Touring
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan has rejected Madison Square Garden’s long-standing proposal to build a Sphere arena in London, less than two months after the company debuted its first Sphere project to critical acclaim in Las Vegas.
News of the rejection came by way of a letter from Khan to Anthony Hollingsworth, director of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which oversees London’s Olympic Park properties. On Nov. 6, Hollingsworth had written to Khan to inform him that “the local planning authority is minded to grant planning permission” for the Sphere project. In the letter dated Monday (Nov. 20), Khan explained to Hollingworth that after considering a 111-page report commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) advising the mayor to reject the plan, he was now ordering the LLDC to “refuse planning permission” for the venue.
A statement from Madison Square Garden Entertainment officials said they were “disappointed in London’s decision” but added, “There are many forward-thinking cities that are eager to bring this technology to their communities. We will concentrate on those.”
A proposal for the venue was submitted in 2018, and Sphere London initially survived key votes by the city’s local planning authority. But with his letter, Khan has seemingly doomed the project.
The mayor said his main reason for rejecting the proposal was the impact he believed the venue would have on the surrounding area, writing that Sphere would “cause significant light intrusion resulting in significant harm to the outlook of neighbouring properties.”
He also said the size of the venue — 300 feet high and 400 feet wide — “would result in a bulky, unduly dominant” facility” that failed “to respect the character and appearance of this part of the town centre and the site’s wider setting.” Lastly, he criticized the venue’s high “energy intensive use,” which he says “does not achieve a high sustainability standard, and does not constitute good and sustainable design.”
“GLA officers have concluded that to grant permission would be contrary to the Development Plan,” adds Khan in the letter, citing a document that lays out the spatial development strategy in London for the next 20 to 25 years. “[It] would prejudice the implementation of the policies within the Development Plan relating to residential amenity, good design, and the conservation and enhancement of London’s heritage.”
The Sphere project had previously faced pushback from some local residents as well as AEG, which operates London’s O2 Arena, located just four miles from the proposed site of the venue. In January, after the London Legacy Development Corporation’s Planning Decisions Committee greenlit MSG Entertainment to initiate work on the project, AEG called on Khan to reject the project in a statement that read in part: “The advertising façade is at a wholly unprecedented scale for London and totally out of keeping with the surrounding area. The design was conceived for the heart of Las Vegas and has been transposed onto this east London site: it’s the wrong design, in the wrong location.”
Each year dozens of primary ticketing systems hit the market, and rarely do any last long enough to generate significant attention or revenue to survive. Lyte is the likely exception.
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That’s because founder and CEO Ant Taylor has a proven track record of innovating the ticketing space, starting with its Lyte ticket exchange allowing fans to sell tickets to one another, directly driving the price of tickets down on the secondary market. In his new bid, Taylor is launching the Lyte Returnable Ticket, which allows buyers to return their tickets for a refund, funded by Lyte, along with tools for fair market pricing and simplified ticket buying tools integrated into the platform.
“Event creators equipped with data intelligence and pricing solutions don’t just increase their revenue potential—they also pave the way for more fans to have richer, more transparent ticketing experiences,” says Taylor. “With the Lyte Returnable Ticket, we’re putting fans first by providing a world-class experience, and generating more demand for creators.”
Lyte is the first platform to upend the industry standard policy of no refunds and no cancellations for ticket purchases. Fans gain early access, dedicated support lines, and exclusive tickets unavailable to other ticket holders.
Lyte’s current ticketing partners includes Australia’s music and arts festival Lost Paradise, Madrid’s MadCool Festival, the Association for Volleyball Professionals Pro Tour, and event powerhouse ReedPop, owner of PAX and numerous Comic Con events.
Lyte’s demand-first ticketing platform is powered by SmartPricing and SmartFulfillment, a powerful ecommerce engine with a history of outpricing scalpers and giving event creators total control of the sales experience for fans. Lyte’s SmartPricing feature dynamically prices tickets at fair market rates.
SmartFulfillment introduces an intelligence to who gets tickets by empowering event creators to decide which fans are fulfilled first. Fulfillment logic can prioritize group orders, repeat buyers, local fans and more, giving true priority treatment to event creators’ best customers beyond stressful, finite early access windows. Lyte’s platform also includes a Subscribe and Request buying interface, enabling fans to request tickets months in advance to avoid painful on-sales. The new experience helps creators sell out earlier, with 95.7% of requested tickets converting to tickets sold.
A small percentage of Taylor Swift fans made huge profits reselling their Eras Tour tickets on sites like StubHub as professional scalpers mostly had to watch from the sidelines, according to data reviewed by Billboard.
The unusual dynamic underscores the challenges major tours face in combating scalpers — and the unintended consequences of efforts to keep tickets off the secondary market.
Swift’s touring team sought to keep tickets for the Eras Tour off the secondary market, according to Ticketmaster officials, and met with Ticketmaster executives to discuss how to best prevent mass ticket scalping. One option was that Ticketmaster could use its Safetix service to digitally lock tickets in place and prevent fans from transferring their tickets, effectively blocking all ticket buyers from reselling their tickets on sites like StubHub. But the downside was that, while many fans liked the idea of blocking scalpers, they didn’t like having their own tickets made non-transferable and found such restrictions inconvenient.
Ultimately, the tour decided to use Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform to screen out scalpers from the initial ticket sale, asking buyers to register in advance. Fans identified as legitimate fans were sent a code allowing them to buy tickets during the presale, which opened on Nov. 15, 2022, and subsequently crashed as millions of fans, scalpers and bots flooded the site.
Ticketmaster officials would later say the website meltdown was the result of a massive denial of service attack that disrupted the presale but didn’t defeat the security measures put in place to screen out scalpers from fans. As proof of its success, Ticketmaster announced that less than 5% of the approximately 5 million tickets sold for the tour ended up being listed on secondary markets.
It’s an impressive feat compared with other major tours in 2023 that took fewer steps to keep tickets off the secondary market and on average saw 20–30% of available tickets sold through StubHub.
While secondary tickets for tours like Beyonce’s and Coldplay’s were initially listed at major markups several times the face value, as more tickets moved through the secondary market prices dropped over time.
Swift’s Eras Tour saw the opposite effect. Eras tickets on StubHub were marked up 10 times face value, and then never dropped. The huge spike in price allowed resale sites, which collect a percentage of sales from both sellers and buyers, to make up the revenue it would have generated had they sold a higher volume of tickets, according to a StubHub rep.
Selling the tickets was easy, but getting them into the hands of fans proved difficult. StubHub noticed that orders for Eras tickets were experiencing an unusually high volume of delays and complaints from buyers. When company officials investigated the issue, they discovered that 83% of the Eras Tour tickets sold on its site were coming from new accounts with no record of past sales. The vast majority of those tickets are believed to have come from Swift fans, and they were making big bucks. A ticket with a face value under $150 could fetch $1,700, while tickets close to the stage were going for as high as $10,000.
While the outcome of the story is surprising, the fact that 83% of the available inventory of Eras Tour tickets on StubHub was sold by fans and not ticket brokers is a testament to how efficiently Swift and Ticketmaster were screening out professional scalpers, reducing their access to inventory to less than 1% of available tickets. While Swift would probably prefer that none of her tickets be flipped on the secondary market, at least she can take solace knowing that her fans, not professional scalpers, reaped most of the financial rewards.
Tate McRae wrapped the sold-out Are We Flying Tour in October, but she’s busier than ever. After launching her next cycle with “Greedy,” she will be performing this weekend (Nov. 18) on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, en route to the release of the album Think Later in December. Next year, McRae takes the new album on tour on the biggest stages of her career.
The Are We Flying Tour grossed $2.2 million and sold 60,000 tickets between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Expect those numbers to triple (and then some) next year, as McRae levels up from clubs and small theaters to boutique amphitheaters, and in one major case, an arena.
At its most extreme, McRae’s level-up expands her audience almost five times over. After selling out Dallas’ House of Blues at 1,674 tickets on Oct. 15, she’s scheduled to play the 8,000-capacity Toyota Music Factory in July. After playing House of Blues in Boston to a crowd of 2,705 fans on Sept. 16, she’ll play two nights at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, to a potential combined crowd of more than 10,000. Similar jumps follow in Minneapolis, Nashville and San Francisco.
Of the 16 North American markets that line up with shows from her recent tour, McRae is playing a venue at least twice the size in 12. The only market with a dip in capacity is Los Angeles: She sold out two nights at the Hollywood Palladium (7,671 tickets on Oct. 4-5) and is scheduled to play the Greek Theatre (6,162 capacity) on July 11.
While McRae could move 10,000 tickets in Boston and at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, Ark., two markets could break 15,000. In Toronto, she’ll play the Budweiser Stage, a 16,000-capacity amphitheater that has recently hosted sold-out concerts by Morgan Wallen, Post Malone, Janet Jackson and more. Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, it’s the only home-country show on the tour.
And after clearing two nights at The Rooftop at Pier 17 (7,494 tickets on Sept. 19-20), McRae is scheduled to close out the North American leg at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which has hosted A-list pop stars from Harry Styles to Madonna. Assuming she doesn’t play in-the-round, she could sell as many as 15,000 tickets.
With every show on McRae’s 2023 tour sold out, the upgrade in 2024 is warranted. There’s also her forthcoming album, already sporting the biggest single of her career. “Greedy” is No. 11 on the Nov. 18-dated Billboard Hot 100, bringing her closer to a top 10 hit than ever before. Previously, “You Broke Me First” slow-burned its way to No. 17. She has five other Hot 100 entries to her name, including collaborations with Khalid, Troye Sivan and Tiesto.
And while McRae can anticipate tripling her North American audience, and potentially expand her grosses further with accelerated demand, The Think Later World Tour will be her first major trip outside North America. The trek begins with 25 shows in Europe and ends with nine in Australia and New Zealand.
Without any Boxscore history on either continent, projections are tricky. But McRae’s international chart history bodes well for her live prospects. While “You Broke Me First” clawed its way to the top 20 of the Hot 100 in March of 2021, it got there five months sooner on the global stage, reaching No. 17 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. list in October 2020, and then peaking at No. 15 in November. Further, “Greedy” has spent its first eight weeks on the Global Excl. U.S. chart in the top 10, returning to its so-far high of No. 3 this week. On Billboard’s Hits of the World chart, “Greedy” already hit No. 1 in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and the Netherlands. It’s a top 10 hit in 16 more territories.
Live Nation will promote the Think Later World Tour, with Presley Regier as support in North America, and charlieonafriday in Europe and Australia.
McRae, who is the latest Billboard cover star, is set to perform for the 2023 Billboard Music Awards, which streams Sunday (Nov. 19) at 8 p.m. ET via BBMAs.watch and the Billboard and the BBMAs’ social channels.
“I Remember Everything” hitmaker Zach Bryan is set to help launch the second year of the Bud Light Backyard Tour, headlining The Bud Light Backyard Tour Presents Zach Bryan during Super Bowl LVIII weekend, on Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, at the 3,000-capacity The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. The show will take place two days prior to Super Bowl LVIII at the city’s Allegiant Stadium.
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Leon Bridges, known for songs including “Coming Home” and “July,” will open the show.
Bryan, who grew up in a military family and served in the U.S. Navy for eight years, noted the event’s integration with the nonprofit Folds of Honor, which aids families of fallen and disabled service members and first responders.
”I’ve been drinking Bud Light since I was old enough to drink, and partnering with them now after all the songs I’ve written while swigging them is full circle for me,” Bryan said in statement. “When Bud Light asked if I would be involved, I didn’t hesitate after I learned the immense amount of support going into Folds of Honor, fallen service members, first responders’ families and loved ones. It is a privilege and honor to provide help in any way to veterans and all the people who make this country as great as it can possibly be.”
Since releasing his breakthrough top 10 Billboard Hot 100 song “Something in the Orange,” Bryan has skyrocketed into a stadium-headlining artist. This year, he earned his first Hot 100 No. 1 with the Kacey Musgraves duet “I Remember Everything” (which also spent seven weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart), while his self-titled album vaulted to the top of the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart.
“Anheuser-Busch and our brands have brought unparalleled experiences to football fans and to country music lovers for decades. We could not be more excited to partner with Zach Bryan and to showcase his all-star talent during Super Bowl LVIII weekend,” said Brendan Whitworth, CEO, Anheuser-Busch. “All of us at Anheuser-Busch are thrilled to work alongside Zach to bring positive experiences to country music fans and to local communities nationwide.“
“Bud Light has always been at the center of great music moments, we couldn’t be more excited to return to our country music roots by teaming up with Zach Bryan, who is one of the most compelling artists in country music right now,” said Todd Allen, VP of Marketing for Bud Light. “Bryan is known for connecting with and bringing fans together, and we can’t wait to put on a great show for fans ahead of the Super Bowl.”
Tickets to The Bud Light Backyard Tour Presents Zach Bryan will be on sale beginning Thursday (Nov. 16) at 3 p.m. ET, with tickets selling for $20. Future dates on the tour have yet to be announced, and the tour is separate from Bryan’s own Quittin’ Time Tour, which launches in March.
The 2024 Bud Light Backyard Tour builds upon previous events including Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest, Bud Light Dive Bar Tour and the Bud Light Seltzer Sessions. Earlier this year, artists including Midland and OneRepublic were announced as part of the Bud Light Backyard Tour summer concert series. The slate of country and country-adjacent shows follow the recent controversy and backlash that ensued against Bud Light and its parent company Anheuser-Busch, after the company teamed with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who posted a video on social media featuring a customized can of Bud Light that Mulvaney received from the company.
Artists including Kid Rock and Travis Tritt spoke out against the brand, while Bryan offered his thoughts on the controversy and spoke out against Tritt, saying via X (formerly Twitter), “I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country where can all just be who we want to be,” and later adding in comments that he has “family transitioning” and “blood to defend here.”
Last spring, executives at Onex, AEG’s private equity partner in facility management company ASM Global, notified AEG leadership of their plans to trigger a clause in their agreement that allowed Onex to sell its 35% stake in ASM. Under the terms of the deal, AEG could either buy out Onex or match competing offers.
AEG officials instead elected to get out too, and over about half a year worked with Onex to identify a buyer for all ASM Global. On Nov. 3, Onex and AEG jointly announced that Legends Hospitality was buying ASM, the country’s leading venue management company.
Onex CEO Bobby Le Blanc told investors on a Nov. 10 earnings call that the decision to sell its ASM ownership stake for $2.3 billion was prompted by the company’s rebound in value, quickly recovering in the post-pandemic period after seeing its value dramatically drop when concerts shut down from 2020-2021 due to COVID-19.
The final sale price would double what ASM Global was worth in 2019 when AEG and Onex merged their SMG facility management holdings to create the world’s largest facility manager, Le Blanc confirmed.
Still, AEG’s decision to sell surprised many in the touring industry who had followed the company’s growth in that space.
For one, the sale made AEG a much smaller company, reducing its global footprint from 350 facilities under management to just nine — all of which AEG either owns or partially owns. And unlike Onex, as the world’s second largest concert promoter, AEG was able to enjoy significant synergies from owning ASM that other companies could not. AEG could more easily book its touring shows at ASM-managed facilities, expand its AXS ticketing platform to ASM-managed venues and sell sponsorships through its global partnerships division.
AEG and Onex merged their facilities holdings 14 months after Onex acquired SMG, AEG’s longtime facilities rival. In so doing, ASM Global became the world’s largest venue management company, with little to no competition for potentially large lucrative government contracts. Facility management has long been a predictable contracts business, in which city and county governments would pay SMG or AEG a fee to manage publicly owned venues and split any profits the private companies helped generate.
Merging the industry’s two largest competitors into ASM Global gave Onex and AEG unprecedented scale in the capital-intensive space and access to lucrative contracts. But the honeymoon didn’t last long. Oak View Group, which was founded in 2015 by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke — who made his own failed bid to buy SMG — began growing as a serious competitor, and peeled away a number of big-name management clients away including PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, the BOK Center in Tulsa and the sprawling McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. While the concert business’ post-pandemic boom has brought impressive profits, a source in facility management says that increased competition and inflation have been eating up ASM’s margins. Additionally, rising interest rates have made it difficult for firms like ASM to offer up capital investments in return for long-term management contracts, and much of the business’ growth was coming from new international venue projects, which were more costly to service.
Most recently, the bulk of AEG’s growth has been in its tour promotion business globally and through its theaters and clubs division. Since the end of the pandemic, both AEG and Live Nation have been looking to expand their network of smaller venues that they manage exclusively.
The company’s sweet spot is “locations with capacities of 1,500 to 5,000,” Rick Mueller, president of AEG Present North America, told Billboard last month. While most arena management deals do not include exclusive booking agreements because no single promoter can provide arenas enough content on their own to sustain a large facility, exclusively programming a club or theater can be much more profitable due to the leverage the contract holder has over other promoters wanting to book the venue, requiring promoters to cut them in on show deals. Now, AEG likely has more than an extra billion dollars to invest in this strategy, should it choose to do so.
Last spring, executives at Onex, AEG’s private equity partner in facility management company ASM Global, notified AEG leadership of their plans to trigger a clause in their agreement that allowed Onex to sell its 35% stake in ASM. Under the terms of the deal, AEG could either buy out Onex or match competing offers.
AEG officials instead elected to get out too, and over about half a year worked with Onex to identify a buyer for all ASM Global. On Nov. 3, Onex and AEG jointly announced that Legends Hospitality was buying ASM, the country’s leading venue management company.
Onex CEO Bobby Le Blanc told investors on a Nov. 10 earnings call that the decision to sell its ASM ownership stake for $2.3 billion was prompted by the company’s rebound in value, quickly recovering in the post-pandemic period after seeing its value dramatically drop when concerts shut down from 2020-2021 due to COVID-19.
The final sale price would double what ASM Global was worth in 2019 when AEG and Onex merged their SMG facility management holdings to create the world’s largest facility manager, Le Blanc confirmed.
Still, AEG’s decision to sell surprised many in the touring industry who had followed the company’s growth in that space.
For one, the sale made AEG a much smaller company, reducing its global footprint from 350 facilities under management to just nine — all of which AEG either owns or partially owns. And unlike Onex, as the world’s second largest concert promoter, AEG was able to enjoy significant synergies from owning ASM that other companies could not. AEG could more easily book its touring shows at ASM-managed facilities, expand its AXS ticketing platform to ASM-managed venues and sell sponsorships through its global partnerships division.
AEG and Onex merged their facilities holdings 14 months after Onex acquired SMG, AEG’s longtime facilities rival. In so doing, ASM Global became the world’s largest venue management company, with little to no competition for potentially large lucrative government contracts. Facility management has long been a predictable contracts business, in which city and county governments would pay SMG or AEG a fee to manage publicly owned venues and split any profits the private companies helped generate.
Merging the industry’s two largest competitors into ASM Global gave Onex and AEG unprecedented scale in the capital-intensive space and access to lucrative contracts. But the honeymoon didn’t last long. Oak View Group, which was founded in 2015 by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke — who made his own failed bid to buy SMG — began growing as a serious competitor, and peeled away a number of big-name management clients away including PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, the BOK Center in Tulsa and the sprawling McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. While the concert business’ post-pandemic boom has brought impressive profits, a source in facility management says that increased competition and inflation have been eating up ASM’s margins. Additionally, rising interest rates have made it difficult for firms like ASM to offer up capital investments in return for long-term management contracts, and much of the business’ growth was coming from new international venue projects, which were more costly to service.
Most recently, the bulk of AEG’s growth has been in its tour promotion business globally and through its theaters and clubs division. Since the end of the pandemic, both AEG and Live Nation have been looking to expand their network of smaller venues that they manage exclusively.
The company’s sweet spot is “locations with capacities of 1,500 to 5,000,” Rick Mueller, president of AEG Present North America, told Billboard last month. While most arena management deals do not include exclusive booking agreements because no single promoter can provide arenas enough content on their own to sustain a large facility, exclusively programming a club or theater can be much more profitable due to the leverage the contract holder has over other promoters wanting to book the venue, requiring promoters to cut them in on show deals. Now, AEG likely has more than an extra billion dollars to invest in this strategy, should it choose to do so.
A little more than three months ago, Christopher Anthony Lunsford, aka Oliver Anthony Music, was still working his day job in outside sales. In a little under three months from now, he’ll kick off his 40-date Out of the Woods world tour in Stockholm.
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It’s heady stuff for Lunsford, who’s never traveled much beyond the southeastern United States and is awaiting the arrival of his first passport. The tour, which begins on Feb. 1, comes on the heels of the breathtakingly rapid success of his raw, blue-collar anthem, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-August, a little more than 10 days after radiowv posted the video on YouTube of the six-foot-six, red-headed Virginian playing the song in his woodsy backyard.
“The last 90 days have been a little crazy,” Lunsford, a 31-year-old father of three, declares in a major understatement, during his first non-podcast/TV interview. Calling from the DMV in, believe it or not, Richmond, Lunsford comes across as smart and forthcoming. Even though he’s had to quickly navigate fame and the music industry, he’s already media-savvy enough to know what not to say — including declining to name the prominent producer he is in discussions with to helm his first full album, coming early next year, since the deal isn’t yet done.
Lunsford, who is self-managed and has no plans to sign with a label, seems extraordinarily grounded for someone who transformed into a household name almost overnight, even becoming such a cultural touchstone that his song was referenced during the first Republican presidential debate. Despite the far right’s initial embrace of his music and the left’s early rejection of it, he has declared that “I sit pretty dead center down the aisle on politics, and always have.”
Booked by UTA, his tour will weave through Norway, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Ireland before the U.S. portion begins with two shows at country music’s mother church, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, and then heads into amphitheaters and arenas, including Jupiter, Florida’s Abacoa Amphitheater and the Greensboro (N.C.) Coliseum. Venue capacities average around 1,900 seats in Europe and 7,000 seats in the U.S. For the vast majority of the shows, tickets will range between $25-$45, excluding Ticketmaster fees. Fans can register for first access to tickets in select North American markets at his website, and tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday (Nov. 17) at 10 a.m. local time.
Tackling the ceaseless struggles of hourly-wage workers, who are taxed “to no end” to pay for, among other things, “the obese milkin’ welfare,” while politicians keep getting richer, the controversial “Rich Men North of Richmond” has been viewed more than 93 million times on YouTube and received more than 111 million streams on Spotify. The song is up for Top Selling Song at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards on Sunday (Nov. 19), while Lunsford is also up for Top Song Sales Artist, competing with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Jason Aldean, Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How are you doing?
The last 90 days have been a little crazy. It’s funny because the music side of it has been very calming and enjoyable. It’s all the stuff behind the scenes that’s unreasonably chaotic. My life is actually a lot simpler in some ways, because I’m not working a job and juggling 10 other things with the music. But when you become a full-time musician, you’re essentially a business owner and an entrepreneur and a lot of other things, too. And those are things I’m not quite used to yet.
How long had you been in outdoor sales?
Pretty much the last decade. I dropped out of high school, had a GED, I was doing factory work and then I had a bad head injury in that factory. I was unable to work for a period of time, and then I moved into sales. I’ve spent the last 10 years having real, authentic conversations with hardworking Americans who are very transparent about the way they feel about things. It has, in a sense, given me the ability to maybe create music that’s so relatable to those type of people. Being on job sites and talking with so many people, I realized how similar everyone is as far as our personal struggles and our personal ambitions. We’re all dealing with a lot of setbacks and frustrations. … I hated the sales side of things. I just went out and did my thing every day. I’m not so much a big crowd person, but I do appreciate people individually.
You may say you’re not a big crowd person, but you’re about to perform before some big crowds come February, and you’ve already played some shows that drew thousands of people.
My first paid gig ever was 12,000 people [on Aug. 13] at Johnson Morris Farm [in Barco, N.C.], where Jamey Johnson showed up. That was my first time on the stage [other than] some open mics.
Many of your songs are topical. How do you educate yourself about issues?
It’s a mix of things. If there’s any kind of books, I probably was consuming Audible versions of them while I was in the truck driving around. In the last five years, I’ve listened to quite a bit of podcasts and YouTube videos. We’re a commodity to big companies, and all these companies spend all their time trying to manipulate their systems to be as addictive as possible, so when you get on Facebook, you’re gonna fall into this trance where you’re gonna scroll for like two hours. I’ve done it before myself. I’ve just tried to do everything I can do to not fall into that bubble, and instead try to spend my time educating myself.
Your first big interview was on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast. Are you a fan? Is that why you went on the show?
I guess I’d say I’m a Joe Rogan fan. I don’t watch every podcast episode. If I’m a fan of anything of Joe Rogan, it’s his style. He runs his whole podcast not around what’s culturally relevant, or what’s going to get the most views. He only talks to people he’s genuinely interested in. When you meet him in person, you’re seeing the guy that you watch online, there is no smoke and mirrors, versus a late-night TV guy. So that’s why I wanted to choose him first. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, of course. Nobody agrees with everything everybody says, but I like his style.
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Your first full album is coming next year. What can you reveal about it?
I don’t know if I can say who I’m recording with or not, but he’s one of the best in the business. In my opinion, it’s probably going to blow away everything else I’ve done so far, because everything has been recorded with just the internal microphone off of an about broken-in-half Android phone with a cracked screen. Even the radiowv videos used very basic equipment, so I had never had anything recorded with studio-quality equipment. So even just the vocal quality should absolutely knock people’s socks off, compared to what they’re used to hearing.
I want everything to still be authentic, and I want it to be me playing the music and not like a whole group of people involved. Everything now is just so carefully refined and edited and so we won’t have any of that. If anything, some of the songs are going to be recorded on older equipment from the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s.
That ties into the concept of your name, Oliver Anthony Music, right?
I adopted the name because I didn’t want my real name associated with the music, because I’ve got a lot of songs about a lot of things that I wouldn’t necessarily want an employer to hear. In the very infancy stages of things, like a couple years ago, it was right after my grandpa passed away. He was the only other one in the family that’s 6’6” and redhead, and he’s like my second dad in a lot of ways. So, it’s an honor to him. But then the reason I stick Music on the end of the name is because it really is supposed to be a representation of music that would have existed in his era when he was alive, living up in the mountains. They had dirt floors, they were scrounging to survive, they didn’t have electricity. I’m trying to represent that type of music [and] maintain the simplicity that would have just been necessary at that time. It’s not going to sound like something that’s going to be on country radio, by any means.
Are you going to record in Nashville?
We’re actually going to be in a studio in Georgia. I’m never going to be in Nashville sitting with people co-writing, ever. Most anything I put out is going to be something I write just by myself and if I do co-write something with somebody, it’s going to be with another artist and we’re going to be singing the song together. I don’t ever want to sit in some writing circle somewhere and have somebody in khaki pants and a collared shirt figuring out what my words are from my song. There’s a million other people that can go do that. I’m not one of those guys.
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Is Jamey Johnson going to be on the album?
I don’t know if he will be or not. He just came to one of the shows. … I’ve had just so many artists reach out, kind of trying to — I don’t know if “protect” is the right word — but just kind of mentor me early on, because I kind of got into this so quick, they didn’t want me making wrong choices. He was just trying to be supportive, and come and introduce himself, and be somebody I can lean on for guidance.
John Rich also reached out and offered to work with you.
John Rich and I talked a little bit early on. I haven’t done anything with John Rich, we’ve just had a few casual phone conversations. See, this is kind of one of those gray areas where I don’t know if somebody wants me to mention their name or not in an interview, but I guess if I can make a statement about it at all, I would just say that there are a lot of really good people, not just in country music, that have been very supportive. We did the Blue Ridge Rock Festival and Louder Than Life, there were a lot of those rock bands that I met, they were super supportive and awesome. I’ve gotten to sing onstage with Shinedown and Papa Roach, and all those guys are just incredibly supportive. I’ve made contact with 20 or 30 different artists. A lot of them will reach out through Instagram.
You’ve said you believe that divine intervention has put you in this position. In the last few months, have you gotten any clarity on why this happened to you, and what God wants from you?
I mean, there’s no question that I don’t deserve any bit of any of this, so there’s no other explanation to be made of what happened the way it happened. There’s a gazillion, billion, trillion other people out there that are posting music that in my mind is better than mine. I’d had a decent online following before “Richmond” was ever written. I’d already started to have A&R people reach out from songs like “Doggonit” and “Ain’t Gotta Dollar.” I’d known for probably six months before “Rich Men North of Richmond” was even written or recorded that I’d probably end up full-time in music, but I would have never guessed it would have happened like this.
I think if there’s a message at all that needs to be spread, it’s probably that we just desperately need to connect on a personal level with each other. As a society, I think we rely too much on communicating with each other through the internet. The difference between talking in person and a text message is totally different — things get misunderstood and misrepresented, and when that’s done on such a large scale, like social media, and then there are things like bots and trolls, and probably the government influencing things and what gets said and what doesn’t get said, people form way too many opinions based off of internet-related content. Everyone’s looking at the top to fix a lot of what’s broken at the bottom, but we have to start at the bottom. It doesn’t matter who’s elected president, a lot of our problems are on the ground level.
You have been fearless when it comes to speaking truth to power, such as posting a video after the first Republican presidential debate declaring that those candidates are the very ones you’re singing about and distancing yourself from.
I don’t have anything against conservatives. I think there’s a big difference in today’s time between a conservative and a Republican. If you look at what conservative values are, by definition, I would say none of those candidates, maybe one of them, represents anything close to what a conservative is. When I knock those people, then the immediate attack that came back after me was like, “Oh, he’s against conservatives.” But most conservatives I know, at least in Virginia, would never vote for anybody that was up on that stage.
It’s funny, if I got any backlash at all from that statement, it was people misquoting me, trying to make it seem like I was against conservatives or somehow for, like, Joe Biden. What I’m against is corporate-owned politicians. The whole idea of us having a government and electing representatives is so they can represent us, because we obviously can’t all go to D.C. at one time and have our voice heard. And what’s happened is like, 90% of those quote-unquote “representatives” no longer represent us. They’re all bought out by whatever big corporation and they’re given stocks and given benefits, and they’re all filthy rich, and they do what they say, not what we say. It’s not a right or left issue. It’s more of a class versus corporate issue.
[Lunsford momentarily stops the interview, because a fan recognizes him at the DMV.]
You just got recognized. How are you adjusting to fame?
It’s been cool. I mean, everybody’s been super polite out in public and even at the shows everybody’s been very respectful. Everybody’s been just overwhelmingly well-behaved about everything.
There was a photo of you with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Cheryl Hines, on social media. Are you going to endorse him for president?
No, I was very clear, even when I talked to Bobby, that I don’t want any affiliation with him politically. Whether he becomes president or not, he’s very involved in this idea of a healing center, which is basically a way of combining regenerative agriculture and mental health together. We met specifically to talk about that project, because I’m looking to implement something very similar at my property. We were very clear upfront that there wasn’t any sort of political affiliation there with him. He’s been very respectful about that.
That’s kind of my long term ambition: getting people back in nature and teaching people how to grow their own food and raise animals and do all that stuff. We’ve become very disconnected from each other [and] we’ve also become very disconnected from nature. Everything’s fake and phony and plastic now, so getting away from that would really benefit, especially, our youth.
Yeah, as far as a candidate goes, I’m not really interested. I probably won’t vote for anybody. As a joke, I’ve made some Oliver Anthony 2024 signs, and I actually drive down the road and see quite a lot of them, which is pretty cool. But I’m not even old enough to run for president.
How do you even wrap your head around some of this? A year ago, you would not have been saying, “I said to Bobby,” referring to RFK Jr.
I’ve gotten open invitations from everybody, even the former president and all, and I’ve been careful about how I want to handle those because, I mean, if I wanted to go meet with Trump, no one should be upset about that. He was the president of the United States. Just historically, we’ve always respected anyone who was. People do just blow everything out of proportion.
You are the first person to debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart without ever appearing on any other Billboard chart. Did that mean anything to you?
I think the most special thing about it being on the chart at all is that it made it to the chart without some big, corporate schmucky schmuck somewhere pumping a bunch of money into making it get there. It actually got to the top of the Billboard because people genuinely wanted to listen to it and support it. I think if people realized how much money record labels pumped into getting songs to become popular in the first place, they probably would never want to listen to the songs to start with. To just be a couple of dummies out in the woods with a laptop and a microphone and a guitar and [the song] ended getting there completely organically, that’s really saying something in and of itself. That’s what I proudest of.
There’s a lot of exciting things to come, but the most important part of all of it is just gonna be the opportunity to travel the world and connect with a lot of people. If there’s any mission statement out of any of this or any purpose, going back to your question before about what I’ve been called to do, I really hope if I accomplish anything out of my career in music, it’s just to give the voiceless a voice.
Out of the Woods tour dates
February 1 – Stockholm, SE – Cirkus
February 2 – Oslo, NO – Sentrum Scene
February 5 – Utrecht, NL – TivoliVredenburg
February 7 – Glasgow, UK – Barrowlands
February 8 – Manchester, UK – Albert Hall
February 10 – London, UK – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
February 12 – Belfast, UK – Ulster Hall
February 13 – Dublin, IE – Vicar St.
February 21 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
February 22 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
February 29 – Plant City, FL – The Florida Strawberry Festival (on sale Dec 7 8AM ET)
March 2 – Jupiter, FL – Abacoa Amphitheater
March 3 – Estero, FL – Hertz Arena
March 8 – Alexandria, LA – Rapides Parish Coliseum
March 9 – Brandon, MS – The Brandon Amphitheater
March 16 – Queensland, AUS – CMC Rocks QLD 2024 (on sale now)
April 4 – Ft. Worth, TX – Billy Bob’s Texas
April 5 – Round Rock, TX – Round Rock Amp
April 6 – Lubbock, TX – Cook’s Garage
April 12 – Tupelo, MS – Cadence Bank Arena
April 13 – Jonesboro, AR – First National Bank Arena
April 19 – Albany, GA – Albany Civic Center
April 20 – Savannah, GA – Bulls, Bands & Barrels
April 26 – Greensboro, NC – Greensboro Coliseum Complex
April 27 – Duluth, GA – Gas South Arena
May 3 – Huntington, WV – Mountain Health Arena
May 4 – Beaver Dam, KY – Beaver Dam Amphitheater
May 10 – Corbin, KY – The Corbin Arena
May 11 – Pikeville, KY – Appalachian Wireless Arena
May 17 – Doswell, VA – Atlantic Union Bank at the SERVPRO Pavilion
June 14 – Marion, IL – MTN Dew Park
June 15 – Camdenton, MO – Ozarks Amphitheater
June 16 – Council Bluffs, IA – Westfair Amphitheater
June 22 – Canandaigua, NY – CMAC
June 28 – Pittsburgh, PA – Stage AE Outdoors
July 19 – Cullman, AL – Rock The South (on sale now)
August 16 – Lewisburg, WV – State Fair of West Virginia
August 21 – Put-In-Bay, OH – Bash on the Bay (on sale now)
August 23 – Indianapolis, IN – Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park
August 24 – Saginaw, MI – Dow Event Center
September 1 – Palmer, AK – Alaska State Fair
September 13 – Allegan, MI – Allegan County Fair
K-pop giant JYP Entertainment has signed a multi-year global strategic pact with Live Nation to produce tours for all artists on JYP’s roster, it was announced Monday (Nov. 13). Under the deal, Live Nation will produce tours for established JYP artists including TWICE, Stray Kids, iTZY, Xdinary Heroes (XH) and NMIXX as well as emerging […]
It’s a cruel fall for Taylor Swift fans in Argentina … at least for the day. The pop superstar announced on Friday (Nov. 10), just hours ahead of her second show at the Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that the concert would be postponed.
“I love a rain show but I’m never going to endanger my fans or my fellow performers and crew,” Swift began her written message in an Instagram Stories post. “We’ve rescheduled tonight’s Buenos Aires show for Sunday due to the weather being so truly chaotic it would be unsafe to try and put on this concert. Good news is I get to stay in Argentina later!”
Though she had to delay her show, it wasn’t a bad day for the 12-time Grammy winner. Earlier on Friday, The Recording Academy announced the nominees for the 2024 awards, with Swift receiving six nods. Among the awards she’ll be competing for are record and song of the year (“Anti-Hero”), as well as album of the year (Midnights). She has not yet shared a reaction about her latest nominations. Besides the Grammys, Swift is also the lead finalist with 20 nods for the 2023 Billboard Music Awards, which will stream Nov. 19 on BBMAs.watch and via Billboard and the BBMAs’ social channels.
Swift kicked off the international leg of her Eras Tour a day earlier, on Thursday (Nov. 9). During the show — also held at the Estadio River Plate — she delivered her nightly two surprise songs. For her first show in Buenos Aires, the “Maroon” singer offered up “The Very First Night,” followed by “Labyrinth.”
It was the second song that had fans giddy. Video captured by concertgoers show the pop star smiling as she sang the chorus, which goes, “Uh oh, I’m falling in love/ Oh no, I’m falling in love again.” Swifties flooded X (formerly known as Twitter) with their reactions, convinced that the star was singing about new love interest Travis Kelce.
“MY GIRL IS SMITTEN,” tweeted one fan. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TRAVIS KELCE.”
“travis kelce tysm for your service,” added another Swiftie, who was one of many who credited the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end for Swift’s performance of the Midnights deep cut.
Though fans may think Swift was singing about the NFL star, Kelce wasn’t in Buenos Aires to catch the performance. Instead, the football player was back in Kansas City, attending Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ charity gala. But according to NBC News, Kelce is planning to see Swift perform in South America.