Who Played The Biggest Concert Of All Time?

The blog over at Songkick posted a pretty surprising list of concerts with the highest attendence in history. If you want to guess what the biggest show of all time was, here are two hints: all of the shows on the list happened in 1991 or later, and none were in North America. 

Here's the top five:

5. The Rolling Stones in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2006 (1.5 million)

4. The Love Parade [EDM festival and parade]  in Berlin, Germany, 2008 (1.6 million)

3. Monsters of Rock [Metallica, AC/DC, The Black Crowes] in Moscow, Russia, 1991 (1.6 million)

1. Rod Stewart in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1994  (3.5 million)

1. Jean Michel Jarre in Moscow, Russia, 1997 (3.5 million)

The official accounts of the Jean Michel Jarre show sound pretty crazy as well. Apparently it took place at the State University of Moscow for the city's 850th anniversay, and included a surprise "direct link with the Russian space station, Mir, live from Space during the concert,"and a laser controlled synthesizer. 

Think back to the largest concert you've ever been to. Chances are it was either at an arena or a huge music festival. Here's some perspective: Madison Square Garden in New York holds 20,000 fans when it's set up for a concert, and Coachella broke its own attendence records with about 82,500 attendees for each of its three days. 

That means that Rod Stewart's and Jean Michel Jarre's shows were attended by enough people to fill Madison Square Garden 175 times and the entire Coachella Festival 42 times over. Check out part one of the Jean Michel Jarre concert below. See the laser synths for yourself at the four minute mark. [Songkick via DS / Photo: James Cridland]