Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Vanesa Martín and Pablo Alborán share more than global fame: each of them started out performing in small bars, pubs and clubs long before they sold out stadiums, headlined festivals or racked up millions of streams, according to a profile of their early careers.
Today these artists can sell thousands of tickets within minutes. Decades ago, many of them played to rooms of just ten or twenty people who barely looked up from their drinks, using those modest gigs to build the skills and confidence that would later carry them to the biggest stages in the world.
When a bar was the biggest stage in the world
For many musicians, small bars offer the first real chance to perform in front of a live audience, whether it numbers ten people or fifty. Each show becomes an opportunity to build confidence, test new songs and learn something no rehearsal can teach: how to connect with a crowd.
Many artists look back on those years fondly, despite the nerves, the shows that paid little or nothing, and the nights spent hauling instruments from venue to venue with no certainty the effort would lead anywhere. Several have said that period shaped the way they understand music to this day.
Ed Sheeran: playing for five people still counts
Ed Sheeran's story captures those early years well. Long before he filled stadiums such as Wembley in London and the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, the British singer-songwriter carried his guitar around pubs, cafes and small venues across London.
Sheeran has said in interviews that he played hundreds of shows in a single year, treating every performance as a chance to improve. Some nights drew as few as five people in the audience, and occasionally fewer still. He never changed his setlist or scaled back his intensity regardless of the crowd size.
During that period he also slept on friends' sofas while trying to break into the music industry. His ability to hold a full concert together with little more than a guitar and a loop pedal, now one of his signature traits, was forged in those small pubs where every set was a test.
Lady Gaga found her persona in New York clubs
Before becoming one of the most influential artists in the world, Lady Gaga performed in small clubs in New York's Lower East Side. Those venues became a laboratory where she could experiment freely.
She did not just test songs there. She also played with costumes, make-up and stage presentation that drew attention even when the crowds were small. She has said she needed to work out who she wanted to be as an artist, and those bars gave her the freedom to do it.
Many of the traits that now define her career took shape in front of audiences who had no idea they were watching a future winner of multiple Grammy Awards and an Oscar.
Bruce Springsteen's marathon nights in New Jersey bars
Bruce Springsteen is known for marathon concerts, but that habit did not begin once he started filling stadiums.
In his early years he played clubs and bars across New Jersey with various local bands. There he learned to read a crowd, improvise and turn each show into a different experience, continuing to play for as long as the audience kept enjoying it.
Those nights were essential to developing the energy he still brings to the stage today. Many fans trace his closeness with audiences back to those small venues, where there was no real distance between performer and crowd.
Vanesa Martín and Pablo Alborán rose from small Spanish venues
Spain offers plenty of examples too. Vanesa Martín spent years performing in bars and venues across Andalusia before recording her first album, playing intimate shows, often accompanied only by a guitar, as she gradually built a loyal following.
Pablo Alborán followed a similar path. Before becoming one of the best-known voices in Spanish pop, he gave acoustic performances in small venues in Málaga. Those shows ran alongside home videos he posted online, in which he performed songs with the same natural style that later won over a mass audience.
Neither artist made an immediate leap to fame. Their rise was gradual, one concert at a time, showing that patience is as much a part of success as talent.
Bars remain the first step for many dreams
Although social media can now make a song go viral within hours, small bars and venues remain an essential training ground for many artists.
It is there that performers learn to hold the attention of a distracted crowd, improvise when the sound fails, or keep singing even when the room is half empty. These are experiences musicians rarely forget, and many later recall them with a smile.
Behind every major star, it seems, there was once a first concert on a small stage: an ordinary bar, a shared microphone, a handful of people listening without knowing that, years later, they might be able to say they saw the artist perform before fame ever found them. Somewhere in Spain right now, another artist may be living through that exact moment.
