A packed Route 91 calls for big anthems — PHOTOS

A big space calls for big songs.

Did country explode because it started delivering hits that could pull in 25,000 people? Or did country start writing big anthems because it's pulling in 25,000 people?

It was a chicken-or-egg question — or, better a $14 smoked turkey leg or $11 beer question — at the three-night Route 91 Harvest festival.

Keith Urban may have been singing about "Swingin' side to side, doin' that Electric Slide" in "Good Thing" on Saturday night, but the tensely pumping rhythm — more like Foreigner's "Jukebox Hero" — was more about delivering the beat all the way all the way to the last beer stand, not about keeping the dance floor in line.

Committed dance couples will always find a way, and somehow there was room for them on the periphery of the MGM Resorts Village festival site across the Strip from Luxor. A well-behaved crowd even made room for lawn chairs, although the second year of Route 91 made a clean sweep, advance sell-out of its 25,000 three-day wristbands.

But it was more about singing than dancing when the big, anthemic choruses exploded out of those mid-tempo rockers: Urban's "Even the Stars Fall 4 U," or Lady Antebellum's "Bartender."

Cry in your beer? Heck, a few tear drops would hardly be tasted in the 24-ounce cans and draws that were Route 91's beverage of choice.

The pleasantly voiced suburban pop-rock tunes of Urban and "Lady A" made them perfectly matched co-headliners for Saturday, which was likeliest the festival's busiest of three nights in terms of actual head count. The gathering was to close out Sunday night with Tim McGraw as the top headliner.

Friday night's top-billed Florida Georgia Line proved just how far country radio has broken down genre walls, when the duo of Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard fired the opening blast of swampy "hick hop" in "It'z Just What We Do."

But the second and third songs, "Round Here" and "Anything Goes," were almost the same song, and you suspect either of them would have been happily recorded by Urban or Lady A.

The latter were having a blast on what they told the crowd Saturday would be their last show of 2015. Charles Kelley explained his gambling strategy of establishing a mental number for acceptable losses.

"I'm past it," Hillary Scott told him.

Kelley helped Scott down the long extension ramp into the crowd because, in her high-heeled boots, she said that unlike Taylor Swift, "I'm just not that graceful."

Kelley complimented Scott on her Stevie Nicks look, after the opening "Long Stretch of Love" channeled Fleetwood Mac. The tribute became even more direct later in the show, with an acoustic cover of "Landslide" down amid the crowd on the extension ramp. But if Lady A also reminds you of Shania T(wain), they covered "Any Man of Mine" too.

It took some of the down-bill acts to remind us how things have changed since 1996, when Gary Allan remade the Waylon Jennings' "Her Man" and purists were no doubt sniffing and proclaiming "That's not country."

Now, Allan's breakout hit seemed more than 13 years away from Urban's moody, Pink Floydian guitar solo on "Till Summer Comes Around."

Whatever you call the suburban pop-rock that dominated Route 91, it's clearly inclusive. Urban was early in his set when he marched down the ramp to sing "Without You" alone with his guitar, creating one of those magic moments for everyone — or at least those still dialed in enough to pay attention.

If the 24-ouncers had bitten too hard by then, maybe you were still engaged when the whole place sang "Need You Now" with Lady A.

Or the night before, when FGL's Brian Kelley looked at the Strip beyond the festival fence and noted, "We can see all these amazing buildings behind us, but we can't see you." It was a beacon to fire up phones and lighters for "Get Your Shine On."

Big festivals create big moments. Or maybe big moments create big festivals.

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com. Follow him @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.