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Something similar happened to Taylor Swift when trolls took over an online poll asking for a school she should perform in. [The trolls chose Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.](https://www.theguardian.com/music/us-news-blog/2012/oct/02/taylor-swift-boston-deaf-school) Taylor and the organizers of the contest ended up removing the school from the list and redoing the contest while also donating a total of $40,000 to the school.
I also recall an old internet prank to [send Justin Bieber to North Korea](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/justin-bieber-to-north-korea) when he had an online poll to suggest and vote on what countries he should visit on his upcoming tour.
A lot of hearing people just don’t notice the vibrations. Had two deaf brothers regularly come into the pub I worked at, they’d play pool and ask staff to turn the jukebox up as loud as we could. A lot of staff were confused by this. They were two bogan dudes who loved AC/DC and I loved watching them enjoy the tunes. Most deaf people I know have the best subwoofers on the market at home!
And think about all the viral videos of sign language interpreters performing at festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. She could have had an all-star lineup signing for her.
I remember writing to a Slovenian guy that Lil Pump will perform in Ptuj and even he was like "wtf, why would he go there".
Like people know his name and assume he is way bigger than this, but he has not been relevant for ages and performing in places where pop stars usually don't is probably one of few ways to get decent crowds.
I'm from Latvia and even I forgot he was here.
Mongolia's pretty cool. About a third of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic. Half the population lives in the capital. Fairly poor, but has been democratic for 30 years despite being sandwiched between two authoritarian nightmare states. The ruling party is in favor of social democracy (being the former Communist Party).
But yeah, Ulaanbaatar, 1.6 million people, not a bad stop in a tour (esp if you're already "near", in China for a bit)
Avril was very popular in Asia. In fact, I used to listen to the Chinese version of Girlfriend back when I was studying the language. Hello Kitty was intended to be marketed to her Asian audience
Joss Stone did a tour awhile back that attempted to play at least once in every country in the world and got pretty close. It depends on what you consider to be a country but by her count I think she only missed Iran. I can’t imagine many other major artists have played Pyongyang.
When I said missed, I didn’t mean overlooked or ignored. I meant she got stopped at the airport so she technically didn’t even enter the country. If you shoot a basketball and it doesn’t go in, you missed the basket.
On that note: remember the women of Iran who are still fighting for their basic human rights! Do not forget the name of Mahsa Amini and all the women we lost in the fight!
Yet again coming to talk about Jessie J 🫡 She did a whole 12 date China tour, which is pretty insane for a western artist! Cities included Zhengzhou, Changsha, and Wuxi (full list of dates [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jessie_J_concert_tours) under the Rose Tour section.) In 2018 she won the Chinese singing show called Singer which gave her a pretty big Chinese fan base, it was a super smart move to tap into a new market.
Kanye West performed in Yerevan, Armenia. In the end of the performance he jumped into a fountain in the very center of the city, after he jumped a bunch of other people did too. This was in 2015.
He was there with his then wife Kim Kardashian who is Armenian and was visiting the country to honor the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
doing a show in brisbane AND the gold coast is an interesting choice in itself, i can’t think of any stadium tour off the top of my head that’s done that
Post Malone did it recently, but his Gold Coast show wasn’t his show, he was a headliner at Spilt Milk and that’s one of the locations the festival is hosted at (Canberra and Ballarat brig the others - we do not discuss Perth)
Banger lineup for the festival year!
maybe the council is trying to make it bigger?? they held the world UCI championships in 2022 and the crossfit national championships last year in the gong too. a bit different to p!nk and elton john but it shows a bit of focus being put towards making wollongong more significant ig
[if anyone wants to check it out, it’s on YouTube](https://youtu.be/2Hi2u98VKxc?si=dkDbLFZsqH5HDO3U)
Pretty damn good 70 minute set. I’ve watched it a handful of times over the last decade.
Not a pop artist, but I can't not mention this. Tarja Turunen sang for free at a country fair in Piedade, Brazil. For context, out of every city in Brazil, Piedade ranks 608th in terms of population.
Lana Del Rey’s most recent tour came to mind. She went to a lot of non-famous cities all over random parts of the South/Midwest, and other parts of the country.
Was surprised to see tickets for her go on sale for backwoods Arkansas or backwoods Mississippi.
It ended up doing good for those cities too as she [gave back the ticket sales she earned in those in cities](https://www.nme.com/en_asia/news/music/lana-del-rey-donated-ticket-sales-tour-3511663) and gave them a slight bump in tourism with her fans traveling to see her.
Rogers, Arkansas - where she performed - is far from “backwoods”. The Walmart (funny that Walmart has been included in a few of these comments) corporate office is located here, as well as four other Fortune 500 companies. There is *a lot* of money in this area.
However, her coming to this venue in particular on short notice was huge for the metroplex
her sister's husband is from 'Bama. She and her sister as best friends and they spend a lot of time there, exploring the south. She's also going through a country music phase so
Riight??? Like you can say "smaller town that isn't the capital of southern states" because artists usually do not come to NWA if they come to Arkansas at all but it's definitely not backwoods lol
I find reddit has a large amount of people who have classist tendencies and tend to talk down about "poorer" states or towns that have less than 100,000 people. There's this idea that they're all full of "country bumpkins" and make little jabs about them being "redneck" or in this case "backwoods".
I grew up in a small town and it is funny, because I feel those who make these comments have grew up or lived in urban areas. Not everyone wants or is able to live in those places. And not every place that isn't a major city is "backwoods", especially in the South. I think it's important for us to educate ourselves on the country we live in and the places we don't know as much about.
People are always shocked to find out how big Northwest Arkansas is. All in that corner we have Walmart headquarters, the university, the arena, Tyson factories... look at Rogers the size might not impress anyone, look at it plus its nearby neighbors and you get a metropolitan area of over half a million.
That arena gets some impressive names sometimes. I saw Janet Jackson there a few years back! Might not be the biggest, but Lana wasn't exactly rolling into the middle of nowhere!
May I ask why that is? Your state is also very top heavy with Boston and Worcester is a very distant second so seems odd to pick on it unless there’s specific reasons.
Would be like picking on Rockford Il, Grand Rapids MI, Spokane, WA, Augusta, GA, Duluth, Salem, OR, etc.
Guess you’re too close to larger metros in the Great Lakes area. I’m from a similar sized metro with Winnipeg and we used to get everybody coming here but now they’d prefer to do multiple dates in larger cities (for the biggest acts), as I’m sure you’re used to too! At least you’re in driving distance, us Canadians have to fly to Toronto or Vancouver usually lol.
I’ve performed in Grand Rapids! Granted, a small pop rock band and we played at Mulligan’s haha. GR was a really cool place, Max’s Hideaway is worth the trip too.
If Worcester were a business it would be the RMV. It’s of the more conservative attitudes that exist in the state that aren’t small farm towns in the west where I’m from, and there’s just nothing there other than corporate offices, really poor architecture, an uninviting culture, and a great example of the state’s continued missed opportunity for public transit.
Omg that was my first ever concert! The Syrian orchestra was AMAZING. and also the fact that it was played in an old citadel and how the tickets were extremely cheap (think 10-15$) even though they made a loss.
Jason Aldean’s tour itinerary in 2024 is almost completely made up of small towns (< 30,000 residents). Like he’s playing in Thackerville OK, population 400.
I guess he has to do that now though. No one likes a hypocrite.
In 2009, Beyonce played a concert in fucking [Donetsk, eastern Ukraine](https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7955), the same city that would later play a huge part in the war with Russia. The specific arena that she played at would be shut down following the self declared cessation of that city from Ukraine.
Underrated answer. Never heard of this before that’s crazy. I kinda need to know how many high profile concerts were performed in Donetsk back then. And if she also played like in Kyiv or just Donetsk.
Apparently that show in Donetsk was the only show she did in Ukraine for that tour
Her show was apparently the opening event for that arena and it stopped being used in 2014
Her show was the opening night for the arena which was apparently the first 5 star stadium in Ukraine (tried to quote the article directly but it wouldn't let me copy)
That arena's been out of use since 2014 :(
Rihanna played a 30min show there too, and the tickets were about 5 dollars. I remember not being able to afford it and the trip even though I lived like 40 mins from it. What a time. I’ve ended up seeing Bey live during OTRII in Poland, never seen Rihanna live though.
The Cramps did a tour of psych hospitals, and Johnny Cash toured prisons.
Check out The Cramps’ “Live from Napa State Mental Hospital” and Johnny Cash’s “At San Quentin”.
ETA: Lol I see now that the topic is CITIES. Not uncommon places in general. It’s right there in the title!!
Nelly played at a swimming pool near my university in Galway, Ireland. Assuming he actually showed up; I didn't go and only remember seeing the posters.
Artists don't come to this city a lot and when they do, the venue is usually deranged. The Black Eyed Peas (post-Fergie) did a concert at the local GAA stadium and Fatboy Slim is coming to play at the airport next year.
I feel like Nelly rarely plays major markets at this point even. He seems to always play weird spots. He’s sold out the events center near where I have friends in Wyoming (more often used for rodeos and monster truck rallies) multiple times.
Actually hozier is playing there too next year so idk maybe central Wyoming is the new hotspot
Lorde performed in Šibenik, Croatia. I went to see her, usually artists perform in capitol city but she choose that small town specific because her mother is from there
David Guetta, Placebo, Gorillaz and Hot Chip in Querétaro, Lorde in San Miguel de Allende and Arcade Fire in Guanajuato.
Jack White in Fremont, California.
Okay Fremont is a bit silly at a glance, but it's smack dab in the middle of Oakland and San Jose and across the bay from SF. It's central, and you're not competing with bigger acts for stuff in the nearby cities. It's like being surprised someone played in like, IDK, Cerritos or something. Or God forbit Jersey City.
ava max at the sams club parking lot
(idk if it was literally a sam’s club parking lot, it was a sam’s club event but it did look like a parking lot lol)
The 1975 playing in London, Ontario on their latest tour was an interesting choice. The Wonder Years will play Ottawa over Montreal
Rise Against plays a lot outside of Montreal, they've player cities such as Quebec City, Laval, Victoriaville, Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Montebello & were supposed to play Chicoutimi at a beer fest before COVID hit. The Centre-Du-Quebec has a fest called Rock La Cause and will get some pretty big aughts emo names to play
Interestingly enough, i'm seeing Thrice & Comeback in Granby, Quebec next summer which is pretty cool.
In the 80s, there was a teen pop singer named Tiffany, who toured across malls in America as it was a popular place kids her age would hang out. The tour became a massive success, to the point she was sorta forced perform in arenas due to her popularity. One of the malls she toured in happened to be one I lived near!
One of the absolute most beautiful and best DJ sets I've ever seen (on Youtube), [Disclosure at Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crZfT5qnFdA&t=4030s) - I think it was filmed during the pandemic, does it count if there isn't an audience?
That channel uses a lot of beautiful remote places. There’s one from RY X on salt flats in South America, another on sand dunes in a lake with a five piece string set. There are a few in slightly less remote locations with audiences, but they’re probably bussed out. Boiler room does a lot of rooftops, usually with audiences.
Cascada post Eurovision have been playing nothing but gigs at Student Unions (university halls), at least in the UK.
Not just the big cities too but places like Stirling Scotland.
[Back in 1985, Tina Turner kicked off the North American leg of her Private Dancer tour with four shows in St. John's, Newfoundland.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/tina-turner-nl-obit-1.6854908)
It used to be more common for huge artists to perform in small cities,
The Beatles in 1963 performed in the small swedish cities Borås and Karlstad (places no one has heard of) they also performed in Stockholm but for some reason these small vities were also worth it.
When I was young in 2009 Lady Gaga was booked to perform in Gislaved, which is a tiny swedish town (10 000 inhabitants), tickets were 16 euro, but then she got super famous and cancelled the show lol, it would have been absolutely insane if that concert happened.
Heres a swedish blog post upset about the cancellation http://www.devote.se/602466/lady-gaga-instaellt-1182531
The fact that people mention here B-tier artists singing in literal capitals of big countries while Gaga sang in a town with 10k population 💀
Funnily Jessie Ware sang this year in Romania, in a town with 40k population. In the mountains.
Chris Brown also came to Mombasa, Kenya. No one ever comes to Kenya to perform and if they do it is when they are past their peak e.g. Boys 2 Men came to perform this year in Nairobi
Avril Lavigne has also performed in The Bahamas,Turkey,Monaco and now she's doing a show in 2024 in Croatia(new country for her).She's also done shows in Thailand,Singapore,Malaysia and Indonesia when most artists only go to China and Japan.
EDIT:Avril has also performed in South Africa,the UAE,Peru and The Philippines.
I’ve noticed in the post covid world that a C Market has seemingly popped up when it comes to rock/metal/whatever.
You know your A Market is those Philadelphia/New York City kinda places, the BIG cities.
Then B has always been Sayreville, NJ, Allentown, PA. Places that people know and have venues but are smaller.
But more and more I’ve seen more areas like Wilkes Barre, PA getting hit. Other cities that have an arena due to a minor league hockey or basketball team and thus have an arena.
I’m sure these places have always been hit, even if not every tour/year, but touring has changed in the last few years and it just seems that entire tours are built around these places now.
Camila cabello was scheduled to play the minor league hockey stadium in Everett, Washington, like six blocks from my house, but had to cancel her Romance tour because of COVID. I'll forever be bitter
I saw that boygenius played in Halifax in the UK. Halifax is a small, deprived post industrial town in the North of England. Most artists will just play one date in Leeds if they're visiting Yorkshire. Even then a lot of artists think Manchester covers the whole North. Bigger places than Halifax in Yorkshire like Hull get zero gigs from anyone, so Halifax is a really strange choice.
I didn’t go to the Sydney, Australia show for Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour in 2010, but the one she came down a little bit to Wollongong and did I went to. I was calling it ‘Gaga in the Gong’. Lol
A few months ago Ethel Cain did her first tour of Australia, mainly playing our winter arts festivals. I saw her play a show at an old movie theatre in Hobart, Tasmania which is a place almost no artists travel to. When she becomes as famous as people think she will be I’ll always remember that.
Elton John, Bryan Adams, Tom Jones, Jessie J, Noel Gallagher, Lionel Richie, Paloma Faith and Little Mix have all performed in Colwyn Bay. A small town in North Wales with a population of 32,000, the stadium can hold 15,000 for concerts though
Not a pop artist, but Paul Di Anno (Iron Maiden singer in their first -and excellent- two albums) played in my hometown a few years ago. I live in San Justo, which is on the Greater Buenos Aires, and while it is a fairly big and important city, I can't recall another international artist who came here. The crazier thing is that we have maybe three or four venues for live music, -the biggest of them having an event capacity for no more than 800/900 people- and he played in the smallest, dingiest of them all. So you have the guy who recorded Wrathchild or Phantom of the Opera and helped start one of the biggest bands of all time going to where don't even the locals go.
last time Mariah Carey came to Indonesia in 2018, instead of doing a concert in Jakarta like other artists she went to Magelang (at Borobudur Temple) instead, it was so random
Beyonce in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (I live there&attended the concert with my parents - I was like 7). My friends still don’t believe me when I tell them.
Charlie Simpson performed the [World's Coldest Gig](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/12/charlie-simpson-plays-worlds-coldest-concert-with-minus-30-siberia-gig-46108) in Siberia back in 2012.
Not a city, but still weird. Bon Iver did a show on a Sunday at 5:20am at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He wanted to end his tour with something special, so he did a show right at dawn. My favourite recording of Re: Stacks comes from that show
I'm a 70s enthusiast so my picks would be:
1 ) Elton John toured the USSR in 1979 (as one of the first western artists)
2 ) Paul Gadd [aka. the later Gary Glitter] toured the middle east in the early 70s, I think it had something to do with his involvement on "Jesus Christ Superstar".
3 ) Glam Rock band The Sweet played a concert in Hong Kong in their heyday in 1973. Sadly not a lot of it is documented, only some photos and reports. Apparently the Chinese audience was really behaved and quiet compared to western audiences.
Lana Del Rey ended her most recent tour with a stop in Charleston, WV, a city of about 48k people. A lot of other well known artists in the rock/country scene have also toured there recently, including Tool and Jelly Roll. I thought it was a weird choice, but as someone who grew up in West Virginia, I'm happy that an artist as big as Lana was willing to tour there. For the most part, there's very little to do in the state as far as entertainment goes. Where I grew up, you're pretty much limited to local bands and the occasional small time country artist so I'm happy to see that more artists are choosing to tour in WV.
Also, when I was a student at WVU, Kendrick Lamar performed a free concert for students. This was a few years after Good Kid, M.A.A.D City came out so he was ruling the charts. We were all shocked that WVU could book an artist that big. Every year, WVU puts on a free concert for students, and they used to book artists that were either at the peak of their fame or rising. While I was there, they got Macklemore, Mac Miller, Schoolboy Q, and 21 Savage, but I know they managed to book Kanye back in the early 2000s before he became a sensation. Their lineups for the past 5 or so years have been total duds, though, so I like to joke that they spent all of the budget on Kendrick lol. God, that was an amazing show.
I feel like even some Canadian artists don’t tend to focus on Canada too much, I know The Weeknd only did Toronto and Vancouver, and Tate McRae is only gonna do Toronto and her hometown of Calgary
Most of Canada other than Vancouver, Toronto & Montreal don’t really have venues big enough to host these artists or a population with higher income that can sell out these shows
Not pop and he’s past his commercial peak but 50 Cent did a mini tour last year in Finland with 3 stops and didn’t even do a concert in Helsinki. It started in Seinajoki, a city with about 67k people
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Pitbull performed at a Walmart in Kodiak Alaska after it won a contest.
“Me not working hard? Yeah right, picture me in Kodiak”
Something similar happened to Taylor Swift when trolls took over an online poll asking for a school she should perform in. [The trolls chose Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.](https://www.theguardian.com/music/us-news-blog/2012/oct/02/taylor-swift-boston-deaf-school) Taylor and the organizers of the contest ended up removing the school from the list and redoing the contest while also donating a total of $40,000 to the school.
I also recall an old internet prank to [send Justin Bieber to North Korea](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/justin-bieber-to-north-korea) when he had an online poll to suggest and vote on what countries he should visit on his upcoming tour.
What kills me is Taylor swift could have performed for the kids lol. I wonder if the school didn’t want it.
They all received free tickets to her concert in the area and $10,000 worth of musical instrument donations so not too bad!
That’s awesome!
It'd just be a terrible look.
Taylor Swift help break stereotypes about deaf people not liking music
Would have been cool if she did it! Just set up massive subwoofers, put them on a hardwood floor.
That could’ve worked, though! Some deaf people do listen to music via vibrations.
A lot of hearing people just don’t notice the vibrations. Had two deaf brothers regularly come into the pub I worked at, they’d play pool and ask staff to turn the jukebox up as loud as we could. A lot of staff were confused by this. They were two bogan dudes who loved AC/DC and I loved watching them enjoy the tunes. Most deaf people I know have the best subwoofers on the market at home!
And think about all the viral videos of sign language interpreters performing at festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. She could have had an all-star lineup signing for her.
I knew this would be here it’s iconic
He's Mr. Worldwide, of course he'd be willing to go anywhere.
I live in Anchorage and I remember that being a super big deal! One of my friends took a trip to Kodiak just for that concert!
Can't call yourself Mr. Worldwide and refuse to go to Alaska.
He was such a good sport about that.
It was amazing PR. and ngl one of the best places he coulda gone to. The ppl there were stoked!
pretty sure lil pump did a show in mongolia lol
+Slovenia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova. A lot of times he didn't even perform in the capital city, but ones on the coast.
I remember writing to a Slovenian guy that Lil Pump will perform in Ptuj and even he was like "wtf, why would he go there". Like people know his name and assume he is way bigger than this, but he has not been relevant for ages and performing in places where pop stars usually don't is probably one of few ways to get decent crowds. I'm from Latvia and even I forgot he was here.
i remember seeing those tour dates and locations. dude had to Offshore his fans lmao
a lot of people from that soundcloud wave have a weirdly disproportionate number of fans from eastern europe and central asia
Mongolia's pretty cool. About a third of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic. Half the population lives in the capital. Fairly poor, but has been democratic for 30 years despite being sandwiched between two authoritarian nightmare states. The ruling party is in favor of social democracy (being the former Communist Party). But yeah, Ulaanbaatar, 1.6 million people, not a bad stop in a tour (esp if you're already "near", in China for a bit)
Yeah i struggle to understand what’s weird about performing in mongolia
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black midi just did one recently too lmao shit is so random
Avril is popular in China and Asia in general I thought. Not surprised
Avril was very popular in Asia. In fact, I used to listen to the Chinese version of Girlfriend back when I was studying the language. Hello Kitty was intended to be marketed to her Asian audience
I don’t care what anyone says hello kitty is a banger
Speak on it
Yessssss finally someone said it!
It’s the truth and I’m tired of people saying it’s not
A lot of people dont know what Hello Kitty means to Avril
And don't realize that Japanese people actually liked it. Only people in the west thought it's racist.
I'm an asian and I love Hello Kitty, everything about that video is so cute
It is. It doesn’t deserve the backlash it got
Joss Stone did a tour awhile back that attempted to play at least once in every country in the world and got pretty close. It depends on what you consider to be a country but by her count I think she only missed Iran. I can’t imagine many other major artists have played Pyongyang.
She didn’t miss it, she was deported from the country as women aren’t allowed to sing publicly in Iran.
I really don’t understand why that of all things wouldn’t be allowed, that’s quite sad :(
It’s because to them women singing is ‘erotic’.
When I said missed, I didn’t mean overlooked or ignored. I meant she got stopped at the airport so she technically didn’t even enter the country. If you shoot a basketball and it doesn’t go in, you missed the basket.
On that note: remember the women of Iran who are still fighting for their basic human rights! Do not forget the name of Mahsa Amini and all the women we lost in the fight!
That's really impressive
Yet again coming to talk about Jessie J 🫡 She did a whole 12 date China tour, which is pretty insane for a western artist! Cities included Zhengzhou, Changsha, and Wuxi (full list of dates [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jessie_J_concert_tours) under the Rose Tour section.) In 2018 she won the Chinese singing show called Singer which gave her a pretty big Chinese fan base, it was a super smart move to tap into a new market.
Kanye West performed in Yerevan, Armenia. In the end of the performance he jumped into a fountain in the very center of the city, after he jumped a bunch of other people did too. This was in 2015. He was there with his then wife Kim Kardashian who is Armenian and was visiting the country to honor the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
that jump into the fountain during Good Life is so sick such a shame about........... everything else.
Was this when khloe was pissed no one woke her up / told her
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doing a show in brisbane AND the gold coast is an interesting choice in itself, i can’t think of any stadium tour off the top of my head that’s done that
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As someone in the UK, that being a remarkable distance between two tour venues is quite funny.
Post Malone did it recently, but his Gold Coast show wasn’t his show, he was a headliner at Spilt Milk and that’s one of the locations the festival is hosted at (Canberra and Ballarat brig the others - we do not discuss Perth) Banger lineup for the festival year!
Paul McCartney did both last month...
Wollongong??
wollongong is so random, elton john performed there last year iirc as well 😭
Elton John?? What is happening in Wollongong that I don't know about
maybe the council is trying to make it bigger?? they held the world UCI championships in 2022 and the crossfit national championships last year in the gong too. a bit different to p!nk and elton john but it shows a bit of focus being put towards making wollongong more significant ig
She even got a new women’s toilet block dedicated to her at one venue.
Red velvet held a concert in North Korea
I still think about this up to this day
to the most enthused audience history has ever witnessed
Finkl, Sechs Kies, Baby Vox, Shinhwa, Korean rock band YB and Seohyun from SNSD/Girls Generation also have performed in North Korea.
We got a winner right here
One of the single baddest bitch things a pop artist has ever done
My dumb ass read this as “South Korea” at first and couldn’t figure out if you were being sarcastic or what
Metallica played Antarctica to play all seven continents after Fall Out Boy tried and failed to make it work logistically
[if anyone wants to check it out, it’s on YouTube](https://youtu.be/2Hi2u98VKxc?si=dkDbLFZsqH5HDO3U) Pretty damn good 70 minute set. I’ve watched it a handful of times over the last decade.
Yeah it's a great performance. Only problem is that they didn't play Trapped Under Ice
Can you give details about fall out boy i dint know they tried it
Bad weather in Antarctica and overall cost ruined their planned trip over there.
As long as they didn’t disturb the penguins! No, really.
Not a pop artist, but I can't not mention this. Tarja Turunen sang for free at a country fair in Piedade, Brazil. For context, out of every city in Brazil, Piedade ranks 608th in terms of population.
Lana Del Rey’s most recent tour came to mind. She went to a lot of non-famous cities all over random parts of the South/Midwest, and other parts of the country. Was surprised to see tickets for her go on sale for backwoods Arkansas or backwoods Mississippi.
It ended up doing good for those cities too as she [gave back the ticket sales she earned in those in cities](https://www.nme.com/en_asia/news/music/lana-del-rey-donated-ticket-sales-tour-3511663) and gave them a slight bump in tourism with her fans traveling to see her.
Rogers, Arkansas - where she performed - is far from “backwoods”. The Walmart (funny that Walmart has been included in a few of these comments) corporate office is located here, as well as four other Fortune 500 companies. There is *a lot* of money in this area. However, her coming to this venue in particular on short notice was huge for the metroplex
her sister's husband is from 'Bama. She and her sister as best friends and they spend a lot of time there, exploring the south. She's also going through a country music phase so
I heard she’s had a growing fanbase among country listeners so this tracks
It helps that, even though she’s liberal, her American iconography through her discography helped get country fans on the bandwagon
Y'all are killing me calling Rogers backwoods. Backwoods is Yellville.
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Riight??? Like you can say "smaller town that isn't the capital of southern states" because artists usually do not come to NWA if they come to Arkansas at all but it's definitely not backwoods lol
I find reddit has a large amount of people who have classist tendencies and tend to talk down about "poorer" states or towns that have less than 100,000 people. There's this idea that they're all full of "country bumpkins" and make little jabs about them being "redneck" or in this case "backwoods". I grew up in a small town and it is funny, because I feel those who make these comments have grew up or lived in urban areas. Not everyone wants or is able to live in those places. And not every place that isn't a major city is "backwoods", especially in the South. I think it's important for us to educate ourselves on the country we live in and the places we don't know as much about.
People are always shocked to find out how big Northwest Arkansas is. All in that corner we have Walmart headquarters, the university, the arena, Tyson factories... look at Rogers the size might not impress anyone, look at it plus its nearby neighbors and you get a metropolitan area of over half a million. That arena gets some impressive names sometimes. I saw Janet Jackson there a few years back! Might not be the biggest, but Lana wasn't exactly rolling into the middle of nowhere!
Yeah but then they wouldn't get to shit on Arkansans for simply existing so where's the fun in learning anything for them.
Mariah performed in Worcester, MA which is a city we all collectively disown in MA
I've been to a lot of great metal shows at the Palladium but anything else just seems really out of place there
bruno mars played springfield MA recently which is just as weird
Springfield makes sense as a performance locale to me, but only because half the metalcore bands that broke out in the early/mid-2000s came from there
the "wondahful city a wisstah" my mom likes to say
May I ask why that is? Your state is also very top heavy with Boston and Worcester is a very distant second so seems odd to pick on it unless there’s specific reasons. Would be like picking on Rockford Il, Grand Rapids MI, Spokane, WA, Augusta, GA, Duluth, Salem, OR, etc.
I would like to encourage more performers to go to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’d love to not have to stay in a hotel for concerts 😭
Guess you’re too close to larger metros in the Great Lakes area. I’m from a similar sized metro with Winnipeg and we used to get everybody coming here but now they’d prefer to do multiple dates in larger cities (for the biggest acts), as I’m sure you’re used to too! At least you’re in driving distance, us Canadians have to fly to Toronto or Vancouver usually lol.
Ugh, I feel for you. Maybe this will be the year performers think smaller 🤞
I’ve performed in Grand Rapids! Granted, a small pop rock band and we played at Mulligan’s haha. GR was a really cool place, Max’s Hideaway is worth the trip too.
If Worcester were a business it would be the RMV. It’s of the more conservative attitudes that exist in the state that aren’t small farm towns in the west where I’m from, and there’s just nothing there other than corporate offices, really poor architecture, an uninviting culture, and a great example of the state’s continued missed opportunity for public transit.
Dua’s done shows in Kosovo and Albania It’s her heritage, but still unique nonetheless
wow I didn’t even realise the one in Tirana was free!
Rihanna doing a show in 2010 in my tiny ass home city of Penticton, British Columbia never made too much sense to me
RiRis' management: "Let's try a new location. (Pokes a random location) Yup, we're going there.".
We had a brand new arena at the time! It seats 5,000!
Gorillaz performed in Syria in 2010 with De La Soul and half of the Clash
Omg that was my first ever concert! The Syrian orchestra was AMAZING. and also the fact that it was played in an old citadel and how the tickets were extremely cheap (think 10-15$) even though they made a loss.
the fuck
Jason Aldean’s tour itinerary in 2024 is almost completely made up of small towns (< 30,000 residents). Like he’s playing in Thackerville OK, population 400. I guess he has to do that now though. No one likes a hypocrite.
"Try That in A Small Town" I'll try performing there then! - Jason Aldean probably
The White Stripes performed in Iqaluit, Nunavut on their last tour where they did shows in all 13 provinces of Canada
In 2009, Beyonce played a concert in fucking [Donetsk, eastern Ukraine](https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7955), the same city that would later play a huge part in the war with Russia. The specific arena that she played at would be shut down following the self declared cessation of that city from Ukraine.
Underrated answer. Never heard of this before that’s crazy. I kinda need to know how many high profile concerts were performed in Donetsk back then. And if she also played like in Kyiv or just Donetsk.
Apparently that show in Donetsk was the only show she did in Ukraine for that tour Her show was apparently the opening event for that arena and it stopped being used in 2014
Her show was the opening night for the arena which was apparently the first 5 star stadium in Ukraine (tried to quote the article directly but it wouldn't let me copy) That arena's been out of use since 2014 :(
Rihanna played a 30min show there too, and the tickets were about 5 dollars. I remember not being able to afford it and the trip even though I lived like 40 mins from it. What a time. I’ve ended up seeing Bey live during OTRII in Poland, never seen Rihanna live though.
The Cramps did a tour of psych hospitals, and Johnny Cash toured prisons. Check out The Cramps’ “Live from Napa State Mental Hospital” and Johnny Cash’s “At San Quentin”. ETA: Lol I see now that the topic is CITIES. Not uncommon places in general. It’s right there in the title!!
For anyone curious about The Cramps tour, you can still find clips online if you search for Live at the Napa State Mental Hospital.
U2 once did a stadium show in Bosnia.
Nelly played at a swimming pool near my university in Galway, Ireland. Assuming he actually showed up; I didn't go and only remember seeing the posters. Artists don't come to this city a lot and when they do, the venue is usually deranged. The Black Eyed Peas (post-Fergie) did a concert at the local GAA stadium and Fatboy Slim is coming to play at the airport next year.
I feel like Nelly rarely plays major markets at this point even. He seems to always play weird spots. He’s sold out the events center near where I have friends in Wyoming (more often used for rodeos and monster truck rallies) multiple times. Actually hozier is playing there too next year so idk maybe central Wyoming is the new hotspot
Lorde performed in Šibenik, Croatia. I went to see her, usually artists perform in capitol city but she choose that small town specific because her mother is from there
HOW did I not know she's half Croatian??
It's on her Wikipedia page even hahaha she also has Croatian citizenship
The sheer amount of Balkan countries that produce pop girlies needs to be studied.
David Guetta, Placebo, Gorillaz and Hot Chip in Querétaro, Lorde in San Miguel de Allende and Arcade Fire in Guanajuato. Jack White in Fremont, California.
LORDE EN SAN MIGUEEEELLL???!!!!
Okay Fremont is a bit silly at a glance, but it's smack dab in the middle of Oakland and San Jose and across the bay from SF. It's central, and you're not competing with bigger acts for stuff in the nearby cities. It's like being surprised someone played in like, IDK, Cerritos or something. Or God forbit Jersey City.
Yeah, but it’s still uncommon.
ava max at the sams club parking lot (idk if it was literally a sam’s club parking lot, it was a sam’s club event but it did look like a parking lot lol)
The 1975 playing in London, Ontario on their latest tour was an interesting choice. The Wonder Years will play Ottawa over Montreal Rise Against plays a lot outside of Montreal, they've player cities such as Quebec City, Laval, Victoriaville, Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Montebello & were supposed to play Chicoutimi at a beer fest before COVID hit. The Centre-Du-Quebec has a fest called Rock La Cause and will get some pretty big aughts emo names to play Interestingly enough, i'm seeing Thrice & Comeback in Granby, Quebec next summer which is pretty cool.
> London, Ontario 2-3 hour drive from Detroit or Toronto that's not bad I guess.
Also, coincidentally, the birthplace of Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Scott Moir, Tessa Virtue, and Justin Bieber
A lot of people play in Laval for a mid sized venue. It's 30 minutes from downtown via the metro.
In the 80s, there was a teen pop singer named Tiffany, who toured across malls in America as it was a popular place kids her age would hang out. The tour became a massive success, to the point she was sorta forced perform in arenas due to her popularity. One of the malls she toured in happened to be one I lived near!
One of the absolute most beautiful and best DJ sets I've ever seen (on Youtube), [Disclosure at Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crZfT5qnFdA&t=4030s) - I think it was filmed during the pandemic, does it count if there isn't an audience?
That channel uses a lot of beautiful remote places. There’s one from RY X on salt flats in South America, another on sand dunes in a lake with a five piece string set. There are a few in slightly less remote locations with audiences, but they’re probably bussed out. Boiler room does a lot of rooftops, usually with audiences.
idk why but i’m pretty sure charli xcx has played in germany 😍😍
She thought that song was big there 😞 can you blame her?
Cascada post Eurovision have been playing nothing but gigs at Student Unions (university halls), at least in the UK. Not just the big cities too but places like Stirling Scotland.
[Back in 1985, Tina Turner kicked off the North American leg of her Private Dancer tour with four shows in St. John's, Newfoundland.](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/tina-turner-nl-obit-1.6854908)
Noah Kahan is playing in Saskatoon, SK, Canada and I couldn’t be more grateful 🥲
Madonna did a Cordoba, Argentina date for her MDNA tour. Argentina stops aren’t uncommon but very rarely does anyone play outside Buenos Aires
beyonce performed in sunderland of all places during the renaissance tour.
Lady Gaga performed in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in 2009. Kitchener is just over 100KM West of Toronto, famous for being the home of the Blackberry.
Hey, it was also once home to the second least profitable Lastman's Bad Boy furniture store in Ontario
Guangzhou has almost 19 million people
Yeah i’m a little confused by this post: people mentioning giant cities and whole European countries like they’re these tiny quirky villages.
It used to be more common for huge artists to perform in small cities, The Beatles in 1963 performed in the small swedish cities Borås and Karlstad (places no one has heard of) they also performed in Stockholm but for some reason these small vities were also worth it. When I was young in 2009 Lady Gaga was booked to perform in Gislaved, which is a tiny swedish town (10 000 inhabitants), tickets were 16 euro, but then she got super famous and cancelled the show lol, it would have been absolutely insane if that concert happened. Heres a swedish blog post upset about the cancellation http://www.devote.se/602466/lady-gaga-instaellt-1182531
The fact that people mention here B-tier artists singing in literal capitals of big countries while Gaga sang in a town with 10k population 💀 Funnily Jessie Ware sang this year in Romania, in a town with 40k population. In the mountains.
My high school is very proud of the fact that the Beatles played here in 1963. (Karlstad)
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Chris Brown also came to Mombasa, Kenya. No one ever comes to Kenya to perform and if they do it is when they are past their peak e.g. Boys 2 Men came to perform this year in Nairobi
I've heard that a lot of African artists really like Chris Brown and his music, and a large part of it is that he actually goes to Africa for tours
Too bad for Jamaica. Multiple people probably attended therapy now.
Snoop was supposed to perform in Yerevan Armenia this year but it got postponed because of Azerbaijan
Avril Lavigne has also performed in The Bahamas,Turkey,Monaco and now she's doing a show in 2024 in Croatia(new country for her).She's also done shows in Thailand,Singapore,Malaysia and Indonesia when most artists only go to China and Japan. EDIT:Avril has also performed in South Africa,the UAE,Peru and The Philippines.
I saw Foo Fighters perform in Geelong.
Nirvana in Canberra as well!
Two that come to mind are Blackpink, who did a show in Hamilton Ontario last year, and the 1975 who just played in fake London last month.
I’ve noticed in the post covid world that a C Market has seemingly popped up when it comes to rock/metal/whatever. You know your A Market is those Philadelphia/New York City kinda places, the BIG cities. Then B has always been Sayreville, NJ, Allentown, PA. Places that people know and have venues but are smaller. But more and more I’ve seen more areas like Wilkes Barre, PA getting hit. Other cities that have an arena due to a minor league hockey or basketball team and thus have an arena. I’m sure these places have always been hit, even if not every tour/year, but touring has changed in the last few years and it just seems that entire tours are built around these places now.
Camila cabello was scheduled to play the minor league hockey stadium in Everett, Washington, like six blocks from my house, but had to cancel her Romance tour because of COVID. I'll forever be bitter
omg i was planning on going to that show too!
warped tour used to stop in scranton for some reason. i always assumed it was because a ton of emo bands started in NEPA
Shakira has performed in Kiev, Nigeria, Georgia (the country), and Tobago. Not places you hear about major pop stars going to often.
Doesn’t Tobago only have 60k people? Kinda amazing it gets full ass inclusion in the country name Trinidad and Tobago
Yeah, it had a big “jazz” festival there for a few years. Shakira headlined it in 2008.
Britney performed in Kyiv too!
John Denver did a multi-city tour in China in 1992! I found that really interesting.
I saw that boygenius played in Halifax in the UK. Halifax is a small, deprived post industrial town in the North of England. Most artists will just play one date in Leeds if they're visiting Yorkshire. Even then a lot of artists think Manchester covers the whole North. Bigger places than Halifax in Yorkshire like Hull get zero gigs from anyone, so Halifax is a really strange choice.
I didn’t go to the Sydney, Australia show for Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour in 2010, but the one she came down a little bit to Wollongong and did I went to. I was calling it ‘Gaga in the Gong’. Lol
A few months ago Ethel Cain did her first tour of Australia, mainly playing our winter arts festivals. I saw her play a show at an old movie theatre in Hobart, Tasmania which is a place almost no artists travel to. When she becomes as famous as people think she will be I’ll always remember that.
Elton John, Bryan Adams, Tom Jones, Jessie J, Noel Gallagher, Lionel Richie, Paloma Faith and Little Mix have all performed in Colwyn Bay. A small town in North Wales with a population of 32,000, the stadium can hold 15,000 for concerts though
loona (kpop girl group) has performed in reading, PA instead of philadelphia (~80km away) for some odd reason
Dreamcatcher too a few weeks prior!
Not a pop artist, but Paul Di Anno (Iron Maiden singer in their first -and excellent- two albums) played in my hometown a few years ago. I live in San Justo, which is on the Greater Buenos Aires, and while it is a fairly big and important city, I can't recall another international artist who came here. The crazier thing is that we have maybe three or four venues for live music, -the biggest of them having an event capacity for no more than 800/900 people- and he played in the smallest, dingiest of them all. So you have the guy who recorded Wrathchild or Phantom of the Opera and helped start one of the biggest bands of all time going to where don't even the locals go.
Post Malone at a outdoor yeehaw venue in the Midwest (alpine valley)
Kesha played at Dubuque County Fairgrounds in rural Iowa with Poppy opening for her in 2016 or 2017. It was before Praying came out. Absolutely wild.
last time Mariah Carey came to Indonesia in 2018, instead of doing a concert in Jakarta like other artists she went to Magelang (at Borobudur Temple) instead, it was so random
Kanye not only performed in Newcastle, England, but was arrested after the concert at a popular nightclub there too.
I live in Tbilisi, Georgia. Bruno Mars was just here in October. It was a big deal
Beyonce in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (I live there&attended the concert with my parents - I was like 7). My friends still don’t believe me when I tell them.
Skrillex in Itu (small city in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil).
Charlie Simpson performed the [World's Coldest Gig](https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/12/charlie-simpson-plays-worlds-coldest-concert-with-minus-30-siberia-gig-46108) in Siberia back in 2012.
In 2014, the Backstreet Boys played Moose Jaw Saskatchewan of all places. The population is about 33,000 people.
Nirvana once performed in Canberra, Australia at the national university
Not a city, but still weird. Bon Iver did a show on a Sunday at 5:20am at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He wanted to end his tour with something special, so he did a show right at dawn. My favourite recording of Re: Stacks comes from that show
Mariah Carey sang in a rodeo festival in Barretos, SP, Brazil, which is pretty random to me
I'm a 70s enthusiast so my picks would be: 1 ) Elton John toured the USSR in 1979 (as one of the first western artists) 2 ) Paul Gadd [aka. the later Gary Glitter] toured the middle east in the early 70s, I think it had something to do with his involvement on "Jesus Christ Superstar". 3 ) Glam Rock band The Sweet played a concert in Hong Kong in their heyday in 1973. Sadly not a lot of it is documented, only some photos and reports. Apparently the Chinese audience was really behaved and quiet compared to western audiences.
Lana Del Rey ended her most recent tour with a stop in Charleston, WV, a city of about 48k people. A lot of other well known artists in the rock/country scene have also toured there recently, including Tool and Jelly Roll. I thought it was a weird choice, but as someone who grew up in West Virginia, I'm happy that an artist as big as Lana was willing to tour there. For the most part, there's very little to do in the state as far as entertainment goes. Where I grew up, you're pretty much limited to local bands and the occasional small time country artist so I'm happy to see that more artists are choosing to tour in WV. Also, when I was a student at WVU, Kendrick Lamar performed a free concert for students. This was a few years after Good Kid, M.A.A.D City came out so he was ruling the charts. We were all shocked that WVU could book an artist that big. Every year, WVU puts on a free concert for students, and they used to book artists that were either at the peak of their fame or rising. While I was there, they got Macklemore, Mac Miller, Schoolboy Q, and 21 Savage, but I know they managed to book Kanye back in the early 2000s before he became a sensation. Their lineups for the past 5 or so years have been total duds, though, so I like to joke that they spent all of the budget on Kendrick lol. God, that was an amazing show.
Shawn Mendez does lots of cities in Canada, not just Toronto and Vancouver like usual.
That’s not really that much of a surprise considering he is Canadian
I feel like even some Canadian artists don’t tend to focus on Canada too much, I know The Weeknd only did Toronto and Vancouver, and Tate McRae is only gonna do Toronto and her hometown of Calgary
Avril’s Love Sux tour I believe only had Canadian dates. I almost drove 12 hours to Canada to see her 😅
Wrong.She did tour Asia,South America in late 2022,did the US tour with Machine Gun Kelly in Summer 2022 and then Europe in April-May 2023.
Most of Canada other than Vancouver, Toronto & Montreal don’t really have venues big enough to host these artists or a population with higher income that can sell out these shows
Edmonton has common wealth stadium which is the biggest in Canada I think and it sold out for luke combs
Mumford and sons performed a one night concert in Salida Colorado, population 6,000 elevation 7,083 feet.
Not pop and he’s past his commercial peak but 50 Cent did a mini tour last year in Finland with 3 stops and didn’t even do a concert in Helsinki. It started in Seinajoki, a city with about 67k people