Rock
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Metallica may be the last, true Monster of Rock: one of the few massively popular rock bands whose tours aren’t self-consciously nostalgic. The group’s Black Album (1991’s Metallica) is the best-selling album in the U.S. since 1991 (the beginning of what was then called the SoundScan Era), and the outfit is popular, successful and independent enough to buy its own vinyl pressing plant. These days, young fans are more apt to discover the band from the Stranger Things scene that used “Master of Puppets” than radio airplay. But acts that stream many times as much can’t play multiple nights at stadiums, let alone in a way that brings back many of the same fans.
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Metallica’s M72 World Tour – which started in late April in Amsterdam but began in earnest on May 17 in Paris and runs through September 2024 – rewards the faithful with two-night stands at stadiums, and a “no repeats” promise not to do the same song twice in each city. Two-night ticket packages went on sale first, and a quick look around during the Friday (May 26) show at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany, made it clear that this wasn’t the first show for most people there – and in more than a few cases, not one of their first half dozen. A substantial number of fans came from elsewhere in Germany to see both shows – some for one of six “enhanced experiences,” like a meet-and-greet or special seating. It was an audience that was eager but not easy to impress.
The staging for Metallica’s tour is built to do just that, though, on the kind of grand scale well-suited for football stadiums. The band performs in the round, on a big stage in the shape of a ring that surrounds fans with tickets to the VIP “snake pit.” That means anyone on the floor isn’t actually all that far from the band – but also that the traditional video screen setup doesn’t work. So the band put the screens, and most speakers, on eight massive towers to allow anyone to see them. During some songs, the colors were bleached out, making the footage one-hued to underscore the drama. Most bands would seem dwarfed by the scale, but Metallica rose to the occasion. More space just means more space to conquer.
The band opened with some ’80s favorites – “Creeping Death,” then “Harvester of Sorrow” and “Leper Messiah.” Only then did frontman James Hetfield actually say anything – the kind of welcome you give to an audience you’ve seen before. “Here’s a song you might not know,” he said. “I hope I know it.” It was “Until It Sleeps,” from Load, and he need not have worried – it sounded familiar to everyone. The band played three songs from its vital new album, 72 Seasons – the title track, “If Darkness Had a Son,” and “You Must Burn!” – but the focus was on early, heavier songs and classics from the Black Album. Some acts have eras, but Metallica has epochs, and every single one of them is heavy in its own way.
The only drawback to the band’s over-the-top staging was that the same scale that made it so spectacular drained a bit of the band’s chemistry. With multiple microphones and several drum sets for Lars Ulrich – one would disappear beneath the stage and another would come up so he could play while facing another part of the crowd – everyone could see everything, but not always at the same time. The ring was so big that “Wherever I May Roam” (stark and dramatic as ever, toward the end of the show) could have been self-referential. But Metallica wanted to out-do itself, and it did. This kind of maximalism is only silly if you can’t carry it off – and Metallica does.
By stadium standards, the band keeps the music fresh, too. Sure, it has enough classics to spread over two nights – “One” and “Welcome Sandman” on May 26, “Blackened” and “Master of Puppets” two days later – but it also pulled out “Whiskey in the Jar,” a traditional-by-way-of Thin Lizzy song that sounded very human even at this gigantic scale. For at least a few minutes, the stadium felt like the world’s biggest bar – if you can imagine a bar with eight 14-ton video towers – and if any crowd deserved a drinking song it was this one.
After “Whiskey” the band turned to “One” and then “Enter Sandman,” ferocious metal song that has acquired the patina of classic rock. There would be more surprises in two days at the next show, and the crowd pondered the possibilities as it filed out of the venue – more classics, a rarity, who knows? Like the best big rock shows, it would feel familiar but sound fresh. It was live but also, somehow, much bigger.
Royal Blood’s set at a music festival in Scotland turned into a royal mess as the band blasted the crowd and walked off, with frontman Mike Kerr raising his middle fingers as a departing gift. The English rock duo performed late afternoon Sunday (May 28) at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2023 Dundee.As the band neared the end of their performance, Kerr gave the audience a serve for a perceived lack of enthusiasm.“Well, I guess I should introduce ourselves seeing as no one actually knows who we are,” the 32-year-old artist said in a video doing the rounds of social media. “We’re called Royal Blood and this is rock music. Who likes rock music? Nine people, brilliant,” he remarked, sarcastically.
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Introducing drummer Ben Thatcher, he added, “We’re having to clap ourselves because that was so pathetic. Well done, Ben.”
Kerr then stared down the side-of-stage camera and appeared to ask the operator: “Will you clap for us? You clap? You’re busy. Can you clap? Yes, even he’s clapping.” He turned to the audience, “What does that say about you?”
Then, Kerr let rip with an off-color chord as they walked off stage, his middle fingers held high to the audience.
Some fans have pointed out that Royal Blood was stuck in a tricky schedule, wedged between pop stars Niall Horan and Lewis Capaldi, whose sophomore album Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent is currently No. 1 in the U.K.
Other social media users have pointed out on that, yes, sometimes the crowd isn’t moved, and artists should roll with it.
The band’s fourth studio album, Back to the Water Below, is due out Sept. 8 through Warner Records.
A busy touring schedule through the U.K. and Europe should set up the release, including a performance at Glastonbury Festival, June 21-25, and a return to Scotland for TRNSMT Festival 2023, set for July 9 in Glasgow.
All three of their previous albums have gone to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Chart: Royal Blood (2014), How Did We Get So Dark (2017) and Typhoons (2021).
Watch Royal Blood’s unusual exit from stage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
Keanu Reeves dismisses the idea that playing bass in his long-defunct rock trio, Dogstar, was a passion project that he hoped to make time for in between a prolific Hollywood career. “It’s not ‘make time for it,’” he tells Billboard, his hair shagging into his eyes, during a Zoom call earlier this week. “It’s something that’s part of my life.”
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Although Dogstar hadn’t released an album in over two decades — 23 years and four John Wick films ago — Reeves says that a proper reunion with his pals Bret Domrose and Rob Mailhouse had been on his mind for a while. “I missed playing together, I missed writing together, I missed doing shows together. It’s something I’ve always missed,” he admits. “We came to a spot where we weren’t playing anymore, and I missed it … Once we started to play, and it felt good, and really positive and creative, that’s when it was like, ‘Okay, let’s make this happen.’”
The reunion of Dogstar — which has been teased since last July, when their Instagram account declared, “We’re back” — finally comes into focus this weekend, when the trio takes the stage for their first public performance together at BottleRock Napa Valley music festival on Saturday (May 27). The band will play a mix of older songs from their previous studio albums, 1996’s Our Little Visionary and 2000’s Happy Ending, as well as unveil cuts from a forthcoming, as-yet-untitled album — which was always part of the plan when the reunion became official.
“I think all three of us just said, ‘Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s make a record,’” says Reeves. Singer-guitarist Domrose adds, “We just knew that there was ‘X’ amount of time, and we needed to make the most of it. We just locked on as wanting to make this record, and it happened pretty quickly.”
Reeves, Domrose and Mailhouse kept in touch over the years after Dogstar played its final show together in 2002. “We’ve sort of been sporadically getting together, because we’re all friends,” Mailhouse explains. The three would occasionally meet up in the rehearsal space of drummer Mailhouse’s home in Silver Lake to jam, but would seldom come up with new song ideas.
During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, however, those jam sessions became a bit more concentrated: house visits turned into shared quarantining, and with travel restricted, soon the trio were “stuck together, like we were at camp,” as Mailhouse puts it, and logging eight-hour rehearsal days together. Reeves adds, “We played the catalog songs, and then we can’t help it — we just started writing.” Within two and a half months, the guys had written more songs than they needed for Dogstar’s third studio album.
The timing and release details of the Happy Ending follow-up have yet to be announced, although the band members are confident that they and producer Dave Trumfio (Wilco, Built To Spill) have located a sound that will satisfy new listeners as well as longtime fans who have been waiting for their return. “[Dave] understood where we were coming from,” says Mailhouse, “and worked really well with Bret, layering guitars and doing lots of different sounds and ambient things — things that weren’t just hard rock, in-your-face music, [but] a little more textural.”
Dogstar has played private performances since reuniting, but Saturday’s set at BottleRock marks their years-in-the-making return to the spotlight, and the first of what they hope to be many more shows. The trio says that they’re too excited to feel jittery. “I’m sure as the hour grows closer, I’m gonna get much more nervous,” Domrose says with a laugh.
For Reeves, who joined the band as a rising Hollywood star and returns to it as one of the most consistent leading actors of the century, Dogstar represents a passion that he’s thrilled to return to in a real way after all these years. “It’s a space that I love,” he says, “and a space that I tried to protect.”
The first No. 1 for boygenius on a Billboard songs chart is “Not Strong Enough,” which lifts to the top of the Adult Alternative Airplay tally dated June 3.
The track also marks the first trip to No. 1 on an airplay ranking for each member of the three-piece band, featuring Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.
As soloists, Bridgers boasts the best rank of the group on the chart, thanks to “Sidelines,” which hit No. 12 in July 2022. Dacus has reached a No. 13 best in September 2021 with “Brando,” followed by Baker with “Faith Healer” (No. 14, March 2021).
Concurrently, “Not Strong Enough” jumps into the top 20 of Alternative Airplay (23-20). It’s the first top 20 entry for the group; Bridgers reached No. 25 with “Kyoto” in February 2021.
On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, “Not Strong Enough” lifts 15-14 with 2.2 million audience impressions May 19-25, according to Luminate.
On the most recently published, May 27-dated multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs survey, “Not Strong Enough” ranked at its No. 29 high. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 1.4 million official U.S. streams May 12-18.
The Record, boygenius’ debut full-length album, which includes “Not Strong Enough,” bowed at No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums chart dated April 15 and has earned 162,000 equivalent album units to date.
The set also started at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard 200. “We were told, if we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10. And then it was, actually, maybe we could break top five,” Dacus recently told Billboard, noting that Bridgers shared the news of the LP’s debut rank as they were practicing. “We celebrated by playing the songs.”
All June 3-dated Billboard charts will update on Billboard.com on Wednesday, May 31.
When there are absolutely zero f’s left to give, somehow Noel Gallagher always finds a way to give one less f. A prime example is a new interview in Spin about Gallagher’s latest album with his band the High Flying Birds, Council Skies, that veered into a very on-brand takedown of the latest calls for an Oasis reunion.
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When the interviewer asked Gallagher, 55, if he’d heard about the Feb. interview in which The 1975 singer Matty Healy said Noel and his estranged brother Oasis singer Liam Gallagher owe it to their fans to get over their squabbles and reunite, well, Noel got went supersonic on Taylor Swift’s reported current boyfriend.
“Oh, that f–king slack-jawed f–kwit. What did he say?” Noel asked when the subject came up. To wit, the interviewer quoted Healy saying, “Can you imagine being in potentially, right now, still the coolest band in the world and not doing it because you’re in a mard with your brother?”
Noel’s response was as barbed as you’d expect. “He would never be able to imagine it. He needs to go over how s–t his band is and split up,” Gallagher said. Sounds like yet another hard no from the man who penned “Don’t Look Back in Anger.”
And, Healy being Healy, back in Feb. he also had much more to say about his dreams of a comeback from the sibling group that split in 2009 and who’ve spent the past decade-plus endlessly sniping at each other while pursuing their solo careers.
“I can deal with them dressing like they’re in their 20s and being in their 50s, but acting like they’re in their 20s — they need to grow up,” Healy said at the time. “They’re sat around in Little Venice and Little Highgate, crying because they’re in an argument with their brother. Grow up; headline Glastonbury. There is not one person going to a High Flying Birds gig, or a Liam Gallagher gig, that wouldn’t rather be at an Oasis gig. Do me a favor: Get back together; stop messing around. That’s my public service announcement for today.”
In good news for Oasis fans not named Matty or Healy, Noel said he’s still planning to play some Oasis songs on the Birds’ upcoming North American tour, which kicks off on June 2 in Seattle. “I’m digging out some old songs this time, and they do sound good. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it,” he said.
As for that AI Oasis album that dropped earlier this year, yeah, you can imagine Noel’s thoughts. “F–king embarrassing. I just think people clearly have too much time and money on their hands if they’re f–king around with that for a laugh,” he said of the one-off from British band Breezer, who wrote an Oasis sound-alike album during lockdown that features their playing and an AI voice that mimics Liam’s classic vocals. “I mean, who wants to f–king hear Ringo Starr singing ‘She’s Electric’ and Freddie Mercury singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger?’,” Noel huffed. “Life’s too short for that s–t.”
For the record, in predictable contrarian Gallagher fashion, Liam dubbed the AISIS album “mad as f—k,” bragging that “I sound mega.”
The world is mourning the loss of Tina Turner, who died on Wednesday (May 24) at 83. The news of Turner’s death was confirmed to Billboard and in a statement posted to her official Instagram account. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Turner. With her music and her boundless […]
Rob Thomas believes that the lead single to Matchbox Twenty’s first album in over a decade works because the band didn’t overthink it.
“Wild Dogs (Running in a Slow Dream),” the pop-rock sing-along that deploys a racing tempo and a handful of rousing hooks, was added to the track list of Where the Light Goes, the band’s fifth studio album, after Thomas, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Paul Doucette and producer Gregg Wattenberg recognized a spark in its music and lyrics — then proceeded to do as little as possible to mess with its momentum.
“There was a vitality to that track – a drive, a visceral feeling, that if we spent too much time polishing and re-polishing, it was gonna go away,” Thomas tells Billboard. “Gregg was very careful to be like, ‘We’re gonna get in, and once we get it, I want you to get out. Capture it, then step away from it. Don’t just keep adding to add.’”
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In some respect, Matchbox Twenty didn’t need to add to its discography: the alt-rock veterans’ catalog, beginning with 1996’s diamond-certified Yourself or Someone Like You, boasts hits like “3AM,” “If You’re Gone,” “Unwell” and “How Far We’ve Come” that could power summer amphitheater shows for years to come. Yet Where the Light Goes, due out this Friday (May 26) on Atlantic Records, is the product of a creative drive and longstanding collaborative ease: Thomas, Doucette, bassist Brian Yale and guitarist Kyle Cook have conceived the follow-up to 2012’s North, which topped the Billboard 200 chart upon its release, as a loose, unabashedly heartfelt check-in from a collection of old friends.
Matchbox Twenty kicked off their 54-date Slow Dream tour earlier this month, and will be playing a mix of old hits and new album cuts on the road through August. Ahead of the tour kickoff and album release, Thomas and Doucette chatted with Billboard about how an unlikely full-length turned into one of the most satisfying projects of their shared careers. (Ed. note: this conversations has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
Considering it’s been over a decade since the last Matchbox Twenty album, how does it feel to start the machine back up?
Thomas: Oddly comfortable and normal.
Doucette: We’ve done so much in our lives, so it’s like, we haven’t done it in a long time, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that different. The world is different — like, we didn’t have to worry about TikTok [before]. We just made a video for “Wild Dogs,” and part of that conversation is, “How does this work in small little cuts?” Those aren’t conversations that we used to have. So there’s definitely new things in this process for us, but it is still the process that we’ve been doing all of our adult lives.
Thomas: From 1996, we’ve only existed through change. When we started out, it was this period where we got to make a lot of mistakes, and they were private — they didn’t exist online, nobody was there with a camera, TMZ didn’t exist. We were a band that came out at a time when we said the actual phrase, “Do you think we need a website?” Social media didn’t exist until like three records in.
So I think that we came along at a really good time to expect and be ready for change, whenever we were starting a new endeavor. But then at the same time, we’re getting ready to go on tour, and this process where we bring out the gear, we make sure that we’ve got the sound just so — this was exactly the same in 2017, in 2015. That’s the job, and that feels very familiar.
When did you guys start focusing on this group of songs?
Thomas: We were pretty much at a place where we didn’t think we were ever going to make a full-length record. Going into 2020, it was, “Let’s record a couple of songs to accompany the tour, and then maybe that’s our business model — you know, we tour every couple of years, and we maybe release a song or two.” That didn’t excite Paul. He wasn’t sure how much effort he wanted to put into a couple of songs, so he was like, “If you guys want to run with that, go for it.” So during that time, Paul listened to [the song] “Where the Light Goes,” and he was just like, “I like that one, maybe you guys should work on that.” And me and Kyle worked on it.
It was 2022, and other bands were really out touring, and we didn’t go out. And there was a sense that we were letting fans down. It was Kyle who would start the conversation of, “Maybe we do want to make a full-length record — we’re gonna be sitting at home, we’re not gonna be doing anything this summer, and that would make next summer even more exciting for people that have been waiting for three years. It’s another level of excitement to that touring process.” So that just got the ball rolling.
Doucette: I ended season three of [co-composing the score for] For All Mankind in April, I think, and then in May I flew to New York to start working on this, and it was basically from May until December. I think we all kind of felt like we were never gonna make another record — and then suddenly, we were making a record, and that record’s done! In the grand scheme of things, this record came together probably more quickly than any record we’ve ever done.
Thomas: To be fair, though, this wasn’t a situation where we went into the studio and wrote all the songs. Some of those were written during the process, but then some of those were 75% done and then we’d jump in and help finish it together, and some were 100% done. We came in with a lot of material, and then we whittled down a good portion of this album with things that were started at different times, and then just finished as a band.
How much of the creative energy between you guys was just like old times, and how much has it evolved over the years? Since it’s been such a long time that you all worked on an album together, what was it like trying to regain a rhythm?
Thomas: Some things are just very automatic. You’re just like, this is how this works, I see where you’re going with that, let me pick that up. It’s happening amongst a group of guys who are 10 years older than the last time we did it — and the last time we did it, we weren’t young. And so I think there’s a refinement to the process that’s welcomed, in a really big way, and a civility to the process. We’re less precious with our feelings and our ideas — we want to get something done, but at the same time, we’re very precious with other people’s feelings and other people’s ideas. So I feel like everything about it that was different was only for the better.
Doucette: Also, like, you’re not fighting for an idea simply to fight for it. We just want to come up with the best thing, and that takes a lot of the pressure off, because you’re more willing to try stuff that might get shot down. We were working on a song called “One Hit Love” on this record, and we were trying to find the chorus for it. We were playing the track in Gregg’s studio, and we had a microphone, and Rob would get up and say a line, sing a melody. And I’d go, “Oh, no, let me try this.” And I’d try something and he’s like, “No, not that.” It was going back and forth until we got it right, not going, “It has to be this, I believe in this more than anything!” The benefit of age is just being better at that, at being more conscious of each other’s feelings. You can have that conversation in a healthy way.
A lot of lyrics on the new album contain a personal specificity, even as the themes are pretty universal. I’m thinking of a song like “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” which is about identity and how your past informs your present.
Doucette: I know that, at least for me, I’m trying to write from a place that’s searching for positivity. There’s a poster from an artist named Deedee Cheriel that says ‘You Have Everything You Need,’ so I wrote “Friends” about that. “One Hit Love” is a song that we wrote that’s about this might be doomed, but we’re gonna go for it anyway. I just want to keep writing about hopeful things. That said, there’s a song, “Warm Blood,” that’s totally negative.
Thomas: I’m always like write, write, write, and I end up writing four or five songs for every one that I actually like. After 30 years, it’s become about getting a sense of what you’re writing about, but then trying to find a way to say it that has its own flair, its own color. When you talk about relationships, it’s easy to fall into the same tropes – you want to try and find new ways to express yourself. The effort that we put into the lyrics on this record, I think makes it one of our strongest ones that we’ve written.
Roger Waters has provoked the ire of Israeli authorities after a pair of concerts last week in Berlin during which the former Pink Floyd leader displayed Nazi-like symbolism and made what is described as offensive comments about Holocaust victim Anne Frank. “Good morning to every one but Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust,” read a tweet from the State of Israel’s official account on Wednesday (May 24).
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During a two-night (May 17-18) stand at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin, the singer reportedly took to the stage with a message that read, “The show will start in 10 minutes and a court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an antisemite… just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly.” In April, a court in Frankfurt ruled that the city could not cancel a planned May 28 show by Waters after city officials dubbed the singer “one of the most widely known antisemites in the world.”
Waters, whose lyrics and concert imagery have long trafficked in transgressive and provocative imagery, reportedly offended some with the content of his Berlin shows, which the Jerusalem Post reported repeatedly employed images of “humanoid pigs and shady businessmen… pulling the strings” that activists condemned as “antisemitic dogwhistle[s].”
Perhaps most offensive was a segment of the show featuring the names of activists killed by authorities, including anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl, Mahsa Amini, who was killed by Iranian morality police, George Floyd and Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager murdered by the Nazi regime at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
The latter’s name was listed just before Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist who is thought to have been killed last May by shots from Israeli soldiers during a shootout with Palestinian militants. The paper reported that the juxtaposition sparked “outrage from Israeli and Jewish activists and officials around the world.”
After an intermission, Waters reportedly returned to the stage wearing a costume similar to a Nazi SS soldier’s uniform with a red armband while pointing a fake rifle at the crowd. The set piece also included a giant inflatable pig with a variety of symbols and words on it — including a prominent Jewish star — that floated over the crowd as “banners in the style of the Third Reich but with crossed hammers instead of swastika” hung from the ceiling.
The show took place in the city where more than 60,000 Jews were deported to their deaths during WWII and which was the site of the Nov. 1938 “Kristallnacht” purge, in which most of Berlin’s synagogues were burned down and Jewish-owned stores and homes were vandalized and robbed. It is against the law in Germany to display Nazi symbols or memorabilia.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the concert in a tweet, writing, “Shame on Frankfurt authorities and Mercedes Benz arena in Berlin — a place from where Jews were deported by the Nazis — for providing anti-Semite #RogerWaters this venue for his concert with no concern/care for the Jewish community.” In a follow-up tweet the leading Jewish human rights organization asked, “Will Germany prosecute #RogerWaters for Holocaust distortion or will promoters rush to book the anti-Semite for more lurid 3-D anti-Israel + #Antisemitic hatefests masquerading as concerts?”
At press time a spokesperson for Waters had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment. Waters has repeatedly been condemned for making what many consider to be anti-semitic comments on the state of Israel, including comparing the actions of the Israeli government to that of South Africa under the apartheid regime and Nazi Germany, as well as questioning Israel’s right to exist.
See the tweets below.
Good morning to every one but Roger Waters who spent the evening in Berlin (Yes Berlin) desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. pic.twitter.com/4tcrV6f8mt— Israel ישראל 🇮🇱 (@Israel) May 24, 2023
“THAT ONE LOOKS JEWISH:” ROGER WATERS BRINGING NAZISM BACK TO BERLIN // @rogerwaters disgraced the memory of Anne Frank, compared Israel to Nazis, flew his notorious pig balloon, and dressed up as an SS officer… /1 pic.twitter.com/QwOjyCd9Yi— Jewish Defense Network (@JewDefense) May 24, 2023
Shame on Frankfurt authorities and Mercedes Benz arena in Berlin — a place from where Jews were deported by the Nazis — for providing anti-Semite #RogerWaters this venue for his concert with no concern/care for the Jewish community. https://t.co/XYAS4bFi7h— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) May 23, 2023
Post-pandemic anticipation helped accelerate a new class of arena headliners, but also cemented long-time road warriors on their ways to new peaks. More than 20 years into the band’s touring career, Muse is reaching new heights on the Will of the People World Tour. With reported data through April 12, the glam hard rockers break the $200 million barrier in career grosses, having earned $206.6 million, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
The Will of the People World Tour launched in October with theater-sized underplays in major markets, before playing a quartet of shows in Mexico in January. Muse then traveled north for a proper run of arena shows in the U.S. and Canada, playing 24 dates across two months. In all, the tour has reported grosses of $36.1 million and sold 402,000 tickets over 30 shows.
Broken out by region, it’s the biggest tour of the band’s career. In Mexico City, two shows at Foro Sol grossed $6.8 million and sold 107,000 tickets, eclipsing plays in the same city in 2019, 2013 and 2007, in terms of revenue and attendance. In Guadalajara, the Jan. 20 show grossed $1.2 million and sold 13,000 tickets, up 34% from an area play in 2013.
In arenas in the U.S. and Canada, Muse’s business averaged out to $1.1 million per show, marking the band’s first North American tour to crack the seven-figure line. Previously, The 2nd Law World Tour (2012-14), the Drones World Tour (2015-16) and the Simulation Theory World Tour (2019) each paced between $700,000-800,000, while the current run represents a 50% increase from what had seemed to become their standard business.
Muse’s star rose throughout the 2000s and 2010s, reaching increasingly higher until they amassed some of the biggest rock hits of all time (2009’s “Uprising” and 2012’s “Madness” are Nos. 1 and 4, respectively, on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Alternative Songs chart) and then scored a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with 2015’s Drones. But years beyond those chart peaks, Muse hits a new high on tour, backed by last year’s Will of the People.
The Will of the People World Tour resumes this weekend in the U.K., continuing throughout Europe with a mix of headline tour dates and headline-festival gigs. Muse’s tour history indicates that the shows across the pond will earn about 20% more than the spring’s North American dates, pushing the tour gross toward the $50 million mark.
More than two decades as road warriors, Muse’s latest grosses push their career total to $206.6 million and 3.1 million tickets.
The Foo Fighters launched their first tour with new drummer Josh Freese on Wednesday night (May 24) at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion at Meadowbrook in Gilford, N.H. The bittersweet evening marked the band’s first tour in a quarter century without beloved late drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died last March while on tour with […]