Why Paying $500 to See Music You Grew Up On Is Completely Worth It

Whether that’s Hilary Duff, Phish, or the Strokes, our writer considers it like investing in therapy.

As my husband and I waited for Trey Anastasio—the lead singer of Phish and my husband’s personal hero—to take the stage for a solo acoustic performance at Port Chester’s Capitol Theater, I told him about my desperate desire to see Hilary Duff at Madison Square Garden.

Decent tickets were hovering around $500, which he found absurd. “I’m cashing in my trauma bucks,” I joked crudely, referencing the hard start to the year we were closing out, full of dog death, pregnancy loss, and recovering from surgery. I told him it was the cost of a couple therapy sessions but worth at least that much for my healing.

He rolled his eyes, so I pivoted to reminding him how much we had paid for Phish tickets over the years. I’d bought tickets to the show we were currently at for him for Father’s Day. Even at this intimate venue without the full band and lightshow, seats near the stage were close to $400. I’d managed to find two tickets in the back for just under $200 each.

“Ya, but it’s Trey,” he replied. “He’s a Jedi.”

“And she’s a queen,” I retorted.

While I am aware Hilary Duff’s cringe pop (as I lovingly call it) is not quite of the same echelon of Trey’s virtuosic guitar playing, I have looked up to her since first watching her play Lizzie McGuire on The Disney Channel as a tween always on the fringe of the “cool kids” at school.

Finally, the lights dimmed, cueing an immediate and reverent hush over the crowd of mostly male, overwhelmingly white, often bearded mid-lifers. The hope on their faces was that of devotees awaiting the Dalai Lama or the Pope, eager to catch a stray blessing from a figure anointed with otherworldly blessings. They roared as Trey, ordinary in his appearance, skinny and clad in his usual uniform—glasses, a plaid shirt, and jeans—took the spotlight. Boyish, relieved smiles broke out on the faces in the audience.

It was the same near-religious anticipation that led me up the steep, long driveway of my best friend’s house every Friday evening as a girl when a new episode of Lizzie McGuire was on. Her family had a sinky, green leather couch that was always cool in their basement, a big screen TV, the suped-up cable package I regularly begged my parents for with access to The Disney Channel, and even a vintage soda machine that was always stocked with glass bottle Cokes, Fantas, and Sprites. They kept a trove of coins on top of the machine, adding to the adolescent fantasy of abundance.

I would grip a cool glass bottle, my knees tucked to my chest, goosebumped from the always aggressively cranked A/C, ready to study what it meant to not be popular, or a nerd, but something perhaps even more coveted to a 13-year-old: to be gloriously normal. Palatable. Perhaps, the safest route to surviving girlhood.

Hilary’s crimped hair, message T’s, and even that knockoff Tiffany’s chain necklace with the dangling heart made their way into my wardrobe. I hoped they would act as talismans to becoming acceptable in a middle school environment that made any misstep (frizzy hair, missed shaving spots, braces) grounds for ridicule. In Hilary Duff’s world, the good girl wins.

With a bowl of popcorn nestled between the pillows, chemical butter would coat the roof of my mouth as I, wide-eyed, watched Aaron Carter lean in and kiss Lizzie under the mistletoe. I slept a little sounder those Friday nights having been presented with a comforting worldview that countered the one in the halls of my public school—if you tried hard, were nice, and kept going, things might work out for you. Nearly 25 years later, among personal setbacks, navigating early motherhood, and impossible beauty standards, I longed for that comfort again.

I’d once asked my husband what he wanted to be when he grew up when he was a child. He’d responded, “Trey Anastasio.” Now as we watched Trey play, he squeezed my leg and whispered simply but giddily, “There he is!” The heroes we choose as children give us a chance to imagine who we might become. Getting older alongside them eventually shows us how to continue being.

At the end of Trey’s acoustic set, he placed his guitar down and began to sing a cappella. Though an accomplished instrumentalist, Trey is not known for his vocals. Still, he began to belt a sort-of riff that made me feel nervous and uncomfortable should it break at any moment. I looked around to find the rest of his audience practically holding their breath with deep respect, many middle-aged hands placed over their hearts.

Trey’s voice hardly lilted toward anything that deserved a stage outside of the shower, but it stayed in tune and steady. Fans grew glassy eyed. I heard one mutter, “You’ve got this, Trey,” like he was watching his kid play a Little League game. I realized this closing vocal display was never about how well he could belt—but that he had the guts to try. When he finished, grown men were shedding tears as if they had witnessed a vocal run by Aretha Franklin.

As kids listening to live Phish shows on CD or Hilary’s “Metamorphosis” album—Henry with the same shaggy hair and flannel wardrobe as Trey and myself with my Lizzie sensibilities—we learned that an ordinary devotion to staying the course could result in something as extraordinary as stardom. As adults, watching them age and remain imperfect, offers proof that showing up still results in meaning over time. Just as it had in the past, this message makes each mundane failure or mediocre day a little easier to swallow. 

Now Hilary with her pop music revival was offering a chance for me to experience the same strange gift the glitter-eyed grown men around me were receiving: an encounter with a childhood dream that survived intact into adulthood. Though a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden doesn’t reflect my reality like Lizzie McGuire once did, the lyrics of her latest album, “luck… or something” do. For months, I’ve been singing along to her new songs in my car on the way to day care pickup, as a distraction from cleaning my house, and while running the same trails where I used to walk my dog. Her songs cover such relatable territory as trying to be a decent spouse, maintaining a good friendship, raising children, losing relationships, and starting over.

Her acceptance of these everyday let-downs helps me practice acceptance, too. Dogs die. Pregnancies end. Bodies fail. And concert ticket prices have reached an all-time high, particularly for bands offering both entertainment and nostalgia. But what are we really buying when we cough it up if not a portal to that same hope these heroes gave us as children?

Once someone becomes our hero, virtuosity stops being the point. We become attached to their continued existence. Just as no one batted an eye (except to shed a tear) at Trey’s subpar singing, I didn’t care if Hilary’s performance was worth the ticket price. She once represented my future. Now I wanted to stand in the same room with her and, in some sense, compare notes. Had we done it, she and I? Had we made it by sheer will and goodness?

My favorite episode of Lizzie McGuire was titled “Best Dressed for Much Less” in which Lizzie’s mom helps her win “Best Dressed” by thrifting a pair of bedazzled jeans. When Lizzie sashayed arm-in-arm with her best friends down the high school corridors in her winning outfit I knew she was not, in actuality, best dressed. This butterfly t-shirt, these bargain jeans were not her best outfit of the series or even the episode—but even though she didn’t win according to any style rubric, I felt she deserved her prize. She’d cried and dug through the discount bins.

I can still conjure the outfit in all its exactness down to the randomly curled pieces of hair, adorned with a dainty headband. This image was the promise of Hilary herself; that a regular girl—broke, emotional, bullied—could end up the winner. Could get the prize, and the guy, and anything else she wanted if she was nice and wished hard enough (cue the Trevi fountain). Not talent but “luck… or something” would be what took us from our ordinary doldrums to what dreams are made of.

When I found two tickets under $400 I scooped them up and knew exactly where I would derive my outfit inspiration to see Hilary Duff in concert as a thirty-six-year-old. Dressed as an 8th grader in $10 rhinestoned Poshmark jeans, swaying and jumping arm-in-arm with my best friend, I felt euphoric. Best dressed, at least.

Around me, glitter shone on the faces of grown women, clutching their hands to their hearts, not unlike their male counterparts had at the Trey show a month earlier. There Hilary was, still standing, and so was I. We made it. We’re still here.

For one evening, we all inhabited a world where a person who tries, fails, but keeps going can still win an extraordinary prize by way of ordinary dreams. Persistence could be enough for a meaningful life. For me, this reminder was worth the price of admission and then some.

---

Want our stories delivered to you? Sign up for our newsletter, then follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook for regular updates and a lot of other silliness. And if you’ve liked what you’ve read and want to help us keep bringing stories your way, please consider a small donation.