Olivia Rodrigo, left, and Billie Eilish seem like a natural duo for a headlining tour, sitting on top of each other and sharing the spotlight, should that concept make a comeback. (AP photos)
Blame it on Kanye. Or rather, sort of.
There was a time, not so long ago, when true headlining tours were all the rage. I’m not talking about a traditional time slot for an opening act filled by an opening act, which would be followed by a traditional time slot for an opening act filled by a headlining act. Instead, I’m talking about tours featuring two headliners who brought their bands together, sat on top of each other, and traded the spotlight every three or four songs. Nothing was binary.
We can blame Kanye at least in part because it was 2011 when he teamed up with Jay-Z to release “Watch The Throne,” both a collaborative album and a collaborative tour. The ordeal was new for its time – it’s not that nothing like it had ever been done before, as concerts like this can go back decades in many forms, including the old revues that Motown or Stax Records were creating, but for the mainstream of popular culture in the 2010s, it was certainly fresh (remember, the Jay-Z/R Kelly tour took place in 2004, but we Let’s put that aside for the sake of this conversation because it seemed like an anomaly at the time).
From there, the world saw a strange influx of these types of bills. Jay-Z had a similar escapade with Justin Timberlake a few years later. Sting performed a daily double, first sharing a stage every night with Peter Gabriel and his band before doing the same with Paul Simon and his band. I was a fan of those things. The Watch The Throne tour turned out to be one of the three best hip-hop shows I’ve ever been to, while the Sting tours were interesting in their own right (not in a million years would I never imagined seeing Sting, in the flesh, singing the chorus of Gabriel’s “Kiss That Frog” alongside the former Genesis frontman).
My biggest question these days: what happened? They came and went and that’s about all we got in the 2010s. It only lasted a handful of years and everyone moved on without anyone really thinking about the reasons why artists stopped associating like this. Thinking about it too recently (as a geek like me would), I started to go down the mental rabbit hole of what combined touring in 2024 might make sense. And even though it seems that the golden age of these mashups is over, we can dream for another two to three years that this concept will make a comeback one day… right?
Either way, here are some ideas for managers and promoters who might want to dive back into the true co-headlining route.
Billie Eilish/Olivia Rodrigo
Of all the possibilities that exist, this one seems the most natural. Eilish just announced that her next record will be released next month and Rodrigo is still in great shape with the very good “GUTS” from 2023. Imagine the lights go out, Eilish starts with “Bad Guy” while Rodrigo sings the harmonies and from there we go straight into a trio of “Driver’s License”, “What Was I Made For?” and “Vampire,” the two verses swapped on each song every step of the way. Take all my money.
Morgan Wallen/Hardy
How has this not happened already? Country bros (sometimes problematic) rock out to crowds full of bros who like to hang out all night. Both are poster brothers of mainstream country’s latest wave of male quasi-superstars; why not allow them to take their respective bottles of Jack Daniels and head to lecture theaters around the world? Love them or hate them, you can’t deny the drawing power of a tour like this.
Noah Kahan/Ed Sheeran
One of them is going up. The other… isn’t necessarily going downhill, but when was the last time Ed Sheeran moved the needle in the seismic way he used to do on a regular basis? Pairing Kahan with, say, Mumford and Sons might make more sense, but that game can only be played with solo artists, so here we are. The collaboration potential is there and it’s not like these two aren’t some of the most famous pop guys with acoustic guitars in the world. Don’t dismiss it so easily.
Rose/Kelly Clarkson
That would be great ? Arguably the two best pure vocalists in the pop music game today, these two would combine for one heck of a show. I’d pay full price just to see how Pink would approach “The Trouble With Love Is.” Ditto for Clarkson and “Just Give Me A Reason”. This could survive in stadiums, right? Just think about how many #1 songs there were between the two.
Kendrick Lamar/J. Cole
Welp. Tell me if I understood correctly. J. Cole released a diss piece aimed at Kendrick Lamar. A few days later, Cole stood up in front of a live crowd and did something no one in hip-hop has done immediately after attacking someone in a song: he excuse. Cole is getting roasted. Lamar is still seen as a king. How could you not want to see a tour like this?
Taylor Swift/Beyoncé
I have to save the most impossible (and lucrative) idea for last. In practice, Beyoncé is moonlighting as a country artist these days, while Swift is the biggest pop star on the planet, so in one way or another, both of these positions have changed before our eyes and we didn’t even notice it. I don’t know how the logistics would work. They both do multi-night stadium runs, so maybe parachute into a city for a week and perform five of those seven nights?
Who knows. All I know is that it would break the music industry. And the Internet. And popular culture as we know it. So someone has to do it before Beyoncé drops her pop-punk album and hits the road with Fall Out Boy. “The Department of Tortured Cowboys” rings a bell, don’t you think?
