Grammy-nominated singer forced to cancel tour over poor ticket sales. ‘I'm extremely embarrassed.'
On July 28, the singer best known for his 2019 collaboration with Julia Michaels, 'If the World Was Ending," posted an urgent message on his TikTok account. He told fans that he had exactly 48 hours to sell 20,000 tickets to improve the prospects of Saxe's tour coming into fruition.
Although fans tried to rally and bought a few thousand tickets in conjunction with Saxe working to keep prices low at around $50, it was not to be. On Aug. 1, Saxe posted that he made the decision to cancel the tour despite his fans' best efforts.
As Saxe explained to The Canadian Press, he was on the verge of concluding his three-album deal with his record label. So, the label itself wasn't going to cover the costs for his slate of North American shows in the fall. Saxe tried to get creative, looking into booking bigger capacity venues to offset potential losses he couldn't afford to have this time around.
Saxe then published an op-ed in Variety to detail the reasons why he was so transparent in how his process went for him.
'As a general rule, I'm always trying to practice sincerity in failure rather than the facade of success,' he wrote. 'I think it's really tempting as an artist, or as anyone, to always be projecting that everything is great at all times. And I find that uninteresting and disingenuous.'
He thanked fans for their support and explained that those who attended would be promptly refunded.
'Even though a few thousand more people showed up in just a few days — which was emotional and the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me on the internet — it still wasn't enough to save the tour, and I will be humbly refunding every ticket,' Saxe said.
Even if it was not meant to be this time around, Saxe still holds on to the belief that he will sell out an entire tour one day.
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Murjani Rawls may be reached at mrawls@njadvancemedia.com
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