Concerts
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Following claims of retirement from Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, or “b-girl Raygun,” the viral Olympic hopeful has made a surprise appearance onstage with fellow Aussie Tones And I at the latter’s Melbourne performance on Saturday (Nov. 9).
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Performing at Rod Laver Arena, the penultimate song of Tones And I’s headline set was “Dance With Me”, the fourth single from her 2024 album, Beautifully Ordinary.
While the album charted atop the ARIA chart in Australia, Tones And I has not had a charting hit in the US apart from her breakthrough single “Dance Monkey”, which peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100 i 2019.
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Hyping up the crowd, Tones And I urged the audience to “please give it up for an Australian icon, the most iconic break dancer there is, Raygun!”
The controversial Olympian took to the stage to share her breaking skills throughout the performance, with memories of her viral appearance at the Paris Olympics flooding back for all in attendance.
Taking to social media following Raygun’s appearance, Tones And I shared a video of the encounter and expressed her gratitude for the breaker, referring to her as the “most beautiful kindest full of life human I have met”
“It was an honour to celebrate you last night,” she added. “Thank you for sharing the stage with me and bringing smiles to so many faces. You always have a friend in me.”
Raygun, a 37-year-old university lecturer from Sydney, shot to fame in August when failed to score any points at the Paris Olympics in routines that included a “kangaroo” dance. The following month, the World DanceSport Federation issued a statement to “provide clarity” on why Raygun had managed to top the sport’s latest world rankings.
Their explanation revealed that the methodology for the rankings were based on each athlete’s top four performances within the past 12 months — but excludes Olympic events including the Paris Games and Olympic qualifier series events in Shanghai and Budapest.
Earlier this month, the breaker made headlines once again when reports emerged that she had announced her retirement from the sport.
She later went on the record to clarify that she would no longer be competing, though not retiring from breaking entirely.
Shaboozey and Lindsey Sterling will join Lainey Wilson in providing halftime entertainment for the trio of National Football League games that take over television on Thanksgiving. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Wilson had been previously announced as the entertainment for the Dallas Cowboys’ annual Thanksgiving Day game, […]
Coldplay’s Chris Martin gave Melbourne fans a shock during the band’s final night at Marvel Stadium when he took an unexpected tumble through a trap door on stage on Sunday, Nov. 3.
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In videos shared to social media, Martin can be seen walking backward while reading fan signs, before accidentally stepping into an open section of the stage, vanishing from sight in a split second.
The nearly 60,000-strong crowd gasped collectively as Martin momentarily disappeared. However, he quickly reappeared from beneath the stage, reassuring fans with a smile and saying, “That’s not planned.”
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Coincidentally, Martin isn’t the only artist who has recently fallen through a trap door onstage in Melbourne.
On Oct. 18, Olivia Rodrigo also fell through a trap door while performing at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena during her “GUTS” tour. Rodrigo, unfazed, joked with the audience upon resurfacing, quipping, “Oh my God, that was fun! I’m okay! Wow. Sometimes, there’s just a hole in the stage. That’s alright! Alright, where was I?”
Rodrigo later admitted on The Tonight Show that she was “shaken up and the incident “was really scary”.
Meanwhile, Marvel Stadium saw another milestone with Coldplay’s four-show run, which drew an unprecedented 227,000 fans throughout their Melbourne dates. The attendance broke the long-standing record set by AC/DC’s Black Ice tour, which brought in 181,495 fans across three shows in 2010.
“Coldplay have officially broken our all-time largest attendance record for a band at Marvel Stadium, with 227k people attending across the four Music of The Spheres World Tour shows held at the Stadium,” the venue wrote on Instagram today (Nov. 4).
According to the venue’s history, the current record for the highest-attended concert belongs to fellow English musician Adele, whose performance on March 19, 2017, was attended by a total of 77,327. Just shy of one year later, Ed Sheeran broke the record for the largest attendance for a concert series by a single artist, bringing in a total audience of 257,751 across four shows in March 2018.
Coldplay’s Australian tour has been met with major fanfare, partly due to the band’s first performances in the country since 2016. This tour supports both Music of the Spheres and the recently released Moon Music, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
The band’s Australian tour continues with upcoming shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium, as they support their tenth studio album, Moon Music, and their chart-topping Music of the Spheres.
When Taylor Swift first announced The Eras Tour on Nov. 1, 2022, she might not have guessed that, exactly two years later, she would still be on the career-spanning trek. Also, with just 27 dates announced on that first day, it might surprise her to learn that when the tour wraps in December, she’ll be […]
Steve Earle’s son, John Henry, was diagnosed with autism when he was 19 months old, while the singer/songwriter was on tour in Australia. He received a phone call with the news from his then-wife, country singer-songwriter Allison Moorer.
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“That was the beginning of me trying to figure out what John Henry needed,” says Earle, “and I got lucky.”
John Henry, now 14, is enrolled in the Keswell School in New York City. The year-round school nurtures and educates students with autism ages 3 to 22, with a teacher-to-student ratio of 1:1 for “pretty intense” therapy, says Earle. John Henry is non-verbal, with a diagnosis of a sensory processing disorder.
For the past decade, Earle has used his acclaimed artistry and career-long friendships to raise funds to help the school with an annual must-see performance.
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On Monday (Nov. 4), at Town Hall in New York, the 10th annual John Henry’s Friends Benefit will feature Earle with Jackson Browne, along with singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy and the husband-and wife duo of Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams.
The show is a rare opportunity to see Browne in a small venue. “Jackson and I have been showing up for each other’s causes for a long time,” says Earle. Glaspy is a New York-based singer/songwriter whose latest album Echo the Diamond was released last year. Earle has been friends for decades with Williams and Campbell, the latter the Grammy-winning producer/singer/guitarist known for his tours with Bob Dylan and as the musical director of Midnight Rambles with the late Levon Helm of The Band.
Presented by Earle and City Winery, the benefit will feature a guitar pull format, “all four artists on stage at the same time, just kind of swapping songs and telling stories,” he says. “It’s a unique experience for the audience.” Earle will draw from his repertoire of classics like “Guitar Town” and “Copperhead Road,” which he recently re-recorded live for his new solo acoustic concert album Alone Again (Live).
The community spirit of the benefit show reflects what Earle has learned about parenting an autistic child, beginning immediately after that very first phone call, he recounted recently.
In Australia, in early 2012, he was playing festivals with Crosby, Stills and Nash. “I’d never really met Stephen [Stills] before that week,” says Earle. But he knew Stills and his wife Kristen have a now-grown autistic son, Henry. (Henry Stills was featured in the 2007 HBO documentary Autism: The Musical, for which his mother was an executive producer.) “I just made a beeline for Stephen and he put me on the phone with Kristen,” recalls Earle.
Connection with others facing the challenge of autism is crucial, he says. Earle, who has overcome addiction to heroin and cocaine, recalls: “There was a guy in my twelve-step group that had a kid, who was a young teenager by that time, who had autism, and [that father] was the one that showed me the ropes in New York City.”
(Although Earle recovered from his addiction, his first-born son Justin Townes Earle, 38, died in August 2020 of an accidental overdose. “I’ve had two of the worst bits of news a parent can receive,” says Earle. “One is your child has autism and the other, my son [was found] deceased on the floor of his apartment.” Earle subsequently released J.T., an album of his son’s songs on Jan. 4, 2021, which would have been Justin’s 39th birthday.)
“Everything that can happen has happened to me,” says Earle, who nevertheless responded to John Henry’s diagnosis with his instincts as an activist. “I have skin in this game,” he says. “I have something I could offer that might be able to raise some funds.”
Earle has become an advocate for those with autism, dismissing misinformation and offering guidance where he can. “It is an epidemic and, yeah, we don’t know what causes it,” he says. “Whatever else you think about vaccinations, it doesn’t cause autism.”
Earle notes that federal disability laws state that “if your public school system can’t provide what your child needs — and that’s any special needs child — then the school system has to fund that education” in a private school setting. “But you have to lawyer up,” says Earle. “You have to litigate to get those funds, even though there’s a federal law, because it’s an unfunded law. There’s a lot of those on our books.”
Earle also sought legal advice to set up what’s known as a special needs trust to provide for John Henry’s future. “It’s something you definitely need to do,” says Earle, while acknowledging that John Henry also will benefit from a strong extended family. The singer’s son, Ian, will care for John Henry when his parents are gone.
“That was decided early on,” says Earle. “I didn’t force that on him or anything. And I think my grandkids will step into the breach,” he adds. “They’ve just been raised that way. We’re that kind of family.”
Federal government support for autism crosses party lines. A renewal of the Autism CARES Act, which will provide $2 billion over the next five years for autism research and healthcare training benefiting individuals with autism, passed both the House and the Senate in September. And yet, “the truth is, any kind of services provided by the government are in danger in an election like this,” says Earle.
Perhaps surprisingly, this self-described “hard-core lefty” does not criticize those who have previously supported Donald Trump. “There’s some people whose lives just didn’t get any better in the administration before and they voted for something different. That’s heartbreaking, but it is the way that it is.”
But on this Election Day, he says, “we have a candidate on one side that really isn’t concerned about anything but lowering his taxes and [the taxes for] people like him and keeping himself out of jail.” On Monday, Earle will be focused on helping the school that has done so much for his son.
“John Henry’s improved a lot,” says Earle. “He’s still non-verbal. He navigates an iPad fairly well.” He also enjoys a wide range of music, Early explains, helping his father develop an appreciation for classical compositions and opera.
“He understands way more than we ever know,” says Earle. But he also will not respond, due to his autism — or perhaps due to him simply being a teenager.
“I’m his father, and there are other times when he understands exactly what I’m saying, and he ignores me,” Earle says with affection. “So that’s not autism. That’s just like any other 14-year-old.”
As North Carolina natives Luke Combs and Eric Church organized the Concert for Carolina benefit held Oct. 26 in Charlotte, the only question anyone asked was “How can I help?”
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“All egos went out the door,” said Chris Kappy, Combs’ manager. “It was just everybody working together, AEG and Live Nation, all the managers, all the teams. It never got territorial.
The six-hour concert, which also featured James Taylor, Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings, Scotty McCreery, Avett Bros., Chase Rice, Parmalee and Wesko, has raised $24.5 million (and counting) for western North Carolina victims of Hurricane Helene.
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While many benefits take several weeks, if not months, to plan, Concert for Carolina was held less than a month after the worst natural disaster to ever hit North Carolina ravished mountain towns, including Asheville and Boone, and left close to 100 people dead.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said at an Oct. 26 press conference that more than 100,000 people in the state had damage to their homes and thousands of businesses had been affected. The estimated financial damages of the storm to North Carolina are $53 billion.
The day after Hurricane Helene hit on Sept. 27, Combs called Church about organizing a benefit and they immediately started calling their artist friends. “I remember sitting at home in Nashville and wanting to figure out how I can be of service, how I can help the place that raised me,” said Combs. “There was no question that this was going to happen come hell or high water.”
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The next step was for Kappy to call David and Nicole Tepper, who own the Carolina Panthers, FC Charlotte and Bank of America stadium, where the NFL and soccer teams play in Charlotte, to see if they could use the stadium. “The yes was so fast,” Kappy said. “David and Nicole said, ‘We’ve got the stadium. We’ve got everything covered.’ David and Nicole would have moved heaven and earth to make it happen for us.”
The Teppers were already looped into hurricane relief via their work with the American Red Cross and had started giving what has now become close to $6 million toward relief efforts for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida just days after Helene passed through. “When [Kappy] called us, it was like, ‘Okay, what do we have to do to do it and it’s three weeks,’” David Tepper told Billboard. “It’s hard from [Combs’ and Church’s] end to get the artists, but on this end, we had to make sure we didn’t get scheduled with [a soccer playoff game.]” Luckily, the Panthers were playing away from home and FC Charlotte could also play away from home. Also fortuitously, Morgan Wallen played two shows at the stadium the weekend before the Concert for Carolina and production could just keep the field covering down.
Ultimately, with Tepper’s encouragement, the stadium’s concession, merchandise and parking vendors all donated their proceeds as well. All the other participating companies, including those providing sound, stage, lighting and video, also donated their resources. Ticketmaster also donated its services and put plans in place to keep tickets out of the secondary market. The show sold out quickly, setting a new venue record of more than 82,000 attendees. Veeps donated all proceeds from a $24.95 streaming option. The acts all paid their own expenses and were not paid to play.
While Combs’ and Church’s teams dealt with the show aspects, Tepper was dealing with logistics. “There’s contracts, there’s the police, there’s who’s holding the money and where’s the money going and making sure it’s flowing the right way,” he said. “Usually there are long negotiations, but everybody was trying to make sure everything was done right. It was a lot of people putting everything aside just to get this done.” Tepper had some experience, having helped organize New York’s 12-12-12 benefit in 2012 following Hurricane Sandy, which hit the east coast in late October 2012.
Even rivals AEG and Live Nation joined together to co-promote the show. “We really looked at it and said, ‘We just need the smartest minds in the room’ and this was an opportunity for everybody,” Kappy said. “You can show everybody that you can put down your swords and you can all put your arms around each other and lift each other up to lift everybody else up.”
The goodwill was infectious. “Everybody wanted to be part of something special and saw what we were doing. They said, ‘We want to be part of that,’” Kappy said. Kappy and Church’s manager, John Peets, worked in “lockstep,” on the benefit, staying in constant communication. “It’s been awesome to go back and forth with him on this and for him to be like, ‘Whatever Kappy says,’ and for me to be like ‘Whatever John says.’ Same with our two agents at WME and our production managers working hand in hand.”
“Everybody in the city, at the stadium, on the artist side…quite frankly, all their better angels were working together to put this together in three weeks,” Tepper said.
All proceeds from the benefit show, auction and livestream are going to organizations selected by Combs and Church, including Samaritan’s Purse, Manna Food Bank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, Eblen Charities and the organizations supported by Church’s foundation, Chief Cares. At the show, Church also stated his intention to build more than 100 houses for those who lost their homes in the hurricane.
The focus now shifts to how to keep awareness on the area and the ongoing need as the recovery will take years. “The biggest thing for Luke and I is we continue to shine a light on this,” Church said. “This concert’s a great way to do it, but these people are going to need help long after tonight and long after next month and long after six months. So, it’s about, how can we continue to put this up front to make people be aware of what happened there, and we help the people.”
Even before Charli XCX dominated the summer with her acclaimed album brat, there was internal chatter about a joint arena tour with her and Troye Sivan. “I was pretty unsure how it would work, honestly,” recalls creative director Imogene Strauss, citing how unusual it is for two artists to alternate within the set list. “I was like, ‘This is going to be a challenge’ — and I think everyone felt that way.”
Ultimately, fusing two separate tours — Charli had debuted her solo brat shows during album release week at Primavera Sound in June while Sivan had embarked on his own European/U.K. headlining tour in support of his third album, Something To Give Each Other, in May — for a fall co-headlining run proved easier than expected. The Sweat tour kicked off Sept. 14 in Detroit and quickly became one of music’s hottest tickets, with sold-out dates at Madison Square Garden and Kia Forum with surprise guests including Lorde and Kesha, respectively. The trek concluded in Seattle on Oct. 23.
“It’s been an interesting morphing, shifting thing because of the scale, but also because of the collaboration element of it,” says Strauss, who has worked with Charli since 2019. Along with Jonny Kingsbury of Cour Design, the pair leaned heavily on lighting as a unifying element for the tour. “That ultimately became the thing that could tie the two shows together,” she says. Adds Kingsbury: “Traditionally with a pop artist, you would use bright key light and lots of downstage wash, but instead we light her very strobe-y, almost as if you were watching someone walk through a club in a movie throughout the entire show.”
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Another early decision the creative team made was to enlist a Steadicam operator from the music video world and to hire a focus puller, which Strauss says is “expensive and specific, but I think it’s added this cinematic level that has been so positive.” (Plus, as Kingsbury says, the concept paired well with the brat aesthetic, “with [Charli] pushing the camera man aside, spitting on the catwalk and licking it up. All of that feels very brat.”)
Fittingly, Strauss’ favorite part of Sweat showcases that creative synergy: Midway through the show, as Sivan is wrapping up “Stud” on the main stage and Charli is gearing up for “365” from the scaffolding, the screens are turned off and Charli’s iconic “bumpin’ that” line blares from the speakers. “Musically, the worlds are so well tied together, and being able to express that visually… it’s just so cool to see the worlds collide in a way that really works,” she says. Both she and Kingsbury credit music director Mitch Schneider for “expertly” putting Charli and Sivan’s music together, ultimately laying the foundation for the entire show.
“I think most people were expecting this tour to be like, Troye plays a set and then Charli plays a set,” says Strauss. “But Troye and Charli and all of us involved were like, ‘If we’re gonna do this, it’s gonna be intertwined musically, visually, everything.”
As a result, Kingsbury says a lot of the feedback he’s been hearing about the tour was how polished the show was. Both he and Strauss say many arena tours today rely on “gags” or “interstitial content” to help with costume or staging transitions, whereas Sweat was “very dialed in,” says Kingsbury. “Everyone is always trying to go bigger and more ridiculous — we went the opposite direction.”
“[This tour] doesn’t take itself too seriously — people dance like crazy,” adds Strauss. “Turning an arena into a club was the No. 1 challenge, and when the arena was literally shaking, I was like, ‘OK, success.’”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Wednesday (Oct. 23) evening in New Orleans, a white SUV tentatively peeks around the corner of Chartres Street in the French Quarter. Though Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” is the song wafting from its window, the man behind the wheel is visibly uneasy as he drives his family past boozed-up revelers stumbling toward Bourbon Street.
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By Friday (Oct. 25), however, Swift’s presence in the city has made all the tables turn. SUVs sporting song titles scrawled in marker (“Getaway Car” is a popular choice) and decals of Taylor’s face clog the streets as tens of thousands of tourists descend upon the city for the first of three sold-out shows at Caesars Superdome.
Fans wearing Eras Tour merch (or unofficial t-shirts playing on the tour’s distinctive color palette) are everywhere from the Bywater (Swift ordered her Lavender Haze birthday cake from Bywater Bakery in 2022) to Frenchman Street to the Instagram-friendly Skeleton House way over by Audubon Park, which this year is themed “Terror Swift: The ScEras Tour” (sample offering: a skeleton in a yellow evermore dress clutches a guitar next to a “No Body, No Crime” sign).
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“Taylor Swift Takes Over New Orleans” trumpets a “visitor’s guide” pamphlet crafted by The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com. The infamous Bourbon Street is almost family-friendly. Aside from “Blank Space,” “You Belong With Me” and “Anti-Hero” playing on repeat, nearly every bar and restaurant is boasting tie-in programming (karaoke, trivia, look-alike contests offering the winner as much as $500) or themed drinks (Taylorita, Lavender Haze fizz, Holy Ground hurricane).
Even the city’s music hotspots, places that skew toward jazz and the blues, aren’t immune to the pop star’s impact. Over on Frenchman, d.b.a. is hosting a friendship bracelet-making station; at the Mahogany Jazz Hall on Chartres, one of the bartenders is slinging lyrical references along with sazeracs (“I knew you were trouble when you walked in,” he quips while serving a customer two cocktails); while Esplanade Studios, where Swift recorded three songs from The Tortured Poets Department (“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “Florida!!!”), serves as an incentive for Swifties to explore the Treme neighborhood.
Back in the French Quarter, Antoine’s Restaurant — the oldest eatery in the city and the birthplace of oysters Rockefeller – is getting in on the fun, doling out pink to-go cups and writing “Eras Tour 2024” in frosting on their signature dessert, baked Alaska.
“[Right now is] as big and as busy as Mardi Gras and that’s the busiest time of year,” says Lisa Blount, who handles publicity for Antoine’s and is married to the CEO of the fifth-generation family-run business. “In the next three days we’ll do over 3,000 guests.”
“New Orleans always enjoys a busy pre-Halloween weekend,” says Steve Pettus of Dickie Brennan’s, a New Orleans restaurant group that includes Tableau, a French-Creole spot that hosted a Swiftie “balcony bash” on Saturday. “This weekend is more than double what we have traditionally seen. The requests for reservations have not stopped. I’ve never felt so popular in my life — I have more ‘friends’ than I realized.”
“We had guests start calling over the summer asking when they could book a table, so we knew what was coming,” says Kyle Brechtel, president & CEO of Brechtel Hospitality, which hosted a Swift-themed rooftop soiree on Friday. (Thanks to on-staff Swifties, “Taylor Tenders & Seemingly Ranch” were on the menu, referencing a viral Swift-related tweet from Sept. 2023.) “[Halloween] is always a big weekend in the city, but this is a whole different level.”
A growing New Orleans’ Halloween tradition is the witches’ luncheon, where locals don black robes, pointy hats and grab brunch. While the witches were out in force earlier in the day on Friday (even belting “Cruel Summer” at a karaoke bar in the crossover spirit of the weekend), by 5:00 p.m. the witching hour had given way to the Swifting hour. Taylor Swift costumes – from the purple “Enchanted” gown to the gold-tasseled “Fearless” dress to variations on the “22” t-shirt (“A Lot of Potholes Going on at the Moment,” “A Lot to Vote on at the Moment”) – and Kansas City Chiefs jerseys became as inescapable as Mardi Gras beaded necklaces.
Fortunately, New Orleans is a city that’s used to hosting massive cultural events. Case in point: Next year’s Super Bowl will take place at Caesars Superdome on Feb. 9, bringing halftime headliner Kendrick Lamar to the same venue Swift just sold out for three nights. So even with the Eras Tour bringing an estimated extra 100,000-150,000 people to New Orleans, the city doesn’t miss a beat.
“We have a lot of practice with this,” says Walt Leger, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company, the city’s official sales and marketing organization. “We have a lot of great professionals on the public safety side who know how to coordinate traffic and other issues that may impact us when we have an influx. Our city excels at these events – we have a professional hospitality community. It’s muscle memory.”
Still, the Eras Tour hits different. “This weekend will be more foot traffic, whereas the Super Bowl is a lot of corporate events scattered around town,” Brechtel says. “I haven’t seen anything rival the impact of a Super Bowl [here] until now.”
“The Super Bowl is very much a corporate event,” Blount echoes. “Large parties, a lot of VIPs. They buy out the restaurant, things like that. This is a different type of busy.” She offers a point of comparison: “We love those weekends where it’s the Saints vs. the Dallas Cowboys. We have massive amounts of people in town, the restaurants are busy, everybody is busy. A friend of mine said, ‘You know what’s great about this? It’s like a football weekend but we’re all rooting for the same team.’”
Not everyone is fully onboard the Taylor train, however. During a Halloween-themed drag show on Wednesday, one of the performers announced they would be hosting a series of Swift-themed drag shows over the weekend and was greeted with light boos. “I know, I know, she’s ruining Halloween,” the queen declared. “I feel the same as you, but I gotta pay rent.”
Another local, after getting off her work shift and finding herself in a sea of Swifties, put it more bluntly: “I’m sick of these motherf—kers and their t-shirts.” (To be fair, if your coffee shop suddenly had a line of 150 people waiting around the block to get a themed plastic cup, you might be irked, too.) Karen-coded behavior reared its head on occasion, too — such as a pair of Swifties telling a local street musician playing blues instrumentals to sing Swift songs instead. Or a table of adults at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop chanting Taylor’s name at the piano player, despite the pianist politely stating that song requests should come with a couple bucks (they did not tip, and their chants went unanswered).
But those brief bad blood moments were few and far between. The city is more than accustomed to tourists, and most locals were more than happy to strike up a conversation with visiting Swifties to offer food recommendations or share bits of the city’s history.
“Our city recognizes that we benefit greatly from who invest in our community by spending dollars and supporting jobs and infrastructure,” Leger says. “Data shows that in the first leg of the Eras Tour, we’re expecting an excess of $200 million in extra spending, conservatively. It’ll probably be more than that.”
Ultimately, the Taylor Swift New Orleans takeover – like the Eras Tour itself – is about something that runs deeper than dollars, though. Walking down a cobblestone street on Friday, a young woman on her smoke break stops a first-time New Orleans visitor with quiet but eager question: “Are you a Swiftie?” Putting out her cigarette, she reveals a wrist covered in friendship bracelets. “Wanna trade?”
“Everybody is walking around having a great time,” Blount says. “It’s a great positive time. In this world today, having it be happy? My God, with the election in two weeks and all the caustic things with the election, it’s so nice to see people smiling.”
Christian Nodal electrified the stage, evoking a torrent of emotions at New York’s Barclays Center on Saturday night (Oct. 26), leaving no doubt about his unmatched vocal prowess.
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Unlike many of today’s concerts — especially in the música urbana landscape, which often rely heavily on pyrotechnics, costume changes, and choreography — Nodal’s performance, part of his Pa’l Cora tour, spotlighted his commanding voice above all.
Opening the concert at 9 p.m. with “El Mariachi” from the Antonio Banderas-starring Desperado soundtrack, Nodal immediately set the tone for the evening. Dressed sharply in beige snakeskin pants with turquoise accents, a matching vest, and a white long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to reveal a silver chain with a cross and his tattoos, he embodied his signature cowboy rocker aesthetic. The Sonoran singer’s stage was embellished by a mariachi troupe in elegant deep-red outfits, an accordionist, backup singers, a brass section, and an electric guitarist — perfectly merging mariachi with norteño into his famed “mariacheño” fusion.
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One of the many performance highlights was when Nodal seamlessly delivered a medley of Vicente Fernández classics, including “El Rey,” “Volver Volver,” “Acá Entre Nos” and “Mujeres Divinas.” Again, the tribute showcased his extensive vocal chops and ability to emotively convey pain, sadness, and elation, leaving the audience spellbound.
Further amplifying the night, Christian Nodal brought out surprise guest Ángela Aguilar, his wife, who only the night before made an appearance in Bogotá, Colombia, with her father, the legend Pepe Aguilar. Nodal playfully asked the crowds, “¡¿You all want her to sing?!” Ángela, donning in a sleek black outfit, pranced out and they sang their duet on “Dime Cómo Quieres.” She then exclaimed, “Because you are my husband, Christian!” showing off her ring, during the song, and by the end of it they shared a kiss before her exit, drawing cheers and applause.
Nodal’s affection for his audience was evident as he addressed them between songs, expressing a special anticipation for his New York performance. “Not to be a nice guy, but I’m going to tell you something. On the tour, there were 26 dates around the United States. But among all of them, the one I was dreaming about the most was with you, New York. Something I love about here, about New York, is that it’s a beautiful place for Latinos,” he said.
He further customized his set for the New York crowd, acknowledging the significant Dominican presence and performing a bachata live for the first time with “La Bachatita.” Additionally, unexpected covers like Maná’s “Clavado en un Bar” and Hombres G’s “Devuélveme a Mi Chica” showcased his versatility, while his renditions of “Como la Flor” by Selena further demonstrated his broad appeal.
Nodal concluded his over two-hour performance without a vocal break — a testament to his impressive stamina. His performances of “La Intención” originally with Peso Pluma, and “Por El Resto de Tu Vida” originally with TINI, were climactic points that underscored a night of intimate connection.
The Mexican music hitmaker will continue his Pa’l Cora tour, making stops in Boston, Orlando, Atlanta, Baltimore, and more. See the remainder tour dates here.
Perhaps it was the ultimate irony that Concert for Carolina, Saturday night’s (Oct. 26) benefit for Hurricane Helene relief organized by Luke Combs and Eric Church, was delayed for nearly two hours because of severe weather as patrons were sent to shelter in the concourse at Charlotte’s Bank of America stadium, home of the Carolina […]