Dream Theater are a band with a lot of material. The prog-metal titans have released 15 studio albums so far, including their most recent effort, 2021's A View From the Top of World. Therefore, the band have so many songs to choose from while putting together the setlists for their live shows, which Dream Theater fans go utterly bananas for, hence the vast discography of live bootleg albums that've been issued over the years (both officially and unofficially).
In advance of their current Dreamsonic package tour, Revolver asked singer James LaBrie to pick his single favorite Dream Theater songs to play live. He had many different answers, spanning obvious fan favorites and deeper cuts that they haven't played in "a dog's age," to borrow his favorite turn of phrase. Read below to see his selections.
"Well right now, if you were to ask me, I'd say 'Answering the Call' is a great song. That's from the new album. I really enjoy playing 'A View From the Top of the World,' too. Those two songs are from our latest album, but I think they show you that we're still evolving, that we're still hungry, that we still are proud of everything that we do.
"I know that 'Octavarium' has always been a favorite of mine. I love 'The Glass Prison.' We haven't played that in a dog's age, but I do love that song.
"[There's] 'Surrounded.' I remember thinking about that just a little while ago, thinking that that song is a little more of a beautiful. Kind of surreal, expressionist, ethereal-like. I always liked playing that song. It's from Images and Words. But it just always came over well. "Under Glass Moon," too, from that album. I always loved playing that, or singing that, I should say.
"Then there're songs even that we haven't played in a dog's age like 'Anna Lee.' I know that that's something that, I think we played it out a few times, and that was when Derek Sherinian was in the band and that whole era. 'Innocence Faded from Awake" was such a cool song. The whole instrumental breakdown section always reminded me of classic Kansas.
"We haven't played 'Learning to Live' in a dog's age, and that's always a fan favorite. Then there's 'Metropolis One,' that's always gone over well as well. So, there're several. I think it depends on my mood and where I'm at at that particular moment."
