▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Barbra Streisand: “I’m Still Here (Live)” (1994)
Following her massive 1967 concert in Central Park, Barbra Streisand developed debilitating stage fright and didn’t tour for 27 years. In 1994, though, she returned to her hometown in grand style with a seven-night residency at — where else? — Madison Square Garden. This triumphant medley nimbly weaves together several Stephen Sondheim numbers with the “Funny Girl” showstopper “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” and finds Babs at her most playfully self-referential. “Songwriting, acting, producing,” she vamps, providing a winking rewrite on the original lyric. “What, does she think she’s a man?!”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Phish: “Reba (Live)” (1995)
In New York City, Phish is to Madison Square Garden what Dick Clark once was to Times Square — trusted annual hosts of a rockin’ New Year’s Eve. This recording of the live favorite “Reba,” a track that blends the band’s penchants for both tightly rehearsed whimsy and improvisational noodling, comes from its third Garden show, on Dec. 31, 1995. Phish has played the Garden a whopping 91 times — more than any other band — and that tally will go up to 96 after a five-show run next month. Though they haven’t yet officially announced a pre-New Year’s residency for this year, it’s likely to happen, and to push that number into the triple digits.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: “Land of Hope and Dreams (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY — June/July 2000)”
Bruce Springsteen was coming off a decade of solo work when he finally reunited with the E Street Band in 1999, for a well-received 15-month tour that ended with 10 consecutive dates at Madison Square Garden. Most of the tour’s performances closed with what was then a new song, this stirring, sermon-like American anthem, the studio version of which Springsteen wouldn’t release until his 2012 album “Wrecking Ball.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Billy Joel: “My Life (From the 100th — Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY-March 28, 2024)”
Finally, we can’t talk about Madison Square Garden without mentioning its unofficial mayor, Billy Joel, who has performed at the venue a record-breaking 150 times. One-hundred and four of those shows were part of his monthly residency, which lasted for 10 years before coming to a close in July 2024. This punchy rendition of his 1978 hit “My Life” comes from the live recording of his 100th residency show, and suffice it to say that when the amount of times you’ve headlined the Garden has reached triple figures, you have officially earned the right to declare, “Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
