Touring
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Louis Messina reflected on his storied career in touring on Thursday (Nov. 14) at the Billboard Live Music Summit in Los Angeles.
Speaking with Melinda Newman, Billboard‘s executive editor, West Coast and Nashville, Messina spoke about the working with some of the biggest names in music, with the 11-artist roster of his Messina Touring Company including Taylor Swift, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Ed Sheeran, Old Dominion and recent signee Zach Bryan.
“I’ve worked with a lot of really goofball acts in my career,” said Messina. “All the acts I work for right now, there is not one that’s an asshole, there really isn’t.”
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Messina credited Strait with launching his own career, saying that “if there were no George Strait, there would be no Messina Touring Group.” He also spoke about helping develop Kenny Chesney, starting his work with Taylor Swift when she was 17-years-old, his impressions of Chapell Roan and much more from his historic and thriving career.
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Below, find highlights from the conversation.
On George Strait, Who “Connects With Everybody In the Audience”
Messina’s first client, George Strait, recently made history by selling 110,905 tickets at a June show in College Park, Texas, for what was the biggest ticket event anywhere in the United States in history.
Messina reflected on Strait’s special (and massive) appeal, saying that “When you’re at a George Strait concert, no matter where you’re sitting, you feel like George is singing to you. His eyes are his show, besides his voice and his music. But he connects with everybody in the audience and that, to me, is the secret of every artist… Every star artist, they know how to connect with the audience, and the audience then connects to the artist. To me that’s the key thing, and that’s what I always look out for: how does the artist and audience connect, and how do they fall in love with each other? That’s George. Every superstar artist, they know how to do that.”
On Working With Taylor Swift Since She Was 17
Newman noted that Swift’s Era’s tour, which wraps up in a few weeks in Vancouver, has grossed well over a billion dollars, then asking Messina what he’s saw in the superstar from the start. “She’s outworks everybody,” said Messina. There’s no one I’ve seen with a work ethic like Taylor Swift. I met her when she just turned 17… She had one song on the radio… By the third night [of seeing her on tour] I just knew. I saw the twinkle in her eye, I saw her work ethic, and here’s a 17-year-old girl singing about high school boyfriends and just had the audience in the palm of her hands. And then every morning, she was the first person in the production office, after she visited radio stations, and she signed notes to everybody. Fans, DJs that played her music… She would be the first one in the building and the last one in the building. That’s what’s special about Taylor Swift, because she’s one-of-a-kind and she will outwork everybody. I was just blessed to happen to be there and see that connection that she had to everybody.”
On The “Magical” Chapell Roan
Newman closed the conversation by asking Messina which artists he hasn’t worked with that he’d like to. He said he’d love to work with Beyoncé and Bruno Mars, adding “and who doesn’t want to work with Chappell Roan, though? What a superstar; what a unique artist. I haven’t seen anybody like her since — she reminds me of when Madonna first started. That attitude; she’s unique. I saw her at ACL and she blew me away… she’s one of a kind. She’s magical.”
On Sphere
While reflecting on the differences between venues, Messina reflected that ultimately “It’s the artist’s name on the ticket, not the building, except the Sphere. That’s a whole other ballgame.” Newman then asked if any of Messina’s artists might play the boundary-pushing venue, to which Messina said, “Yes I have a couple of artists that are potentially playing there.” Newman deftly observed that given that Messina has 11 artists on the roster, there are only a certain number of acts it could be.
On Guiding the Rise Kenny Chesney
Messina has been working with Chesney since the country superstar was opening for George Strait. “He was third or second from the bottom,” Messina said of the lineup he had Chesney on, “and I just saw him, and I saw his merchandise numbers, and he came back the next year, and everybody was in the stands early and he was outselling merchandise more than anybody… I just saw this magic that he had and the connection… We put Kenny on Tim [McGraw’s] tour, and then I said ‘It’s time to headline now.’ He looked at me and said ‘You’re absolutely crazy. I’m going to be playing to grass every night. I’m going to be playing to seats.’ I said ‘No you’re not. You’ve gotta trust me.’ And he did. This year was my 25th anniversary with Kenny. Kenny believed in me, and I got him to believe in himself, and then we got people to believe him.”
Linkin Park is heading back on tour with new co-vocalist Emily Armstrong, and the band’s co-founder Mike Shinoda is opening up about returning to the stage with the group seven years after the untimely death of frontman, Chester Bennington.
In an upcoming interview with The Zach Sang Show alongside Armstrong, Shinoda shared that getting back in the swing of Linkin Park has been “amazing,” despite his initial nervousness. “Part of it is going from the band being an indefinite hiatus or whatever it was — we didn’t put names on it, it was just like, ‘We’re not doing it anymore.’ From it being that to standing on the stage doing it, there were all these weird little moments that were so surreal,” he explained. “Getting in a room and doing it was so cool.”
He added that there were moments that were “stressful,” because he wanted to “set aside enough time for us to get this right,” continuing that with Armstong’s vocal talent, “We were changing keys on songs we played for 20 years. I had to relearn ‘Breaking the Habit’ from scratch basically.”
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“It’s like, having a thing that you felt like it was taken away and then being able to get it back like, ‘Oh, you can’t play shows as Linkin Park anymore,’ even though Linkin Park is like Part of my DNA,” he added.
Shinoda concluded by noting, “Linkin Park is part of my DNA. Everybody’s got a core identity diagram, like, this is who I am. If you were to sit down with a piece of paper and write down the things that make you you, that’s a crazy exercise when you think about it. It’s things you love to do, your family, your kids, your spouse, whatever. The things that make you you and your beliefs, right there in the middle of it is Linkin Park for me. There are many other things too, but to have that one out was painful. To have it back in, there’s nothing like it. There never will be anything like it.”
Ahead of their 2025 tour, Linkin Park is set to drop their eighth studio album, From Zero, on Nov. 15 via Warner Records. Check out the exclusive clip from the interview via Billboard below, and catch the full episode of The Zach Sang Show on Friday (Nov. 15).
When the music world was shutting down for most artists in 2020, it was just gearing up for John Summit.
At Thursday’s Billboard Live Music Summit, Summit and his manager, Metatone’s Holt Harmon, joined a panel discussion titled “Inside the Rise of John Summit,” moderated by Billboard‘s Katie Bain, to detail how they managed to take the dance world by storm over the past four years.
Summit’s Billboard-charting career began in 2020 with “Deep End,” which peaked at No. 26 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs that year. Since then, he’s racked up his first two top 10 hits on the chart — “Where You Are” and “Shiver” (both peaking at No. 8 and both with singer Hayla) — and crisscrossed the globe to play the biggest festivals, set up shop in dance havens like Ibiza and Las Vegas, and wow crowds around the world.
Below, find highlights from Summit and Harmon’s conversation, starting from the beginning of their journey through the release of his first full-length album Comfort in Chaos over the summer.
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No Rules
Holt Harmon: “Part of the beauty of working with young people and being young ourselves is, nobody had put a title on what we were already. So honestly, it was like the beauty of the unknown and the beauty of being able to tackle anything — not living by rules that we didn’t know about.”
John Summit: “If you don’t know the rules, you can’t break them.”
Picking Up During Shutdown
Summit: “I just knew that the whole world was online because everyone was stuck at home. So I was doing streams every single day, posting every single day, sharing my music, sharing the process. … I think a lot of artists took it as a time to relax and see their families for once. But because I was living in my mom’s basement at the time — shout-out Tamara in the crowd! — she kept me fed while I cooked the beats.” [Laughs]
Harmon: “COVID was kind of like the great reset. It’s like, anybody who was leaning or — I hate to put it like this — but anybody who was being lazy and leaning on touring, and that was their entire career, not putting out great music, not putting out great art, but just leaning on that they could tour, didn’t have that to lean on anymore. Didn’t have that crutch. So it more or less reset the industry.”
Changing It Up
Harmon: “You come to a John Summit show, expect the unexpected. He’s gonna play whatever he wants stylistically. He might throw dubstep in. He’s gonna throw drum and bass in. He’s gonna do his thing. … For me, it’s so cool to watch him be able to be like a chameleon. But it allows him to do different things and not get pigeonholed.”
Summit: “That’s where I think songwriting really comes into play, that I can change the productions for a song. … I think kind of changing around the production for songs and adapting, but then also, you know, staying true to yourself.”
His Second Home…To a Point
Summit: “What makes Vegas so nice is that I do 20 days a year, and it’s a different crowd every single weekend. You can’t do like 20 weekends in Chicago, because it would just be the same. Because [Vegas is] a tourist destination, much like Ibiza. That’s what keeps it really fun and entertaining, that keeps things fresh, and the hospitality is so great there that I feel like it’s a second home for me. … But it would my hell if all I did was a residency and it was the same thing every weekend, so that does freak me out.”
Tyler Childers is gearing up for an extensive headlining tour in 2025, when his Tyler Childers: On the Road makes stops at venues including Lexington’s Kroger Field (April 19), two nights at New York’s Forest Hills Stadium (Sept. 29-30) and two nights at Nashville’s GEODIS Stadium (Oct. 10-11), as well as shows at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl (June 10), Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena (June 7), Minneapolis’ Target Center (April 9) and Boston’s Xfinity Center (Sept. 25).
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The tour launches April 3 in New Orleans and runs through Nov. 15, ending with a show at the 02 in London.
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Joining Childers on the trek are guests Wynonna Judd, Charley Crockett, Robert Earl Keen, The Hold Steady, Medium Build, Deer Tick, Hayes Carll, S.G. Goodman, Cory Branan and SOMA.
Artist presale tickets will be available beginning Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. local time, with general onsale launching Friday, Nov. 22, at 10 a.m. local time. Presale registration is open now through Sunday, Nov. 17, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Those who purchase tickets on Ticketmaster and can’t attend will have the option to resell their tickets at the original price paid using the Face Value Exchange. To protect the Exchange, Childers has requested that all shows ticketed by Ticketmaster — except those in New York and Virginia, where Face Value Exchange can’t be mandated — use tickets that are mobile-only and restricted from transfer. For AXS-ticketed events, fans will be able to resell their tickets for face value plus fees through AXS Official Resale Marketplace.
Last year, Childers’s Rustin’ in the Rain album debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The album’s single “In Your Love” was nominated for Grammys including best country song and best country solo performance, and marked the singer-songwriter’s debut on Billboard’s Hot 100.
$1 from every ticket sold will benefit both Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund (HHARF) and REVERB. Established in 2020 by Childers and Senora May, HHARF brings awareness and financial support for philanthropic efforts in the Appalachian Region. REVERB’s efforts reduce environmental impact in live music and fund carbon impact programs.
See the full list of tour dates below:
https://twitter.com/TTChilders/status/1857109117543833902
Tate McRae has two major pieces of news that’ll satiate even the greediest of her fans. In addition to announcing her third studio album, So Close to What, the 21-year-old pop star revealed Thursday (Nov. 14) that she’s going on tour in 2025 — all just hours before her new single “2 Hands” drops. Posting […]
When Toronto-based entertainment and hospitality magnate Charles Khabouth heard that Taylor Swift would be bringing her record-breaking Eras Tour to the city he’s called home for more than 50 years, he knew immediately what to do.
“I opened a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate,” Khabouth, the founder/CEO of INK Entertainment, which operates a series of hotels, bars and restaurants and produces live events in the city, says, laughing. “I’ve been around 43 years in this business; I’ve never seen this hype in my life around anything. We do, I don’t know, 200, 300 live shows ourselves every year. We’ve had everybody in the city from the Stones to Madonna to Prince. This got much bigger support from everybody than ever possible.”
The city of Toronto is about to play host to one of the most significant events — culturally and economically — of the past two years, as Swift and her legion of fans descend upon the city for six nights across two weekends (Nov. 14-16, 21-23), the penultimate stop on a tour that has spanned two years and five continents and changed the fortunes of several cities along the way. And Toronto — known as a savvy, cosmopolitan city in its own right, though one that has at times had to fight to be considered in the same category as cultural capitals such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago — has risen to the occasion.
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On Nov. 4, the city of Toronto and Rogers Communications renamed Blue Jay Way — the street in front of the Rogers Centre that is usually home to its hometown Major League Baseball team and extends from Nathan Phillips Square to the venue — as Taylor Swift Way, complete with 22 ceremonial street signs that will be auctioned in support of the Daily Bread Food Bank after the run is over. (Rogers is also matching donations to the Daily Bread Food Bank up to $113,000 — a nod to Swift’s favorite number, 13.)
And that’s just the opening enchantment that the city would eventually roll out. Since then, the city has announced a poetry-inspired pre-concert initiative overseen by Toronto Poet Laureate Lillian Allen, while other announcements have included the Toronto’s Version: Taylgate ’24 event, which is expected to draw some 60,000 people; an Eras! Eras! Eras! performance by the singing group Choir! Choir! Choir!; and a 13-site scavenger hunt tied to different songs from Swift’s catalog spread across the city, among many other things. There are Eras-themed city tours, dance parties, drag and trivia nights and pop-up shops around the city, plus giveaways from a slew of businesses. Destination Toronto — the tourism bureau for Canada’s biggest city — expects some $282 million in economic impact from Swift’s two-week mini-residency, including $152 million in direct spending, 93% of which is expected to come from tourists flocking to Toronto — an astronomical uplift for the city’s local businesses.
“We’ve seen the entire city getting caught up in the action — from a Taylgate party at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to Taylor-themed hotel rooms and special menus at restaurants around the city,” says Kathy Motton, Destination Toronto’s senior manager of communications. “Major events like Taylor Swift bring visitor spending into Toronto, and that spending circulates long after visitors return home impacting a broad set of businesses. The obvious positive benefit is for hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related businesses, but that benefit also extends to businesses that are indirectly impacted by visitor spending.”
And many of those establishments have met the moment by overhauling their own properties to cater to the estimated 500,000 tourists flooding into the area.
“We’ve got so much happening on property,” says Liza McWilliams, director of marketing at the 1 Hotel Toronto, which transformed its Flora lobby lounge into the Folklore Lounge for the next two weeks, complete with a moss-covered piano, tapestries hanging on the wall with lyrics from Swift’s Folklore album and daily acoustic performances open to guests and the public. They also partnered with the Little Words Project, the original word-based friendship bracelet company, which is doing a pop-up shop in the 1 Hotel’s lobby for the first time in Canada. “I think it’s just really fun to be that much more creative and to dream up some really amazing things that kind of stay with the guests for a longer time,” McWilliams says. “Other than the [Toronto International] Film Festival, I would say we’ve never really been this specific when it comes to an actual city event.”
“This is like preparing for Toronto’s Super Bowl,” says Aaron Harrison, general manager of the Bisha Hotel, a short walk from the Rogers Centre. The Bisha also redesigned its entire lobby space (it went Reputation era), while the common spaces on each of its seven hotel floors are also getting era-themed makeovers, one suite has been entirely rebranded The Taylor (which had been running around $4,000 per night if you could snag it), and the hotel will be offering friendship bracelets, a glitter station and themed food and drinks for guests, among other things, in its Lover Lounge. “We wanted Bisha Hotel to feel like the ultimate fan headquarters,” Harrison adds.
In downtown Toronto, it’s almost more difficult to find a bar or restaurant that hasn’t leaned into Taylor-mania than one that has. (Talk about champagne problems.) The night before the shows kicked off, on Nov. 13, the iconic space needle was flashing rainbow colors in honor of Swift, and bartenders and restaurant staff were all talking about the influx of people in town for the shows. Streets are closed off, the city has dedicated websites aimed at helping both tourists and locals alike navigate the area, and Rogers spent $8 million to upgrade the 5G wireless service at the Rogers Centre ahead of the concerts.
Of the more than half-dozen people who spoke with Billboard for this story, almost all equated the preparations for the Eras Tour to those that go into the build up to TIFF — one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, held in the city each September — but all said the Eras Tour hype went beyond even that. Some hospitality officials and locals are looking at it as a test run for the FIFA World Cup, which will stage six matches in the city in the summer of 2026, and as helping to prove that Toronto can accommodate, and with aplomb, the types of huge events that are often staged in the great cities of the world, ones that invite people to fly in from all over the globe.
There is one thing, however, that nobody is particularly looking forward to: “It’s going to be hell on earth in a sense of the traffic and the amount of people,” Khabouth says, laughing again. (He’s planning to ride his scooter through downtown “with a smile on my face” on the days of each show to avoid driving.) “But it’s a happy moment for all of us in Toronto, to have that energy, that vibe. It’s a concert that’s very positive, you’re gonna see a lot of happy faces, people excited. It’s a very good opportunity for Toronto to stand out and say, ‘Hey, we can play with the big boys.’”
LONDON — The British government is calling on the live music industry to introduce a voluntary levy on stadium and arena tickets sold in the United Kingdom “as soon as possible” to “safeguard the future of the grassroots music sector.”
“We believe this would be the quickest and most effective mechanism for a small portion of revenues from the biggest shows to be invested in a sustainable grassroots sector,” said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in a report published Thursday (Nov. 14).
Earlier this year, a cross-party committee of MPs said a new levy on arena and stadium tickets was urgently needed to stem the tide of small grassroots music venue closures in the United Kingdom.
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According to the Music Venue Trust (MVT), the number of grassroots music venues (defined as limited capacity venues regularly staging live music) in the U.K. declined from 960 to 835 in 2023, a fall of 13%, representing a loss of as many as 30,000 shows and 4,000 jobs.
Responding to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report on the grassroots live music sector, published in May, the government said Thursday that it was “deeply concerned” with the rate of venue closures and that “a small industry-led levy within the price of a ticket” would benefit the U.K.’s live music system “as a whole.”
The government said it wanted the voluntary levy to come into effect “as soon as possible” so that it could be applied to arena and stadium music shows taking place in 2025. How the funds raised will be used to support small and low-capacity music venues should be clearly explained to ticket buyers, said the government.
“We urge the live music industry, and in particular the biggest commercial players who will have the biggest impact on the success of an industry-led levy, to act and to do so swiftly,” said DCMS.
Exactly what form such a levy on arena and stadium shows will take is still to be determined. While there is broad support throughout the U.K. live music industry for a voluntary levy, some promoters would prefer that it is applied on a case-by-case basis and stakeholders are divided on whether the levy should be included within the ticket’s price or as an additional fee on top of the face value of the ticket.
The size of venue the levy would be applied to and its cost/rate is also yet to be decided, although the Music Venue Trust has previously called for a £1 levy ($1.26) to be applied to arena and stadium shows above 5,500 capacity, excluding festivals. Discussions are currently taking place between live executives around what charitable body should collect, manage and distribute proceeds from the fund.
In a statement, Jon Collins, chief executive of live music industry umbrella organization LIVE, said driving forward “an industry-led solution to the challenges currently being experienced by venues, artists, festivals and promoters remains our number one priority.”
The idea of a voluntary arena tickets levy to support the grassroots music sector is one that has already received support from several high-profile U.K. artists and organizations.
In September, Coldplay announced that it would be donating 10% of the band’s proceeds from their 2025 dates at London’s Wembley Stadium and Hull’s Craven Park stadium to the Music Venue Trust.
Other acts backing the initiative include rock band Enter Shikari, who donated £1 from every ticket sold on its February U.K. arena tour to the trust, and Sam Fender, who has pledged to do the same on his forthcoming U.K. dates. This year, Halifax-based venue The Piece Hall became the first U.K. venue to give ticket-buyers the option to donate to the charity.
A similar scheme to support grass roots music creation exists in France, where a statutory 3.5% levy on the gross value of all concert tickets sales goes into a central fund administered by the Centre National de la Musique (CNM), France’s public agency for the music industry.
“This is the beginning of a way forward,” Kwame Kwaten, director of artist management company Ferocious Talent, whose roster includes Blue Lab Beats, Hak Baker and Caitlyn Scarlett, tells Billboard.
“If [the levy] happens, it will at least begin the process of addressing something that has been left out to dry with humongous consequences, especially at the kind of levels that we have to operate at before an artist gets to the arena, stadium level, which is where 80-90% of [touring] artists are,” says Kwaten, who gave evidence to the CMS committee during the inquiry.
“We are standing at a massive crossroads,” he says, “and we have now got a chance to do something about it.”
In a statement, CMS Committee chair, Dame Caroline Dinenage, said she welcomed the government’s recognition that “swift action on a levy is needed from the bigger players who pack out arenas and stadiums,” but warned that “the lack of a firm deadline for movement risks allowing matters to drift.”
“Without healthy roots, the entire live music ecosystem suffers,” said Dinenage, who is calling for government ministers to set a clear deadline for the industry to act. If no significant progress is made within six months, she said the CMS committee will hold another hearing with representatives of the U.K. live music industry.
“Every week I hear from music managers trying to do the impossible and bridge catastrophic shortfalls in their artists touring budgets,” said Annabella Coldrick, chief executive of U.K. trade body the Music Managers Forum (MMF), in a statement. Coldrick says it is “imperative” that the music industry comes together to establish a ticket levy on “all large-scale live music shows” to support smaller scale touring artists. “The current situation is untenable,” she says.
The U.K. government’s support for an arena ticket levy is the latest in a long line of Parliament-led interventions into the music industry that have taken place in recent years, including a nine-month probe into the music streaming business and a subsequent review of the sector by the U.K. competition watchdog.
More recently, authorities have turned their attentions to the live industry. In September, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into Ticketmaster over its much-criticized use of dynamic ticketing for Oasis‘ reunion tour, which prompted hundreds of complaints from fans and fierce condemnation from British politicians.
The British government has also said it would be looking into the practice of dynamic pricing for music concerts as part of its consultation into the secondary ticketing market, which is due to begin in the coming weeks.
Linkin Park fans are receiving what they’ve been hoping for: The band announced that it is adding 50-plus dates to its From Zero World Tour for the new year on Thursday (Nov. 14), one day before new album From Zero arrives via Warner Records.
“Getting back out on the road has been incredible,” Mike Shinoda said in a statement about the trek promoting the band’s new set. “The fans’ support is overwhelming, and we’re ready to take this energy even further around the world. From Zero is a new chapter for us, and we’re so excited to share it with everyone on a bigger scale.”
Linkin Park previously played several shows around the world after announcing new co-vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain, and dropping album singles “The Emptiness Machine” and “Heavy Is the Crown.”
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The next leg of the trek will feature special guests Queens of the Stone Age, JPEGMAFIA, AFI, Spiritbox, Grandson, Jean Dawson and Pvris on select dates as it makes its way to stadiums and arenas around the world, including North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. It kicks off Jan. 31 at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros, and ends Nov. 15 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Prior to announcing the tour, banners reading “Counting From Zero” appeared near the venues and seemingly teased the 2025 world trek was coming. And in the band’s September Billboard cover story about its comeback, Shinoda teased that Linkin Park would be “touring heavily” in the coming year, while bassist Dave Farrell noted, “I’m sure we’re going to do some hard touring in 2025.”
General on sale for shows in North America begins Thursday, Nov. 21, at noon local time, while Europe and the U.K. will be available the following day at 10 a.m. local time. For those in the Linkin Park Underground fan club, presales will kick off on Nov. 18, with more information available on the band’s website.
See below for the From Zero World Tour dates below:
Jan. 31, 2025 | Estadio GNP Seguros – Mexico City, Mexico
Feb. 3, 2025 | Estadio 3 de Marzo – Guadalajara, Mexico
Feb. 5, 2025 | Estadio Banorte – Monterrey, Mexico
Feb. 11, 2025 | Saitama Super Arena – Tokyo, Japan
Feb. 12, 2025 | Saitama Super Arena – Tokyo, Japan
Feb. 16, 2025 | Venue TBA – Jakarta, Indonesia
April 12, 2025 | Sick New World Festival – Las Vegas
April 26, 2025 | Moody Center – Austin, Texas
April 28, 2025 | BOK Center – Tulsa, Okla.
May 1, 2025 | Van Andel Arena – Grand Rapids, Mich.
May 3, 2025 | CFG Bank Arena – Baltimore
May 6, 2025 | Lenovo Center – Raleigh, N.C,
May 8, 2025 | Bon Secours Wellness Arena – Greenville, S.C.
May 10, 2025 | Sonic Temple – Columbus, Ohio.
May 17, 2025 | Welcome to Rockville – Daytona, Fla.
June 12, 2025 | Novarock Festival -Nickelsdorf, Austria
June 14, 2025 | Rock for People Festival – Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
June 16, 2025 | Heinz-Von-Heiden Arena – Hannover, Germany
June 18, 2025 | Olympiastadion – Berlin, Germany
June 20, 2025 | Bernexpo – Bern, Switzerland
June 24, 2025 | I-DAYS Festival – Milan, Italy
June 26, 2025 | Gelredome – Arnhem, Netherlands
June 28, 2025 | Wembley Stadium – London
July 1, 2025 | Merkur Spiel Arena – Dusseldorf, Germany
July 3, 2025 | Rock Werchter Festival – Werchter, Belgium
July 5, 2025 | Open’er Festival – Gdynia, Poland
July 8, 2025 | Deutsche Bank Park – Frankfurt, Germany
July 11, 2025 | Stade de France – Paris
July 29, 2025 | Barclays Center – Brooklyn, New York
Aug. 1, 2025 | TD Garden – Boston
Aug. 3, 2025 | Prudential Center – Newark, N.J.
Aug. 6, 2025 | Bell Centre – Montreal, Quebec
Aug. 8, 2025 | Scotiabank Arena – Toronto, Ontario
Aug. 11, 2025 | United Center – Chicago
Aug. 14, 2025 | Little Caesars Arena – Detroit, Mich.
Aug. 16, 2025 | Wells Fargo Center – Philadelphia, Pa.
Aug. 19, 2025 | PPG Paints Arena – Pittsburgh, Pa.
Aug. 21, 2025 | Bridgestone Arena – Nashville
Aug. 23, 2025 | Enterprise Center – St. Louis, Mo.
Aug. 25, 2025 | Fiserv Forum – Milwaukee, Wis.
Aug. 27, 2025 | Target Center – Minneapolis
Aug. 29, 2025 | CHI Health Center – Omaha, Neb.
Aug. 31, 2025 | T-Mobile Center – Kansas City, Mo.
Sept. 3, 2025 | Ball Arena – Denver, Colo.
Sept. 6, 2025 | Footprint Center – Phoenix
Sept. 13, 2025 | Dodger Stadium – Los Angeles
Sept. 15, 2025 | SAP Center – San Jose, Calif.
Sept. 17, 2025 | Golden 1 Center – Sacramento, Calif.
Sept. 19, 2025 | Moda Center – Portland, Ore.
Sept. 21, 2025 | Rogers Arena – Vancouver, B.C.
Sept. 24, 2025 | Climate Pledge Arena – Seattle
Oct. 26, 2025 | Venue TBA – Bogota, Colombia
Oct. 29, 2025 | Venue TBA – Lima, Peru
Nov. 1, 2025 | Venue TBA – Buenos Aires, Argentina
Nov. 5, 2025 | Venue TBA – Santiago, Chile
Nov. 8, 2025 | Venue TBA – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Nov. 10, 2025 | Venue TBA – São Paulo, Brazil
Nov. 13, 2025 | Venue TBA – Brasilia, Brazil
Nov. 15, 2025 | Venue TBA – Porto Alegre, Brazil
By the time Elvis Presley’s Comeback Special was taped in 1968, The King was not just on the ropes but nearly down for the count. A lengthy period in the wilderness starring in commercially successful but critically derided musicals throughout the 1960s had left his reputation in tatters as a new wave of musicians rose to prominence. There was hope, however, that a stellar performance at the special — for which a new song, “If I Can Dream,” was written — could help him win back the hearts of the American people.
This moment in time is where Elvis Evolution, an upcoming experiential installation in London, will begin for its audience. Set to debut at the recently-opened Immerse LDN in May 2025, the show’s creators view this as the moment when Presley was at his most vulnerable and authentic, making it the perfect jumping-off point for an odyssey that will trace the arc of his musical journey — from his upbringing in rural Mississippi to Memphis’ iconic Sun Studios and Beale Street to the backlots of NBC Studios in Burbank, California, where the Comeback Special was shot.
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To bring Presley’s musical journey to life, Elvis Evolution will utilize archival material and cutting-edge technology, including generative artificial intelligence, holograms and projections, alongside live music performances from a house band and themed set designs. The show comes from Layered Reality, a production company that fuses digital technology with live theater, and Academy Award-winning special effects company The Mill. In 2023, the former secured the rights from the Presley estate and Authentic Brand Group to license the icon’s image and likeness.
The announcement of Elvis Evolution came amid renewed interest in Presley’s life and music. In 2022, Baz Luhrmann’s jukebox epic Elvis told the story of the singer and his rocky relationship with manager Colonel Tom Parker. And Sofia Coppola’s 2023 movie Priscilla examined his first and only marriage from the perspective of his wife.
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Contrary to those interpretations, Elvis Evolution’s director Jack Pirie — who shares a co-writing credit with playwright Jessica Siân — says the show will remain focused strictly on the music. “What I hope we can do with this show is to move away from the myth of what Elvis represented and the image of him in his later years in a white jumpsuit in Las Vegas,” he says. “We want to go back to who he was as a kid, and look at the music he was listening to and how that shaped him.”
Pirie says Elvis Evolution resulted from the success of other, similarly tech-heavy experiences to debut in the U.K. recently. In 2023, cutting-edge digital art venue Outernet in central London attracted more visitors (6.25 million) than the British Museum (5.83 million). The wildly popular Abba Voyage experience, which started in 2022 and features performing avatars of the Swedish pop group, just extended its run into May 2025.
Even Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour concert film, which was released in cinemas to big grosses last year, was cited by Pirie as an example of music fans being willing to celebrate in “a non-traditional environment.”
“Elvis didn’t sit at home listening to music on his phone, he had to go out and seek and experience it,” says Andrew McGuinness, founder/CEO of Layered Reality, which previously produced an immersive version of Jeff Wayne’s War of The Worlds musical and The Gunpowder Plot starring Tom Felton. “The fact that live music runs through the DNA of the story makes it a great property to do it this way.”
Elvis Evolution initially caused controversy when it was revealed that the show would use generative artificial intelligence to help recreate Presley in hologram form. But McGuinness and Pirie tell Billboard that the technology is being used only to enhance authentic moments in Presley’s career. For example, they say the technology will help bring new perspectives and sightlines to the ‘68 Comeback Special, for which only limited camera angles exist. As with any powerful tool, says McGuinness, you need to be “bloody careful” with how AI is employed: “We’re not trying to confect something and we take the responsibility with the utmost importance,” he says.
Tickets went on sale for Elvis Evolution in October, and only a limited number remain available through the show’s opening weeks — specifically, May 10 to June 1. The 110-minute experience will have timed entry, with several performances set to take place each day. Tickets start at £75 ($97), while VIP packages are also available, including the “Burning Love” experience, which includes additional merchandise and VIP seating, and the “If I Can Dream” package, which features tickets to the show, commemorative merch and premium access to the show’s daily after-party.
The show’s venue, Immerse LDN, opened at the Royal Docks’ ExCel convention center in July 2024 and is currently hosting both the Formula 1 Exhibition and The Friends Experience: The One In London, both of which use multi-sensory technology and set design. The immersive venue, which will total 160,000 square feet once completed, is part of a £300 million ($387 million) investment in ExCel.
McGuinness and Pirie’s hope is that Elvis Evolution will be successful enough to be toured globally, and they’re particularly excited about the prospect of taking it to some of the U.S. locations that have strong roles in his story, from Las Vegas to Memphis and beyond.
The show’s success could also create opportunities for similar experiences around other music icons; while McGuinness notes that the commercial demands and scale of such events make only a small group of artists “suitable,” he says discussions have already begun between Layered Reality and other artists’ estates.
Though Presley’s outsized legend makes him one of the few artists, living or dead, to be well-suited for such an elaborate and expensive production, McGuinness adds that one of the goals of the project was to strip away the iconography and get to the root of the person he was.
“There’s a humanity that can get lost with any musician or celebrity, and before I started this project, I was prone to seeing Elvis just as an ‘icon,’” he says. “But within this experience, you get to see him as a man, too.”
It’s shaping up to be a banner week for Linkin Park. On Friday (Nov. 15), they will release their new LP From Zero – the band’s first record following the passing of lead vocalist Chester Bennington in 2017. Now, the iconic nu-metal band also appears to be teasing some huge headlining shows for 2025.
As a slew of social media posts from venues across North America, Europe and the U.K. revealed uesday (Nov. 12), a “Counting From Zero” banner has been placed somewhere around each arena or stadium. Though the signs don’t explicitly include the band’s name, they seemingly nod to the title of the forthcoming album.
Among those venues are London’s legendary Wembley Stadium, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena and Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany. Each post appears to indicate that a tour announcement is expected to land Thursday (Nov. 14) at 12 p.m. GMT (7 a.m. ET).
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Billboard has reached out to Linkin Park’s reps.
In September, following a seven-year hiatus, the band released its comeback single, “The Emptiness Machine,” which peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100, and entered the Official U.K. Singles Chart at No. 4. The new iteration of the band has seen the introduction of Colin Brittain on vocals and drums, while Emily Armstrong (singer with Dead Sara) has also taken on co-lead vocal duties.
These lineup changes follow Bennington’s death by suicide in July 2017. A tribute concert took place that October, before the band’s members went their separate ways for an extended break. Linkin Park co-founder Mike Shinoda released his solo album Post Traumatic in 2018, which was supported by a world tour.
During the band’s first public show since the loss of Bennington at the L.A. Forum on Sept. 11, Shinoda spoke about the emotional significance behind their reformation. “This is not about erasing the past,” he said. “It is about starting this new chapter into the future.”
The band is currently on their From Zero world tour, having recently played London’s O2 Arena twice, alongside dates in France, Germany, Colombia and South Korea. They are currently gearing up to perform two shows in São Paulo, Brazil, across their album’s release weekend.
Earlier this year, Linkin Park spoke to Billboard, sharing that the band kept its return under wraps in order to alleviate any anxiety they were feeling towards making new music. “Things just came into focus, naturally,” Shinoda explained. “Even with Emily and Colin, we didn’t say, ‘Hey, come in, we’re doing Linkin Park sessions.’ We just said, ‘We’re going to write songs.’”
“For three days at least, I don’t ever remember touching the ground,” Armstrong described of her experience of joining the band. “And then everything was different when I came back down – knowing my life was going to be different, in the best way. I came back to a dreamland.”