4 Live Performances That Feel So Intimate, It Almost Feels Like You Shouldn’t Be Watching Them

Good musical performances grab your attention and lock your eyes on the stage. Great musical performances make you forget there’s a stage at all. These transcendental moments can and often do come from the musicians’ innate talent on their instruments. But they can also occur through the intimacy these performers create on-stage.

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These intimate moments can range from deeply tender to intensely passionate to overtly sexual. These highly intimate performances offer up a little bit of all three.

“Help Me Make It Through The Night” (1972)

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge’s performance of “Help Me Make It Through The Night” from a 1972 appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test is so deeply intimate and tender that it’s hard to look away. (Even if you feel like maybe you should.) The musicians sing to one another just inches apart, sharing the same microphone in a way that leaves the crowd saying, “Just kiss already! Geeze!”

“Silver Springs” (1997)

On the flipside of this coin is a 1997 performance of “Silver Springs” by Fleetwood Mac’s infamously star-crossed lovers, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The way Nicks burns a hole into Buckingham’s face while singing the words, “You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,” gives off the same energy as your parents starting to passive-aggressively fight in front of you at the dinner table.

“When Will I Be Loved” (1981)

If it weren’t for the sheer campiness of the performance, Cher’s rendition of “When Will I Be Loved” during her Las Vegas residency would be one of those intimate performances that almost seem NSFW. The sheer absurdity of Cher grinding hips with a dancing cowboy on a mechanical bull keeps it relatively light, we suppose. But it’s still enough to cause more conservative onlookers to gasp.

“Love To Love You Baby” (1977)

The whole point of Donna Summer’s 1970s disco hit, “Love To Love You Baby”, is that it’s sexual. So, it’s unsurprising that her live performances of that track would be equally intimate. Maybe it’s the Midwestern modesty in me. But this 1977 performance is so moan-filled and sensual that I’m wondering if the audience should’ve left to give Summers a second to collect herself.

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