Halsey's Arena Tour

This is Halsey. (It sounds cooler if you say it like "This is Jeopardy.")

You may know her as the female lead in The Chainsmokers' 2016 #1 song, Closer. You may also know her from her current solo song, Now or Never which reached #17 on the Billboard Hot 100. While I try to keep up with popular music, I'll admit that this is all that I know about Halsey. However, I recently heard commercials that she is coming to Washington's Verizon Center in October as part of an arena tour.

While it's possible (likely) that I'm out of touch, how is Halsey big enough to do an arena tour? Yes, she has 5 million Twitter followers and had the #1 album in the US (according to Wikipedia, "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 with 106,000 album-equivalent units, of which 76,000 were pure album sales"), but here are bands/performers that have played or will play at Verizon Center in 2017.

Jay-Z
Janet Jackson
Green Day
John Mayer
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Chris Brown (and others)
The Weeknd
Eric Church
New Kids on the Block with Paula Abdul and Boyz II Men
Kendrick Lamar
Daryl Hall and John Oates and Tears for Fears
Queen + Adam Lambert
Roger Waters
J. Cole
Earth Wind & Fire an CHIC featuring Nile Rodgers
Shawn Mendes
Depeche Mode
Arcade Fire
Ed Sheeran
Katy Perry
Bruno Mars
Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull
Guns N' Roses
Imagine Dragons
Lady Gaga
Andrea Bocelli

There are plenty of superstars listed in this group. While there are others where you can debate whether or not they can fill an arena, it seems like all of them have more impressive resumes than Halsey. Again, I may (and probably am) out of touch, but my question still stands: how is Halsey big enough right now to do an arena tour?

Spice Girls Tickets

I am a Spice Girls fan. Feel free to mock and ridicule me. When the Spice Girls debuted in the United States in early 1997, they were unlike anything else on the music scene. Here were five attractive women, each with a memorable nickname, singing about girl power while dressed somewhat scantily. “Wannabe” was and still is an extremely catchy song, even though to this day, I have no idea what a “zigazig ha” means. Plus, all guys have to love the line, “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” Sounds good to me. A friend of mine even bought me the Spice Girls tape as a gift (it was 1997 and I still didn’t have a CD player; I’m always a bit behind on technology). Despite the fact that some of the Spice Girls really don’t sing very well, they managed to have hit after hit anyway.

As you probably know at this point, the Spice Girls have reunited. There was great celebration throughout the land, specifically in the UK as they are performing 17 shows in December and January in London’s O2 Arena. I recently learned that the Spice Girls are coming to the Verizon Center in DC on February 21, 2008. If tickets were reasonable, I figured that it might be fun to attend. Of course, finding someone to go with me would be a challenge. Unfortunately, this is all a moo point. (“It's like a cow's opinion. It just doesn't matter.”)

I went to the Ticketmaster website yesterday and found that two tickets in Section 418, Row J are $92.50 each. Ticketmaster also charges a “convenience charge” of $17.45 per ticket and an order processing charge of $4.90. Fortunately, there is no charge if the tickets are sent through Standard Mail. What a bargain! How nice of Ticketmaster to cover the 41 cents to mail the tickets. Anyway, the total charge for two tickets (and not even good tickets) = $224.80!! I think I was willing to spend $25 per ticket. That is just about the cost of the Ticketmaster fees alone. Are there really people out there willing to spend that much to see the Spice Girls? Maybe I'll try to catch them when they reunite again in another ten years.