U2 now own the world record for highest grossing tour. Are these the younger acts most likely to match their success?
Mick Jagger may never forgive them, but this week U2 beat the Rolling Stones’ record for highest-ever grossing tour as they took their 360° show to Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Yet whilst their position as the world’s most touring band seems secure for the foreseeable future, there’s a growing number of bands who’d love to match the Irish band’s success. Here’s the five most serious contenders:
1. Coldplay
Chris Martin’s troupe of anthem-makers are, perhaps, the most obvious choice for a band following U2’s career path. Not only does the London band’s ability to sell albums and concert tickets in equally huge amounts make them a contender to U2’s crown, their emotion-inducing rock and concern for the world’s poor has won and lost both bands a great many fans.
2. Muse
With its huge screens and satelitte link-ups, U2‘s 1992/93 Zoo TV tour was arguably the most ambitious and technologically advanced tour of its time. If you missed out or were too young to see Zoo TV, Devonshire pomp-rockers Muse are now the band to beat for the sheer size and scope in their live shows.
3. Arcade Fire
After recording one of the finest debut album’s of the past decade, Canadian folk-rock band Arcade Fire showed a Bono-like ability to network and confirmed their trendy status by performing at New York’s Fashion Rocks event with David Bowie. Since then, the seven-strong group have slowly pushed their way to mainstream success and will cement their place in music’s A-list by performing a huge concert at Hyde Park in June (supported by another band destined for U2-aping mega-stardom: Mumford & Sons).
4. Radiohead
Oxfordshire’s finest rockers, Radiohead, have a reputation for being bookish miserablists but their brand of melancholia has created legions of evangelical fans desperate to see the band live. Having played one of the greatest Glastonbury sets of all time, in support of their album OK Computer in 1997, the band repeated the trick in 2003 to similar acclaim. They may not have box office statistics quite as eye-wateringly huge as their Irish counterparts but if U2 want their friday night slot this summer, to go down as one of the festival’s greatest, it’s Radiohead who’ve set the standard they’ll have to meet.
5. Lady Gaga
Bands are generally more successful than solo acts when it comes to raking in the cash on tour. One of the few credible threats to U2’s record from the younger generation of artists comes from 25-year-old Stefani Germanotta, better known as meat dress-wearing Lady Gaga. Her current Monster Ball tour shows that the New Yorker is following in the outlandish tradition of Madonna and, with a keen eye for attention-grabbing costumes and provocative choreography, Germanotta is blessed with the talents that any artist needs to keep an arena-full of fans happy.
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