Touring
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With election day nearing, it’s possible that America is about to elect a historic first to the Oval Office. Yes, Kamala Harris could be the first U.S. president to have spoken the immortal words “Padam Padam” on camera.
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“Padam Padam,” of course, is the viral hit from Kylie Minogue’s 2023 album Tension, which stormed TikTok last year and nabbed the inaugural best pop dance recording Grammy in February. This month, the Aussie pop legend returns with Tension II, which precedes a huge global tour in 2025 – both of which Minogue chatted about when she swung by Billboard News for an in-depth interview about Padam-demonium, her second Grammy win, working with Sia and more.
“If there’s one Aussie, you’re probably not far from another Aussie,” Minogue tells Billboard News of teaming up with Sia – whom she calls a “High Priestess” – for “Dance Alone.” “She asked if I’d jump on a track. That’s modern parlance, folks – you jump on people’s tracks these days,” she says, smirking. “She’s so talented and such a legend.”
Tension II also features Bebe Rexha and Tove Lo on “My Oh My,” a playful track where each pop star introduces their name and their star sign (“What’s your name? What’s your sign? I’m Kylie, I’m Gemini”). “When we reached out to Bebe and Tove, I was thinking, ‘I hope neither of them are Gemini.’ It would really help if we were all different star signs,” she laughs. “Thankfully, we were.” Earlier this year, Rexha presented Minogue with the Icon Award at Billboard Women in Music. “That was very generous of her,” Minogue notes.
When I suggest that the Grammys specifically created the best pop dance category for Kylie and “Padam Padam,” she pauses. “I wouldn’t be mad at that,” she replies with a smile. “It’s been a while coming to have that category.”
As for what to expect on the upcoming tour – which finds her headlining New York City’s Madison Square Garden for the first time – Minogue says there will be songs from both Tension albums and “a taste of each decade.”
That includes her Hi-NRG cover of “The Loco-Motion,” the international smash that launched her career and hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988. After years of mixed feelings about a hit single she recorded as a teenager, Minogue is finding “a real joy” returning to the song now. “It was the song that started my career,” she points out. “Over time there was a period where I was like, ‘I don’t know how to do it. It’s so uncool. How do I do it?’ But now everything has come full circle. I can really with all my heart and enthusiasm do this song.”
As for planning the rest of the massive tour? “G-U-L-P” she jokes.
To find out Kylie’s touring essentials (“coffee machine, let’s get real”) and what happened when Minogue met Frances McDormand, watch the full interview here.
Southern California concert promoter Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of AEG Presents, announced a new round of promotions for its talent-buying group on Tuesday (Oct. 29).
Talent buyer Becky Rosen-Checa will segue from booking shows at the historic 500-capacity Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood and the 770-capacity El Rey Theatre in L.A.’s mid-city to the 2,000-capacity Fox Theater in Pomona, as well as one-off L.A.-area shows for Goldenvoice. She will also help book gigs at Goldenvoice shows at Los Angeles State Historic Park and Brookside at the Rose Bowl, as well as festival properties Palm Springs Surf Club and Desert Air.
“After two very fulfilling years at the Roxy and El Rey, I’m excited to transition into my new role booking the Fox Theater in Pomona, festivals such as Desert Air & GV Surf Club, and other fun stuff around LA,” said Rosen-Checa in a statement. “Having started out at this company as the receptionist, I am grateful to those at Goldenvoice who believed in me and helped me get where I am today. I look forward to booking many cool shows and festivals for many years to come!”
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Henry Huerta, Rosen-Checa’s booking partner, will continue to handle booking duties at the Roxy and El Rey alongside newly-promoted talent buyer Montreh Nariman-Hassanabadi, who noted in a statement, “I aim to break barriers in live music by amplifying the voices of international acts, particularly Middle Eastern artists,” with plans to “create a vibrant cultural experience that resonates with all.”
Elsewhere, Chavanté Flakes, who joined AEG Presents in 2022, has been promoted to talent buyer at The Novo, where he joins current Novo talent buyer Gaston Leone. And in San Diego, Candace Mandracia has joined the company to help book shows in the area after most recently working at AEG Presents’ Las Vegas office. At AEG, Flakes will now book shows at San Diego’s Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, Humphreys and the venues at Pechanga Casino.
Said Mandracia in a statement, “I’m so excited to be back in San Diego, promoting concerts with John Wojas again. We have years of experience in the market together, and I look forward to being a part of the local Goldenvoice team!”
“It’s really gratifying to see someone grow and develop and to be able to recognize and reward that hard work,” added Melissa Ormond, COO at Goldenvoice. “To be able to do that with four individuals at one time is truly extraordinary. Becky, Montreh, Chevanté, and Candace all are great examples of the spirit we try to foster across Goldenvoice, and I’m thrilled to see them take these next steps on their collective career paths.”
The South by Southwest Music Festival has announced the first group of showcasing artists for its 39th annual event, scheduled for March 10-15 in Austin, Texas. Known for fostering discovery among fans and industry pros, the festival will feature an eclectic lineup from across the globe.
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Organizers today (Oct. 29) announced over a hundred new and established acts that will perform across Austin next March, including UK pop duo The Ting Tings, regional Mexican singer Justin Morales, Dublin punk band Gurriers, Indonesian psychedelic funk group Ali, Montreal art-punk ensemble La Sécurité, Australian rock band Delivery and indie pop artist Twin Shadow, who’ll debut his sixth album Georgie at the event.
“This announcement is an excellent teaser for what you can expect to see at SXSW 2025,” said James Minor, VP of Music Festival. “This round includes a range of exceptional artists, from up and coming talent to established legends, and everywhere in between. If you’ve been to SXSW before, you’ll know that this list is more than an eclectic playlist; it’s a guide to discovery, and your first step toward what you’ll experience in March.”
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The festival’s global scope is reflected in its artist selection (see the full list below), with acts representing countries such as Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and Norway. Showcases are curated with industry collaborators, including record labels, booking agencies, and media outlets like ATC Live, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Deezer, Music From Ireland and Sofar Sounds, among others, offering attendees exclusive, small-stage performances.
Founded in 1987 in Austin, SXSW has grown to encompass tech, film and TV, music, education and culture. The festival has also expanded to include SXSW Sydney and SXSW London, making it a key event for the global creative community.The entirety of the 2025 conference and festival will run from March 10-15.
In 2021, SXSW signed a “lifeline” deal with P-MRC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, making P-MRC a stakeholder and long-term partner with the Austin festival. P-MRC is the parent company of Billboard.
The first round of SXSW 2025 artists invited to perform include
Ali (Jakarta INDONESIA)Amiture (New York NY)Annie-Claude Deschênes (Montreal CANADA)Ava Vegas (Los Angeles CA)babas tutsipop (Guadalajara MEXICO)Bakers Eddy (Wellington NEW ZEALAND)Bee Blackwell (Austin TX)Big Phony (New York NY)Bleary Eyed (Philadelphia PA)Boo Seeka (Dudley AUSTRALIA)Bubba Lucky (Austin TX)Bummer Camp (New York NY)Caleb De Casper (Austin TX)Cap Carter (Sydney AUSTRALIA)Cari Cari (Vienna AUSTRIA)Carter Vail (Los Angeles CA)CDSM (Atlanta GA)Chinese American Bear (Seattle WA)Cloth (Glasgow UK-SCOTLAND)corto.alto (Glasgow UK-SCOTLAND)Cotton Mather (Austin TX)Delivery (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)Dr. Pushkin (Bolgatanga GHANA)Dune Rats (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)Edgar Alejandro (Guadalajara MÉXICO)Ellur (Halifax UK-ENGLAND)Emmeline (London UK-ENGLAND)Exotic Fruitica (Austin TX)Fake Dad (Los Angeles CA)fantasy of a broken heart (Brooklyn NY)Frankie Venter (Mount Manganui NEW ZEALAND)GEOGRAPHER (San Francisco CA)Graham Reynolds (Austin TX)Guardian Singles (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)Gurriers (Dublin IRELAND)Gus Englehorn (Maui HI)Hachiku (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)HIMALAYAS (CARDIFF UK-WALES)Honeyglaze (London UK-ENGLAND)Housewife (Toronto CANADA)J.Tajor (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)Jad Fair and the Placebos (Austin TX)John Francis Flynn (Dublin IRELAND)Julie Nolen (Austin TX)Justin Morales (Cuernavaca MEXICO)Kanaan (Oslo NORWAY)KAP BAMBINO (Bordeaux FRANCE)Ki! (Copenhagen DENMARK)Kombilesa Mi (Palenque COLOMBIA)La Sécurité (Montréal CANADA)Laura Lee & the Jettes (Berlin GERMANY)Lauren Lakis (Austin TX)Letting Up Despite Great Faults (Austin TX)Levin Goes Lightly (Stuttgart GERMANY)Los Eclipses (Mexico City MEXICO)Lucy Sugerman (Canberra AUSTRALIA)MADELEINE (London UK-ENGLAND)Mall Girl (Oslo NORWAY)Man/Woman/Chainsaw (London UK-ENGLAND)Marry Cherry (Austin TX)Maruja (Manchester UK-ENGLAND)mary in the junkyard (London UK-ENGLAND)MatchingOutfits(BerlinGERMANY)MELLT (Cardiff UK-WALES)Meltheads (Antwerp BELGIUM)Mhaol (Dublin IRELAND)Midnight Navy (Austin TX)Miranda and the Beat (New Orleans LA)Monobloc(NewYork NY)Nanocluster [Immersion | SUSS] (Brighton UK-ENGLAND)Nature TV (Brighton UK-ENGLAND)Nemegata (Austin TX)Nilipek. (Istanbul TURKEY)Nive Nielsen (Nuuk GREENLAND)o’summer vacation (Kobe JAPAN)Parker Woodland (Austin TX)Paula Prieto (Buenos Aires ARGENTINA)Perennial (Vernon CT)Personal Trainer (Amsterdam NETHERLANDS)Pug Johnson (Beaumont TX)Quiet Money Dot (Houston TX)Really Good Time (Dublin IRELAND)Rowena Wise (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)Sarah Klang (Gothenburg SWEDEN)Scarlet House (Charlotte NC)Shao Dow (London UK-ENGLAND)Shiho Yabuki (Hadasu JAPAN)Shishi (Vilnius LITHUANIA)Sir Jude (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)Sly5thAve (Austin TX)SodaBlonde(Dublin IRELAND)Sofia Grant (London UK-ENGLAND)Sultanes del Yonke (El Paso TX)SummerPearl(LondonUK-ENGLAND)Surely Shirley (Kiama AUSTRALIA)Susobrino (Brussel BELGIUM)TesfayeTayeGebeyehu/YahoEthiopian Cultural Band/ (Addis Ababa ETHIOPIA)The Philharmonik (Sacramento CA)The Ting Tings (Manchester UK-ENGLAND)The VANNS (Wollongong AUSTRALIA)tiger bae (Harumi JAPAN)TVOD (Brooklyn NY)Twin Shadow (Los Angeles CA)twst (Barry UK-WALES)Vanessa Zamora (San Diego CA)Venus Grrrls (Leeds UK-ENGLAND)Volcan (San Antonio TX)Vv Pete (Sydney AUSTRALIA)Water Damage (Austin TX)Woomb (Sofia BULGARIA)XAMIYA (Tokyo JAPAN)Xixa (Tucson AZ)Yasmin Williams (Woodbridge VA)Yndling (Bergen NORWAY)Yoo Doo Right (Montreal CANADA)Yuuf (London UK-ENGLAND
You can acquaint yourself with the artists who’ll be performing at SXSW 2025 by subscribing to the official SXSW Spotify and YouTube Music Video playlists.
Ticketmaster plans to cancel roughly 50,000 resale tickets to Oasis’ U.K. reunion concerts over violations of the company’s terms and services, Billboard has confirmed. According to Ticketmaster, the canceled tickets were purchased using techniques that have been forbidden for the Oasis tour. Those include a prohibition on purchasing more than four tickets per household, per […]
There’s no disputing that concert tickets are more expensive than ever, with prices rising faster in the last three years than any previous period. Most of the major players in the concert business have recognized the rapid double-digit increase since the end of the pandemic, but few agree on what’s causing prices to spike or whether the increase represents a real problem.
“It’s like going to Disneyland on a really packed day and wondering, ‘How can so many people afford to be here right now?’” says Jed Weitzman, a ticket-pricing expert who specializes in the concert business. “Part of you wonders how a family of four can afford to be there, and yet, clearly, there’s no shortage of people willing to pay to get in.”
This year, the median ticket price to see one of the top 40 highest-grossing tours of 2024 — playing arenas and stadiums — will cost fans $151, according to data compiled by Billboard Boxscore. Three years from now, in 2027, the average cost of such a tour ticket is on track to hit $200 due to steady year-over-year increases to see in-demand top-tier acts like U2, The Weeknd, Sabrina Carpenter and Billy Joel.
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Prior to the pandemic, the price of admission to a top 40 concert had increased 3% to 4% a year, according to Billboard Boxscore. That number more than doubled when touring resumed, increasing an average 9.9% annually. A recent study from Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, concluded that tickets were increasing at about 11% a year.
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The reason for the price increase is less straightforward. Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, attributes the escalation largely to the inflationary costs of global business in 2024. It also contends that tickets to see superstar talent, whether it be Oasis, Beyoncé or Bruce Springsteen, have long been underpriced by image-conscious artists who don’t want their fans to accuse them of price-gouging.
The problem with this argument, say officials with the U.S. Department of Justice who have filed a historic antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, is that it ignores the structural advantages the megapromoter enjoys against nearly all of its competitors. Prices are rising, the government claims, because Live Nation can outbid its rivals by overpaying for touring talent and making up its losses in the concert promotion sector through its affiliated businesses: venue ownership, Ticketmaster and sponsorships.
The government argues that by overpaying for talent, Live Nation is also passing on these increased costs to consumers through higher prices. The problem with this theory, many concert experts argue, is that it oversimplifies the economics of touring and lets the government off the hook for its failure to enforce the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which was signed into law in 2016 to thwart mass ticketbuying by scalpers using bots.
That failure to rein in the illegal use of software and hacking tools — which lead to huge markups on the secondary market — these experts contend, has created a pricing crisis that has made accessing tickets to popular tours at face value practically impossible. In a piece on StubHub’s postponed initial public offering earlier this year, longtime music analyst Chris Castle alleged that the wholesale use of bots to acquire and sell concert tickets “is not a theoretical antitrust case,” but one “dealing with real-time massive consumer fraud” that’s “perpetuated and funded by the public financial markets.”
WME agent Kirk Sommer, whose artist clients include Bruno Mars, The Killers, Adele and Hozier, says he’s cognizant of what other artists are charging for tickets, but fans tend to evaluate concerts on a case-by-case basis and are less concerned about pricing trends.
“I’m never focused on creating one price for a tour that is going to satisfy an artist’s fans,” Sommer explains. “The goal is always to create a wide range of opportunities that fans from all income levels can buy into. It’s important there is something for everyone.”
Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour rolled into New Orleans on Friday (Oct. 25) for the first of three sold-out shows at Caesars Superdome. After a lengthy run of overseas dates, Swift returned to North America for three shows in Miami last week; New Orleans is the second city on this final leg of the Eras […]
Crypto.com Arena hosted the first game of the 2024-2025 NBA season on Tuesday night (Oct. 22), which saw the arena’s tenants, the Los Angeles Lakers, take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. The evening notably featured the first appearance of a father-son duo (LeBron James and son Bronny James) in NBA history — while the 25-year-old arena also showed off its new, nine-figure renovations.
A quarter of a century is a long time for any entertainment arena to remain culturally relevant, but Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) has completed its third round of multi-million-dollar renovations to keep up with technological advancements and a new era in fan enjoyment.
During the Oct. 22 game, the arena — at the center of the entertainment campus L.A. Live — unveiled its new outdoor space, refreshed food and beverage offerings and state-of-the-art technology designed to reduce wait times throughout the facility. The arena’s first outdoor space, the City View Terrace, offers concert and game attendees the option of enjoying food and drinks with downtown Los Angeles as the backdrop while still being able to view the game or concert taking place inside. The terrace features several food and beverage stops and is open to all ticket holders.
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For floor- or ice-seat ticketholders, the arena revamped its exclusive Chairman’s Club to become the Delta SKY360° Club. On Wednesday (Oct. 23), Crypto.com Arena senior vp of guest services and security Danielle Snyder took media on a tour of the reimagined space, which includes a private bar in a lounge setting that is only accessible to premium seat holders and friends and family of the team or act playing. For the first time in its history, Crypto.com Arena will also now offer VIP tours to the general public, allowing guests to access behind-the-scenes areas such as the Delta SKY360° Club.
Danielle Snyder, Crypto.com Arena Senior Vice President of Guest Services and Security
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This season, founding partner Coca-Cola is also continuing to expand its presence with the newly unveiled Coke Studio, a 3,300-square-foot music-driven studio and event space at Crypto.com Arena that will host concerts, artist appearances, podcast recordings and more. Coca-Cola is supporting the arena’s sustainability initiatives, including the r.Cup program, which replaces single-use cups with reusable ones to help further the arena’s commitment to reducing waste. As part of this program, Coca-Cola products, along with other non-alcoholic beverages, will be served in r.Cup’s reusable vessels.
The arena’s new food offerings include chef and TV host David Chang’s spicy fried chicken concept fuku and chef and restaurateur Ludo Lefebvre’s two new concession stands: Mediterranean-focused Ludobab and Trois Familia, a fusion of Lefebvre’s French background with local Mexican cuisine. Elsewhere, Fresh Brothers will become the arena’s official pizza partner with a new concession stand (replacing Blaze Pizza), while Big Mozz is the arena’s newest official mozzarella stick partner.
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
A standout of the new offerings includes the first Doritos restaurant, Doritos After Dark. Located at the arena’s main Star Plaza entrance, Doritos After Dark serves up late-night favorites elevated with the flavor and crunch of Doritos for appetizers and entrees. Special items include Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Ramen-Rito (a Dorito and ramen-filled burrito) and Doritos Nacho Cheese Crunchtastic Vanilla Cone (an ice cream cone with a chocolate shell covered in cheesy chips). On Nov. 15, for one night only, Doritos After Dark will step out of the arena and into a one-of-a-kind Doritos Night Market pop-up in a free, immersive, neon-filled atmosphere open to all from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at L.A. Live’s Peacock Place.
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
New technology has also been installed at the arena. This includes Evolv, a leader in AI-based security technology, which is enhancing fan safety with the rollout of its Evolv Express screening system at all entrances. This cutting-edge technology allows fans to move through security checkpoints more quickly and efficiently, differentiating between potential threats and most everyday metal items such as cell phones and keys. By streamlining entry, Evolv is designed to help fans spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the event.
Once inside, fans can also skip lines with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which has been installed at multiple locations inside the arena, along with the brand-new Exo self-checkout at the Team LA Store, which also underwent a remodel. Now, all items at the Team LA Store include RFID technology, which allows fans to drop all their merchandise into a scanner that rings up everything instantaneously. The technology is currently only available at sporting events, as tour merchandise is not yet streamlined with RFID technology.
Crypto.com Arena is set to host programming tied to some of the biggest and highest-profile sporting events over the next decade. Among other events, it has been selected to host the 2025 Grammy Awards (the 22nd time the arena has hosted music’s biggest night), the 2027 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Regional, and the men’s and women’s gymnastics competitions for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
As the pandemic was waning, John Summit, an emerging Chicago DJ whose music had blown up online during lockdown, had a plan to translate that internet presence to real life. “Our strategy was to be everywhere,” says Summit’s manager, Holt Harmon. “Like, omnipresent.”
In 2021 and early 2022, Summit and his team canvassed North American nightclubs as they reopened, showing promoters (and themselves) that Summit’s online hype could turn into in-person fun. In May 2021, he sold out a 500-capacity venue in Tempe, Ariz., in just 12 seconds.
The team then transitioned from clubs to 2,000-capacity rooms, investing profits into production for stage rigs. “We were smart with how we were living at the time,” Harmon says. “I did everything from a kitchen table with my business partner, and John was working from his parents’ house.”
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Since then, Summit has sold out headlining sets at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium and Madison Square Garden in New York, with a three-night stint at L.A.’s Kia Forum set for mid-November. The large-venue bookings function as part of a three-pronged touring plan for Summit, which also includes his intimate Experts Only shows at clubs and festival sets as Everything Always, Summit’s duo project alongside Australian producer Dom Dolla.
The hybrid approach allows for different creative opportunities: Experts Only parties, for instance, offer no-frills production and let Summit stay close to his audience and test new music. They’re also easy to take on the road, often in destination venues like The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn. (“My goal is Experts Only Alps,” says Summit, who named the party, and his label, after his love of skiing. “That would be f–king sick.”)
Arena and stadium sets, meanwhile, satisfy massive audiences, including fans who might just be getting into electronic music through Summit’s accessible style of progressive house. And Everything Always lets two artists unite to play “bigger, more impactful things than if it was [them] separately,” Harmon says, such as the duo’s Coachella performance in April. “People ask how we keep cycling through markets year after year,” says Harmon, who is also co-founder and CEO of management firm Metatone. “It’s that we can come through as three different forms.”
The plan is to do it again internationally. With 50% of Summit’s 2025 touring happening overseas, Harmon says “the future of John Summit is a global business.” Now, Summit’s biggest sets require a crew of 180 and cost approximately $1.5 million to produce. But despite the growth, the essential goal remains the same as it was in the early days. “I’m still working from the kitchen table,” Summit says, “but it’s my own kitchen table now.”
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Luis Miguel has postponed a series of concerts scheduled across several cities in Mexico, including two performances in the capital, due to health reasons, the Mexico City Arena said in a statement on Thursday night (Oct. 24). Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The Mexican-raised superstar was […]
With Billboard Hot 100 hits like “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Union of the Snake,” “New Moon on Monday” and “A View to a Kill,” Duran Duran’s catalog is frighteningly fitting for spooky season. So in 2022, when the English quartet found itself playing a Halloween-night gig in Las Vegas ahead of its induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band decided to don costumes, sprinkle in seasonally appropriate covers and embrace the darkness.
The show was successful enough to inspire the band’s 2023 album, Danse Macabre, a top 10 hit on the Top Album Sales chart. With an expanded version of the album out now, the veterans — who have grossed $118.6 million and sold 1.8 million tickets since 1987, according to Billboard Boxscore — are set to play a show at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 31 that keyboardist Nick Rhodes promises “will be entirely different than any other Duran Duran show you will ever see.”
Is Halloween as big in the United Kingdom?
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We don’t celebrate it in such grand style as you do in America. I remember the first time I came to America was over the Halloween period. I literally thought, “Wow, they’re so far ahead of us. Why don’t we have these giant blow-up things outside our houses? Why can’t bats be 20 feet wide?” I love the sense of fun, the absurdity and that everybody gets to be a villain for a day.
The deluxe Danse Macabre has “New Moon (Dark Phase),” a moodier take on one of your classics; a cover of ELO’s “Evil Woman”; and “Masque of the Pink Death,” which I’m guessing is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
I’ve always been a great admirer [of Poe]. We grew up in England in the ’70s, where Hammer horror movies on [TV on] a Friday night, whether it was a Dracula or a mummy movie, were the thing you looked forward to all week. Plus, [I love] Tim Burton’s great contribution to everyone who loves goth. Those things shape the way you feel about life and the possibilities creatively. That’s what makes artists unique — their influences and the different areas they take from, even if it’s subliminal.
The Madison Square Garden show will be your second Halloween-themed concert. Do you see this becoming a tradition?
I don’t know. It’s a lot of work for one show. But Madison Square Garden just happened to be available, and New York is such a good place to be for Halloween. It was irresistible. We are going to make it something unusual and special. It won’t be like a regular show at all. The fans in Europe have been writing in already saying, “When are you going to do one in Europe? This is the second one in America; that’s not fair.” I sympathize with that. We always like to try to balance things, so maybe [we’ll do] one in Europe next year.
You have several other U.S. shows this fall beyond MSG. Will Halloween elements work their way into those?
I suspect some of them will feature a few bits that we’re preparing for Halloween. We didn’t think we’d be back in America this year, but when we decided to do the Halloween one, we slotted some more in. I rather like that way of working. For many years, we haven’t been a band that announces big world tours and ends up on the road for 18 months. But we do seem to play a lot of shows. We just add them when we want to, and somehow the chaos is working.
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.