Discover Manchester’s Rich Musical Heritage and Hear the Sound of the City

Manchester Arena: The Biggest Music Venue in the UK

Manchester Arena may not be the best place to experience the intimate, do-it-yourself Manchester ethos and soul, but as the largest music venue in the UK (and the third-busiest in the world, behind London’s O2 Arena and New York’s Madison Square Garden!) it is certainly worth at least passing mention. Originally built as a sporting venue as part of Manchester’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics (which was eventually won by Sydney, Australia), the Arena’s opening show was an on-ice performance by gold-medal ice skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, attended by some 15,000 people, in 1995. Despite these athletic origins, the Manchester Arena has seemingly found its function as the music venue of choice for the world’s biggest acts when they grace the English north, with previous headliners including Take That, The Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Coldplay. Nonetheless, you can always expect a range of things to see at the arena, which hosts an average of 250 events annually, from concerts to comedy to sporting showcases to theatre and musicals! Manchester Arena is the place to go if you want big names and even bigger experiences.

Opened in 1938 in a stunning art deco style, the Apollo is arguably the most prestigious music venue in Manchester. Described by legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr as his favourite music venue, the Apollo’s 3,500-person capacity also made it the largest music venue in the city until the Manchester Arena was erected in 1995. Originally constructed as a cinema and variety theatre, the Apollo served as a fire station during the Second World War before finally being converted into a concert space in the 1960s, quickly garnering acclaim for its beautiful interior design. It hosted a string of colossal names in the ‘70s and ‘80s from David Bowie to The Jacksons to Bruce Springsteen, making the venue into one of the most sought after in the country. Subsequent milestones have included an Oasis ten-year anniversary show in 2001, American pioneer Prince’s two-night show here in 2002, Smith’s frontman Morrissey’s 2009 fiftieth birthday show, and the use of the majestic venue to film scenes from the legendary Madchester film 24 Hour Party People and the Arctic Monkeys’ 2007 Live at the Apollo DVD set. Nowadays, the venue brings together the big-event feel of the Manchester Arena and that intoxicating Mancunian effect of other, much smaller venues, promising a night to remember every time it opens its art deco doors.

The Ritz is Manchester’s oldest music venue, having first opened its doors in 1927 as a dance hall famous for its sprung dance floor. It has lived countless lives since, reopening as a tasteless nightclub in the 1960s infamous for its ‘grab-a-granny’ nights (so-called due to the mixed attendance of seniors reliving the Ritz’s dance hall glory days and students seeking fleeting dance floor romance) before serving as the spiritual precursor to The Hacienda as an originary hub for Manchester’s then-inchoate electronic and house scenes in the ‘70s, an emergent concert venue where The Smiths played their first show in the ‘80s, and the Grade II-listed staple in Manchester’s music scene it still stands as today, beloved by locals for its art deco interior and known more widely for its feature in the Arctic Monkeys’ seminal hit ‘From the Ritz to the Rubble’, in which frontman Alex Turner recounts an ill-fated pilgrimage to the nightlife landmark. As a 1,500-capacity venue, a concert at the Ritz is a much more intimate affair than one at the Manchester Arena, however it makes up for this in the electric atmosphere that seems almost built into its wall and is still large (and revered) enough to attract relatively big names. Headliners of the yesteryear include The Beatles, Stone Roses, The Smiths, John Cooper Clarke, and, of course, Arctic Monkeys, while more recent headliners have included everything from ‘80s art-rock outfit The Psychedelic Furs to Swedish cloud-rap collective Drain Gang to American funk-pop giant and Grammy Award-winner Lizzo. The venue also regularly hosts club nights, tribute acts, and comedy shows.

Albert Hall is one of Manchester’s most delightfully surreal and soulful music venues, occupying a former methodist chapel that was opened in 1910 before being abandoned and left to decay for forty decades between the 1960s and 1990s. Eventually ‘rediscovered’ in 1999 and transformed into a nightclub, its second life as one of England’s most magnetic music venues began in 2014, when acclaimed British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi inaugurated the venue on February 6th.

The current concert space is in what was once the Chapel Hall, the stage being located beneath the (still mint condition) grand organ and flanked on both sides by magnificent stained-glass windows and beautiful baroque plaster work. The building’s facade is equally spectacular, combining Manchester’s signature Gothic style with Baroque Revival tastes. Since its 2014 renaissance, the unique atmosphere found in the former church has attracted some of British music’s biggest names to the venue, among them Welsh rock heroes Manic Street Preachers, pioneering English pop star Sam Smith, and prodigious London rapper Little Simz. A trip to Albert Hall is one unlike any other.

Band on the Wall: A Community Cornerstone in the Northern Quarter

Snugly located in Manchester’s vibrant Northern Quarter, Band on the Wall has a history that is perhaps unrivalled in the city’s music-venue matrix, despite having a maximum  capacity of just 500 people. Originally built as the ‘George and Dragon’, the flagship pub of the local McKenna Brothers brewery, in 1862, the charming pub quickly became a people’s favourite in what was then an unglamorous working-class market district in a city industrialising too quickly for its own good and already with a reputation as a burning hearth of working-class political activity.

The pub picked up the affectionate nickname ‘Band on the Wall’ in the 1930s when, after several years of clandestine musical performances being hosted in the crowded pub, a stage was literally built half-way up the back wall. The venue’s specialty was jazz, a heritage it still holds proudly through its regular jazz events, however it rose to more national attention during the late 1970s as a favourite venue of Manchester’s emergent punk and post-punk bands, most notably the Buzzcocks, The Fall, and Joy Division. The venue has received attention more recently for its international outlook, always keeping a close ear to global sounds and the best of world music, having launched the We Face Forward initiative to spotlight exciting African musicians such as Gambia’s “King of Kora” Juliba Kuyateh. For over a century Band on the Wall has been at the forefront of musical innovation in the city, and this is a reputation that isn’t relenting any time soon.

White Hotel is an idiosyncratic music venue and one of the newest on the scene, having opened on New Year’s Eve in 2015. That said, it has been quick to transform the face of music in the city since. Somewhat drably located in a former garage in the shadow of Salford’s infamous Strangeways Prison (made famous by The Smiths’ 1987 album Strangeways, Here We Come), White Hotel has reclaimed the grimey, DIY punk ethos that defined Manchester’s music scene in the ‘70s and repurposed it with a contemporary, avant-garde flair, eschewing the city’s somewhat oversaturated indie scene and offering instead a cornucopia of experimental dance and techno soundscapes. The result is a quasi-cult that has formed around the venue who swear by its unmatchable atmosphere and will be found there on most weekends and even weekdays, despite (or perhaps because of) its less than glamorous setting. When you combine this die-hard fanbase with the cutting-edge sounds and boundary-pushing performances that have become synonymous with the venue, you get what is perhaps the most exciting music venue to come out the city since The Hacienda closed its doors in the ‘90s, as dancefloor legends Optimo themselves commented after playing here in 2019. For an induction into the White Hotel cult, should you decide yourself brave enough, some of its regular flagship events include ‘Meat Free’, known as “one of the wildest techno raves in the UK”, and ‘Tough Act’, a genre-bending electronic night with a focus on queer clientele and inclusivity. For more information on upcoming events, check The White Hotel’s Resident Advisor’s page.

YES is another fresh face on the scene, having opened in 2018 in a former antiques auction house whose bare-brick building dates to 1912. Spread across four floors (which includes a gardened rooftop drinking terrace, perfect for the summer!), the space has quickly become a local staple and a favourite of students, serving as a hybrid cafe, restaurant, bar, club, and gig venue with delicious veggie and vegan street food at delightfully low prices. Music events will primarily take place in one of two rooms: the YES Basement, or the YES Pink Room. The YES Basement is, as the name suggests, located in the basement of the building and, with its maximum capacity of just 60 people, promises an unbeatably intimate night with some of the most exciting new names in music. The Pink Room, meanwhile, occupies the second floor of the building and gets its name from the pink lights that saturate the dancefloor. With its 250-person capacity, this is YES’s primary events space and hosts both live music events and its signature club nights, the most unmissable of which being the monthly Deptford Northern Soul Night that pays homage to the eponymous Northern soul subculture of Manchester’s 1960s and 1970s. Other regular events include ‘Chipped Polish’, which describes itself as a “queer alt punk/rock/pop club night”, and ‘Shock Horror’, which focuses on the darkwave and new wave genres of the late ‘70s. Meanwhile, previous musical guests include contemporary punk icons IDLES, local synthpop favourites Working Men’s Club, English avant-gardists Black Country, New Road, and legendary Zamrock outfit W.I.T.C.H. (‘We Intend to Cause Havoc).