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Music

Southwest Airlines Will Regularly Inflict Live Music on Trapped Passengers

The airline has extended its partnership with a record label to stage literally inescapable shows aboard more of its planes.
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Photo by Garrett Menichini/Southwest Airlines via Getty Images

These days, taking a flight comes at the risk of enduring a few hours of absolute hell, where terrible smells, exploding phones, and violent yogis are all liable to turn your trip into a waking nightmare. As if air travel isn't miserable enough already, passengers aboard a few select Southwest flights will now be subjected to live concerts, which—at 35,000 feet above the earth—they'll be powerless to escape.

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According to Billboard, Southwest will continue to bring a slate of musicians onboard with its "Live at 35" concert series through an ongoing partnership with Warner Music Nashville, which supplies talent from its mostly pop-country roster of artists. Without warning, planes full of "lucky" passengers who are just trying to sleep or watch a movie without headphones or whatever will suddenly see a band set up a few mics, whip out their guitars, and start shredding.

"With this partnership with Warner Music Nashville, we are excited to continue to offer new music experiences to our customers, and provide WMN artists and fans our friendly and reliable customer service—complete with our promise that bags (and guitars) fly free," Linda Rutherford, Southwest's vice president & chief communications officer, told the International Business Times.

A few souls on a flight from Nashville to Philly recently found themselves the unwilling audience at a Devin Dawson show, a singer-songwriter who—according to his Facebook page—"is an edgy study in contrast, poised as the next bolt of lightning to hit country's family tree." On this particular journey, that bolt of lightning came rocketing toward a plane full of paying passengers' ears, whether they liked it or not.

Southwest isn't revealing which trips will feature the in-flight assault on the senses, so there's no way to guarantee your next voyage won't be interrupted by some dude covering "Wonderwall" and sending every baby onboard into a fit. To some, the element of chance behind "Live at 35" might be like playing the lottery; for others, it may seem like Russian roulette.

There's no word on whether other airlines plan to roll out a similar service, but catching a metal show onboard Flight 666 to HEL could actually be kind of sweet.

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