State Champ Radio reunion tour
RBD will end a long-awaited reunion that took 15 years to come to fruition on Thursday (Dec. 21), a tour that took the famous Mexican pop group through stadiums and arenas in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and the United States for more than 50 dates. The Soy Rebelde Tour was a successful journey that surprised everyone, including its members, who never imagined what their music represented for millions of people.
“It’s beautiful,” band member Maite Perroni tells Billboard Español. “Now we see children who get excited and sing, who are the children of our fans. They make their parents come to the concerts because they want to be part of that history.”
The end of this cycle for Anahí, Dulce María, Christian Chávez, Maite Perroni and Christopher von Uckermann — which began in August in El Paso, Texas — will be at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, a forum for over 80,000 people that has welcomed icons such as Vicente Fernández, Madonna and U2. Previously, RBD filled the Foro Sol for six nights starting November 30, attracting a total of 390,000 fans, according to promoter Ocesa.
While the Soy Rebelde Tour, produced by Live Nation and T6H Entertainment, became the second most lucrative tour by any Latin artist in 2023 (only behind Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito,) the impact generated by the reunion of RBD and its fans is huge at a time when reggaeton and regional Mexican music dominate the streaming platforms.
Five (of six) returning members sat down together in an exclusive cover interview with Billboard Español shortly before hitting the road, and Perroni recounts what returning to the stage with her colleagues has meant for her and the group.
What assessment do you make of this long-awaited RBD reunion? What has been the most surprising thing about it all?
It has been very nice to meet again with so many people who have been part of our history for so many years now, 20 years, which is easy to say, but there’s a lot of loyalty, love, affection. It has been a great surprise to meet new generations — is no longer just one generation, it’s three generations! All of this has made me come to the conclusion that RBD is that powerful, loving, positive energy that moves the project. We have simply become the vocalists, the representatives of what this group is, but the truth is that the magnitude, the strength, the power, the energy, the love, the dedication, have been given to us by the audience. And we realize that RBD is today and always.
What has been the main achievement of this reunion?
That we managed to make history! That is something that was questioned in the past because RBD is a project that came out of a TV show (Rebelde,) a pop group, one of those that already existed in the world. They told us that pop music is easy, that pop bands disappeared easily, and many of us were classified in that place, and also for a long time we received, within the industry, from other colleagues, singers, songwriters, criticism, ridicule, parodies. And despite that we moved forward, building what RBD was. We believed in Rebelde and what we did. And the most beautiful thing is to see that 20 years later our history transcends to another place and that we can feel very proud that this went down in history within Latin music, pop music, and that is thanks to the people.
What was the biggest challenge?
RBD has been a project that has filled us with challenges, with many emotions, a lot of commitment. For me, RBD is more than a group of artists; for me we are brothers and sisters, with our defects and our qualities, with our good and our bad things. We love each other and understand each other. Regardless of that, for me, it has represented being able to balance three worlds: The first one with my baby, my family unit to join this dynamic; two months after my daughter was born we were already flying to Los Angeles to get to the tour rehearsals and to join a tour of almost five months and my husband’s support has been fundamental for me.
On the other hand, and it is something very personal but very important to me, is that in a very short period I had to be on stage, after giving birth, with many extra pounds on me, I had to be on a stage where there were many emotions, hopes and a lot of love, but with a very large magnifying glass to see how you look and what you do — you’re pregnant, you’re fat, you’re skinny, if you didn’t make it — and say, “I don’t care what they say, I don’t care what happens. I am on a stage sharing and being able to carry this.”
What difficulties did you encounter in this process?
The first thing was to commit ourselves in a much more adult way to our project, to commit ourselves to creating a company, a society, to get involved from the administrative and the legal side, and to make decisions that were decisive so that we could continue our tour, take the reins of our history, do things the right way. But I can say that today I leave with my heart full, knowing that the effort was worth it — RBD is worth it — and that together we will always be better and stronger.
What’s in RBD’s future?
The reality is that our last concert is on December 21st. We have hopes, desires. It has been beautiful! Of course the hope of being able to continue building something together remains. We’ll see what destiny and life have in store for us; we don’t know today. We are in a different process, in this closing cycle, finishing this tour in Mexico, at the Estadio Azteca, very excited and tremendously grateful.
NSYNC thrilled fans Wednesday night at the MTV Video Music Awards when they came out to present Taylor Swift with the VMA for best pop video for “Anti-Hero.” The moment would turn out to be bittersweet for fans hoping for a reunion tour from the five-member group, however; Billboard has confirmed there are no such plans.
It turns out that *NSYNC star Justin Timberlake has touring plans of his own for 2024. Billboard has confirmed that Timberlake has holds on dates at arenas in North America for a major run, with sources saying the trek will be accompanied by a new album from the singer. As they say in the business, Timberlake is going back into cycle, which means there won’t be any full-fledged *NSYNC tour any time soon.
That leaves some serious money on the table for the group’s other four members. While not a boy band, the reunion of Blink-182 earlier this year shows that fans are willing to pay big bucks for nostalgia. An arena tour could gross for the five could easily generate $2.2 million to $2.4 million per night in ticket sales — equaling a take-home of $265,000 to $290,000 per night for each member of the group (assuming the profits were split evenly). That means a full 40-city North America tour could gross upwards of $95 million. Add in merch sales and other opportunities, and it could easily be a $120 million earner.
On the bright side, if *NSYNC does decide to return to the road sometime in the future, the road map to successful boy band reunification has been charted by their contemporaries –notably New Kids on the Block, who reunited in 2008 more than 14 years after the end of the band’s Face the Music tour in 1994.
“There really wasn’t a proven runway for pop bands of any kind to reunite and feel like it was going to be a financial success,” says talent manager Jared Paul, the group’s manager and architect of its 2008 reunion and tour.
“It has to start with the music — that’s what turned the idea of ‘maybe someday’ into a reality for New Kids when some music fell into their laps that really inspired them,” explains Paul. “The real challenge though was, it was so unproven, we had to make so many decisions that we’re just betting on ourselves.”
Today, Paul runs Faculty Inc., a full-service entertainment company, tour producer and partner with Live Nation. Besides managing New Kids on the Block (who have now been reunited longer than they were broken up), Faculty Inc. also owns the touring rights for Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance and manages the recently reunited boy band Big Time Rush.
Paul says he’s rooting for an *NYSNC reunion one day and says pulling off a boy band reunion is the ultimate moon shot — where everything has to align perfectly for there to be even a chance of success.
“You have to align your schedules, but more importantly, you have to align your creative vision,” says Paul. “You have to be willing, if you’ve gone off on your own or shifted your focus on your family, to essentially agree on your time commitment, what you are going to sing, where you’re going to tour, what you’re going to wear and, if there is new music involved, which direction the album is going to lean.”
There’s also the challenge of rebuilding the *NSYNC business, but much of that work has already been done thanks to licensing deals with merch companies like Epic Rights, which manages some of the group’s rights. That can significantly reduce the window of time it will take to reunite.
There are also murmurs that the group could reunite without Timberlake. The band has fielded offers for a four-man reunion in the past, following its appearance at Coachella in 2019. But a source with knowledge of the group’s thinking says it was never seriously considered, noting that anything short of a five-person comeback is off the table.
-
Pages
