“Kisses on the Midway”

“Kisses on the Midway” is the title track of ’Round Here’s new album and the musical centerpiece of the band’s Thursday-night concert at the MAC. First introduced through a child’s excitement about the show, it becomes a recurring sound in the Robinson household and, finally, the massed audience’s soundtrack as Holly Gibney intervenes against Brady Hartsfield. The song’s cheerful spectacle frames a crisis in which a shared pop performance both draws the crowd together and briefly obscures the danger among them.

The Song and the Concert

Jerome Robinson tells K. William Hodges that his nine-year-old sister Barbara and her friends are eager to attend the MAC concert by ’Round Here, a boy band he dismisses as bland. When Brady Hartsfield visits the venue ahead of the performance, a guard identifies the upcoming show and names “Kisses on the Midway” as the group’s new album. The conversation makes the concert’s elaborate midway setting part of its appeal: the guard points out the Ferris wheel, while Brady admires the scale of the production.

At the concert, the song arrives as the title track after an introduction from Cam Knowles. Knowles promises the audience a kiss that night, and the band launches into the number amid carnival music, colored lights, and a descending midway set, with its carousel and Ferris wheel already turning. The staging turns the album title into a literal image: the audience is not merely hearing about a midway but watching one become part of the show.

A Song Carried Home

The song extends beyond the concert hall into the Robinson family’s everyday life. After the family’s record has been played repeatedly at home, Jerome hears Barbara playing it yet again down the hall. The repetition is a domestic counterpoint to the spectacular concert: what is an eagerly awaited performance for Barbara becomes a familiar, nearly inescapable presence for her brother.

That familiarity later becomes shared knowledge rather than mere background noise. At the concert, girls begin singing the title song in clear voices; more join, and soon a thousand voices carry it into the warm evening air. Tanya Robinson knows the words after the repeated plays from Barbara’s room and joins in. The song thus links the household to the crowd: the same recording that has filled Barbara’s room equips Tanya to take part in the concert’s collective singing.

The Song During the Crisis

The concert’s communal excitement remains present as Brady waits for the planned attack to unfold. He knows what is coming because he has already been at the venue during load-in. When Knowles announces the title track, the audience roars its response as the band begins; the performance holds the crowd’s attention even as the attack’s danger is close at hand.

Holly strikes Brady while the band and fans continue making a din. Most of the audience remains on its feet, clapping, swaying, and singing; the performance therefore carries on around the sudden intervention, leaving only people close by aware that something has happened. Jerome asks Holly what Brady has under his shirt, and her attention shifts from the song and the confrontation to the immediate threat. The music does not resolve the crisis; its momentum forms the surrounding contrast to the urgent effort to stop Brady.

Narrative and Thematic Role

The song’s recurrence gives the concert a double meaning. In the Robinson home, it is a children’s favorite played often enough to test Jerome’s patience; at the MAC, those familiar words become the shared refrain of a large audience. Their familiarity helps connect private domestic life with the public event, while the concert’s carnival imagery turns the title into visible stage scenery.

At the climax, the audience’s enjoyment and the danger occupy the same space. People sing together without noticing Holly’s intervention, while Barbara and those nearest Brady do see it. The song therefore serves as more than concert detail: its repeated, exuberant chorus marks the ordinary public celebration unfolding alongside an attempted act of mass violence, and underscores how readily spectacle can hold attention even when a crisis is already underway.