What a time to be alive! Beyoncé and Björk have both announced 2023 world tours, a rather auspicious start to the new year.
Queen Bey will kick off the Renaissance world tour in Europe, moving through cities including Stockholm, Paris, and London from May through June. In July, the megastar will travel across North America, hitting major hubs such as Chicago, Miami, and Houston. (New York City and Los Angeles are noticeably absent from the list.)
Björk, on the other hand, is embarking on an arena tour intended as a follow-up to 2019's Cornucopia, an elaborately produced concert series that melded digital art, music, and theater. The Icelandic artist will set sail in March, heading to Australia and Japan. The following month, she'll appear at Coachella, slated to begin in mid-April. Throughout the fall, she'll travel through Europe: Paris, Milan, and Prague are among the tour's stops.
It's prime time for Björk and Beyoncé to go on tour — the latter dropped Renaissance in July, and the former unveiled Fossura in September.
The announcement of Bey's tour closely follows her concert in Dubai, a $2.5 million gig that rubbed some the wrong way. As some critics noted, her decision to perform in a region with an poor record on women's rights and a reputation for "hostility" against members of the LGBTQ+ community is questionable, at best. Granted, the backlash isn't likely to affect ticket sales — this is Beyoncé, after all!
Let's just hope prospective concert-goers aren't confronted with another Ticketmaster fiasco.
