Jason Aldean doesn’t like encores, so he’s very straightforward with his fans in telling them that he’ll never participate in the age-old concert practice.
The “Try That In A Small Town” singer is currently out on the road on his 2026 Songs About Us Tour, which has dates scattered all across North America. If you have been to one of his concerts already this year, you know the drill. If you plan on going to see Aldean in the near future, it might be good for you to lean in and hear what he has to say.
Jason Aldean has always been open about how he feels (with anything really), and at a recent concert, he addressed the audience and told them that he’s not a fan of the whole song-and-dance where he goes off stage at the “end” of his concert, only for applause and cheering to bring him back.
Simply put, he’s not a fan of encores, and that eventually led him to omit encores from his concerts altogether. Now, he just makes sure everyone in attendance knows that when his concert is over… it’s over:
“There’s a thing at the end of a show a lot of times called an encore, where you guys think the show is over, and the artist goes backstage. You guys sit out here and clap for like five minutes trying to get them to come back out and play a couple more songs.
It’s called an encore and I think it’s stupid. I feel like if I’m back there and you guys are out here, we’re just wasting time. So the way I like to do it, I’m just gonna play you guys everything we got and when the show’s over, it’s just over.”
There you have it.
Personally, I don’t mind an encore. I’ll admit that there’s not really a surprise aspect to it anymore. Concert goers know that their favorite artist or band are going to do a fake goodbye, only to return moments later and play a collection of their hit songs that haven’t been touched yet that night.
At the same time, I understand where Aldean is coming from with his perspective. There’s really not a lot of necessity in the act, so artists might as well just play all the songs they wanted to play all the way through, then walk off for real. In the past, Aldean has even described it as feeling as though he’s baiting his fans:
“I’m not a big encore guy. I hate when artists kind of bait ’em into that. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to play one of my biggest songs so that you guys cheer when I’m done for me to come back out and do this.’ And I always tell ’em, ‘Listen, I’m gonna just play you guys everything we got, and when it’s over it’s over.’ Like, that’s it.”
So in conclusion… if you plan on seeing Aldean anytime soon, just know that his concert will be encore-less.
