Fans are fretting about Beyoncé tour ‘spoilers’ – but live music thrives on gossip and excitement

As the star kicks off her Renaissance dates, fans are battening down the hatches and avoiding coverage until she hits their city. Why have gigs become the equivalent of a Marvel plotline?

Before I went to bed last night, I already knew that Beyonce had crawled inside a robotic vagina on the opening night of the Renaissance tour in Stockholm. I knew that she had flown on a bedazzled horse called Reneigh, dressed as a cyber bee in a nod to the BeyHive, opened with a surprising string of ballads, and perturbed fans by apparently not dancing as much as they'd hoped - or was it that she had a leg injury? I was 1,400 miles away and I didn't even go looking for this information; it just came to me ambiently as I clicked around my regular diet of culture sites. Vulture, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork were among the outlets liveblogging the show through the medium of embedded TikToks and tweets from those at the Friends Arena. My lucky friend Jeff was one of them, posting from the front row: when I watched his Instagram Stories, I too was close enough to almost get a strand of Beyonce's wind machine-blown hair in my mouth during Break My Soul.

I don't mind knowing the ins and outs of the Renaissance tour before it hits London later this month. (Admittedly it's kind of my job to know.) But for many Beyonce stans, these dispatches are tantamount to spoilers: as if her hair flicks and song segues were plot points out of the latest Marvel film or episode of Succession. Online, many fans are declaring that they're muting hashtags and any accounts liable to give the game away before they get their own chance to see her in the flesh; our reviewer, in his five-star rave, spoke to one man who had travelled from Brazil in order to get the freshest possible perspective: I want everything to be a surprise," he said.