14 songs you might reasonably expect tonight
Songs you are expecting: ones the band plays often enough to have a habit, which are now a little past it. Measured against each song’s own recent gaps rather than one number for the whole catalog — a staple is late at eight shows and a rarity is not late at eighty. The figure on the right is how far past: 2× means it has now been twice this song’s usual gap, which is printed under it.
Being late is not the same as being expected, and more late is not more expected. A song at six times its usual gap is not one anybody is waiting on — it is drifting out of rotation. So past 3.5× a song is slipping rather than due, past 100 shows it is on the shelf, and with no recent habit at all it is out of rotation. All four are below, though the fourth is a count and a door rather than a list: there are more songs in it than in the other three put together, so they have a page to themselves.
None of this knows what the band has planned. A themed night overrides every figure here — the 2021 Halloween runs built around numbers and animals, the elements nights of the first Sphere run, a run played entirely out of one decade — and the theme is usually not public before the show. On a night like that the list below is the wrong question.
The FAQ answers this at more length, including why a song gone for years is not on the list.
Well past their usual gap rather than a little past it. These could turn up, and they could equally be on their way out of rotation — either way they are not what anybody is expecting tonight. The usual gap beside each one is measured over the last ten years of its performances, so for a song this far past it, read it as the schedule the song was on.
Gone more than 100 shows — long enough that the habit they are being measured against has probably stopped being true. Note this is not the same as saying their return would be a bustout: these songs all still have a recent record, and this site reserves that word for songs that do not.
Gone long enough that a return would be a bustout, and with no recent record left to be late against — so there is no lateness here to rank, and none of it is due. There are more of these than in the three lists above put together, and they are not one population: 52 were in rotation and left it, 56 were played a few times across the band’s whole life and never became a habit, and 176 were played once or twice and never again.