check Twitter and Instagram to fill our capacity for consumption to the brim where the performance before us comes up short. And if the live entertainment we've paid to see should be so bold as to deliberately keep something from us, it's grounds for outrage.

In this way, artists have lost agency in their own performances. The onus is on them alone to satisfy us thoroughly, while we're rarely even willing to give them our undivided attention. Yes, we paid for the ticket so we can do whatever the hell we goddamn please, but so should the artist be permitted to fashion their set however they see fit without reproach. We shouldn't care if they play an encore or not. We really shouldn't. But encores are what we're used to. They're what we've come to expect, and if you think you can get away with giving a critical, content-hungry audience armed with iPhones anything other than what they expect... Well, you better be a little closer to Elvis than to George Costanza.

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