3 Albums Designed to Make Their Artists Sound More Arena-Friendly

When a band takes its act from clubs and theaters to a large sports arena, it involves more than just playing in front of a bigger audience. The subtleties of a mix that might come across well in a smaller venue can get lost in a cavernous building that seats 10,000 people or more. A band may also need to adapt their songs so that they can better accommodate a stage show that is aimed at reaching fans sitting far away.

If you wanted to create a syllabus for a course on how to retool a band’s sound for an arena tour, these three albums would be required listening. You would probably think of these acts long after the likes of Foo Fighters, U2, or Journey when compiling a list of bands that rock fans by the thousands. Nonetheless, each of them convincingly pulled off a big, arena-sized sound on the following albums.

Low Budget by The Kinks (1979)

Long before The Kinks made their final studio album of the 1970s, they had earned their arena rock credentials with “Lola.” The band’s commercial appeal had withered since that 1970 hit, and by the time they toured to support their 1978 album Misfits, they were mostly playing theaters. Arista Records head Clive Davis wanted the Kinks to play larger venues, and for Low Budget frontman Ray Davies had written some loud rockers that would work well in arenas.

In an interview for Mojo, Davies said his writing for Low Budget was largely inspired by the punk movement, which he said, “brought out the vaudeville in me.” However, he was also mindful that the songs needed to appeal to mainstream U.S. audiences, who were into “Styx and big hair and perfect guitar phrases.” Songs like Low Budget’s title track and “Catch Me Now I’m Falling” captured the angst of the times while also providing loud, memorable riffs. Not only did Low Budget become The Kinks’ first Gold-certified studio album in the U.S., but the follow-up live album, One for the Road—which featured several songs from Low Budget—went Gold, too.

The Woods by Sleater-Kinney (2005)

No Sleater-Kinney album rocks harder than The Woods, and the band’s experience as the opening act on Pearl Jam’s 2003 Riot Act Tour had much to do with that. Playing venues like Madison Square Garden in New York, Tampa’s Amalie Arena, and Denver’s Ball Arena was a new type of experience for the trio. They found they had to adapt their set lists to accommodate the larger buildings, sometimes extending their songs into longer jams.

Former drummer Janet Weiss explained to Magnet, “Playing in the giant arenas sounded and felt different—there was so much depth and reverb to each note, we could stretch out the time, slow down, get heavier. The fast-and-furious songs dissipated into the air with a lot less impact than the beefy stompers.” Sleater-Kinney’s experimentation carried over into the making of The Woods, and the bigger, sludgier sounds of Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker’s guitars are evident from the first bars of the album opener “The Fox.” Some of the songs take more time to develop, particularly “Let’s Call It Love” and “Night Light,” which run into each other to create a nearly 15-minute-long opus.

Arena by Todd Rundgren (2008)

Given the timing of Arena’s release—roughly a year after Todd Rundgren toured as the frontman of the New Cars—it would be easy to assume that Rundgren was absorbing the arena rock vibes from The Cars’ earlier catalog. The New Cars played a role in inspiring Rundgren to make an album of big-sounding rockers, but it was an indirect one. An injury to guitarist Elliot Easton brought a premature end to the New Cars’ tour, so Rundgren took on a new project—touring as part of a guitar quartet. That experience put Rundgren in the mode of writing guitar-oriented songs that were made to be played in arenas.

He specifically looked to Boston’s self-titled debut album and Def Leppard’s Pyromania for inspiration, showing he thoroughly understood the assignment. The resulting batch of songs became an album, which he fittingly titled Arena. In a 2014 interview with Louder, Rundgren said most of the 13 songs were intended to reference a prior arena-rock hit. Some songs sound like an amalgam of arena-rock gems, like the way that “Mercenary” comes across like a hybrid of AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

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