Every major tour skipping Aotearoa in 2025, ranked.

Which ones hurt the most? And which ones can we let slide?

Kia ora! This is the third installation of my ongoing investigation into why major artists continue to bypass Aotearoa. Here’s part one and part two.

Yesterday, a familiar feeling crept in. Déjà vu overcame me. It happened when I saw a news story on the Australian website for Rolling Stone. The hard rock band AC/DC had announced a major stadium tour of Australia. On their last tour in 2015, they played an Aotearoa show at Western Springs. I remember it well because I was there. This time, however, there was one key difference. Angus Young and co have made a decision many major touring artists keep making: AC/DC will not come to Aotearoa on their PWR UP tour. Instead, they’re playing all major Australian stadiums on a five-date trek. The great punk act Amyl and the Sniffers is going with them.

Australia is only a three-hour flight away from us but, at this point, they may as well be on a different planet. Across the Tasman, in the place they call “the lucky country,” they are living their lives unhindered, unbothered and unencumbered. Major shows are being announced all of the time. Winter’s going off. Their coming summer is booming. Australia is a place where Kendrick Lamar can resurrect a defunct music festival and play stadium shows at the same time, where Katy Perry can fill 15 arenas in a row, where Stereophonics, Supergrass and Franz Ferdinand can happily tour as much as they want to, and where even bloody Grinspoon can play an eight-date 30th birthday jaunt.

Then there’s the tour I can’t stop thinking about: Ben Ottewell and Ian Ball, just two of the five original members of the gentle UK rock act Gomez, are playing 14 shows. Fourteen! That pair have toured Australia four times together in the past four years. Yet they, and most of the other names mentioned above, are not coming to Aotearoa. Many more are missing us out too. At this point, Australia is just taking the piss. No wonder an entire jumbo jet full of New Zealanders moves there every day because Australia is getting all of the good stuff. We’re left sitting here, twiddling our thumbs, jealously staring at concert listings, waiting out winter while staring at the grimmest summer music schedule we’ve had since … Covid hit us in 2020. Ugh.

So, which of those tours are important? Which ones hurt? Which ones should we worry about, and which ones can we let go? Which ones have you counting up your dollars, wondering if you can afford the steep cost of flights and accommodation? And which artists should we point the fingers at and say, “Hey! Enough!”

There’s only one way to decide: we have to rank them all.

12. Katy Perry.

Somehow, despite the piss poor album, the bad dancing and the embarrassing trip into space, Katy Perry is in the middle of a 15-date Australian tour. This is inexplicable. Is she the new Pink? Has she reached an audience the rest of us can’t quite understand? Perry probably could have filled Spark Arena a couple of times, had she bothered to come. Alas, she’ll have to remain the one that got away.

11. AC/DC.

Leave your school uniform in the dress-up box, take the batteries out of your light-up devil horns and pack away your air guitars: AC/DC will not be coming to Aotearoa on their PWR UP tour. Angus Young is 70 and Brian Johnson is 77. The clock, it seems, is ticking. Will they ever play Aotearoa again? At this point, you’d have to say no.

10. Usher.

Twelve. That’s how many chances Australians have to shake their stuff to ‘Yeah!’, ‘Love in this Club’ and ‘Burn’ when Usher plays six arena shows in Melbourne and another six in Sydney in November and December. Zero. That’s how many chances we have to do the same. Yeah? Sorry, Aotearoa fans. It’s a ‘nah’ for you.

9. Kylie Minogue.

I’m spinning around. I can’t get her out of my head. I believed in her. Kylie Minogue played 10 Australian shows in February, yet refused to give us a single one. Why, Kylie, why?

8. Green Day.

Green Day played three stadium shows in Australia across March, where they played Dookie and American Idiot in full. This one didn’t hurt until their headlining performance at Coachella. Billie Joe Armstrong and co were fiery, spiky and a whole world of punk-rock fun. Totally would have gone. Never got that chance.

7. Mariah Carey.

Hey! Don’t judge! I had Mariah Carey’s MTV Unplugged cassette as a kid. I would have loved a well-organised throwback hip-hop party with her and Wiz Khalifa and Lil Jon that didn’t involve getting my ear bitten off. Shame, then, that Fridayz Live, a festival that has always come to Aotearoa, is now an Australian exclusive.

6. Oasis.

Big tour! Huge tour! But this is ranked at No. 6 because who knows if Liam and Noel Gallagher will make it past their first night without a punch-up. Either way, this seems exactly like the kind of show that could have packed out Eden Park for a couple of nights of boozy singalongs with Aotearoa’s parka-clad expat British community. I don’t even get to use a “definitely maybe” pun here because it definitively ain’t happening, bruv.

5. Drake.

This one’s just weird. He was scheduled to play two Spark Arena shows. They looked like they were going to happen. Sure, Drake was hiding out down under while his nemesis headlined the Super Bowl. Then he postponed his visit for two weeks. Then he cancelled those shows entirely, but promised to reschedule them. That was in February. Four months on, that hasn’t happened. Instead, Drake’s booked a two-month tour across Europe and lost a hell of a lot of money gambling. Will he be back? I wouldn’t put money on it.

4. Billie Eilish.

It just made no sense. None. She filled Spark Arena three times in 2022. My daughter was at one of them for her first major show. There, Billie Eilish called Aotearoa her favourite place in the world. She detailed how that venue had sentimental value to her because, in 2019, she played her first arena show there. “Afterwards I went backstage and bawled my eyes out … When people ask about my favourite places in the world, I tell them New Zealand,” she told the crowd. Apparently, that’s no longer the case. Is she the bad guy now?

3. Lady Gaga.

I’m not a Little Monster. I didn’t stan Lady Gaga from the start. ‘Bad Romance’ doesn’t do it for me. But this year’s Coachella show was such a despicable spectacle, a Tim Burton nightmare come-to-life, a brilliantly orchestrated gothic horror full of wonder and delight at every turn, that I instantly became one. I would have totally bought tickets for the entire family. And I would have learned all the words to ‘Abracadabra’ so I could sing along. That’s really saying something, because they go like this: “Abracadabra / Amor oo na na / Abra ca da bra / Morta oo gaga.”) Sadly, no one will get the chance because – surprise, surprise – Lady Gaga is only playing Australian stadiums on her Mayhem Ball tour.

2. Addison Rae.

A big call for this spot because this isn’t the biggest of tours and she’s not yet the biggest of stars. But Addison Rae’s Australian tour in November speaks volumes about where Aotearoa is at right now. Rae’s a rising star. Big things are predicted. This is a theatre tour designed to introduce her to audiences for the first time. It’s so popular it’s already been extended. All things going well, Rae will soon be back to play much bigger venues. By skipping Aotearoa at the start of her career, the fear has to be that her team doesn’t think it’s worth building up an audience here, that there’s no touring future for her here, that it will be just Australia from here on out. Is it true?

1. Kendrick Lamar.

One song was all it took for Kendrick Lamar to launch himself into the stratosphere. In 2024, amidst a grueling feud with Drake, Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ propelled the Compton rapper into a space few get to sit in: he’s now a Super Bowl-headlining juggernaut, a stadium-filling superstar and, now, a festival-saver too. Lamar has helped resurrect Australia’s Spilt Milk festival over four shows in December. Having sold most of those tickets, he’s headlining two stadium shows in Melbourne and Sydney. An Eden Park or Western Springs show would have reignited our grim coming summer. Alas, as I reported two weeks ago, Lamar’s not coming here. Insert the biggest of sniffs and fire up the crying emoji because this one really smarts. From the Powerstation to Auckland City Limits to Spark Arena, he’s always come here. And now, like everyone else, he is not. Should I write my own diss track?

That’s just 12 shows. There are many more artists and many more tours that haven’t come our way. Let me know your own lists in the comments. Thanks for being here. If you’d like to contribute and support the work I’m doing, the best way is to become a fully fledged subscriber. You can do that below. Thanks to those that already do. You’re the reason I keep getting to do this. Stay safe, listen to lots of music and we’ll talk again soon…
-Chris

Bonus beat.

They’re rubbing it in our faces.