From the same old trailer park to sold-out arenas, Kacey Musgraves’ transformation from country music upstart to crossover queen was made complete with Star-Crossed: Unveiled. The 14-date U.S. arena trek earned $17.8 million and sold 167,000 tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
The tour was in support of last year’s Star-Crossed, which debuted at No. 3 on the Sept. 25-dated Billboard 200. It was promoted by AEG Presents; Musgraves is represented by Wasserman Music in the U.S.
Musgraves kicked off the tour on Jan. 19 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn., with a $692,000 take, and headed east for shows in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Philadelphia, closing out the month in Boston. The tour’s first six shows grossed $5.2 million and sold 63,000 tickets, already making it the biggest grossing tour of her career.
Momentum accelerated in February with each show grossing more than $1 million and selling more than 10,000 tickets. The tour peaked in New York, with the Feb. 5 performance at Madison Square Garden breaking the $2 million barrier at 14,370 tickets.
The MSG show leads a pack of eight Star-Crossed shows as the highest grossing concerts of Musgraves’ career, followed by dates in Los Angeles, Dallas, Nashville, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Oakland and Denver.
The eight-figure lump sum for Star-Crossed: Unveiled averages out to $1.27 million and 11,953 tickets per show, up 338% and 139%, respectively, from 2019’s Oh, What a World: Tour II. That tour was already up 125% and 90%, respectively, from 2018-19’s part one of Oh, What a World: Tour. And that tour represented a leap of 165% and 71%, respectively, from Musgraves’ 2015-16 Country & Western Rhinestone Revue, itself up 16% and 15%, respectively, from Same Trailer Different tour.
Musgraves’ 2022 tour caps nearly a decade of consistent growth on the road, with an especially big bump for her most recent outing. Selling out arenas is a rare feat for a contemporary artist who hasn’t hit the top half of the Billboard Hot 100, but her reputation as an acclaimed albums artist – she has four top five albums on the Billboard 200 and won the 2019 Grammy award for album of the year for Golden Hour – helps.
And in between headline tours, Musgraves has supported a range of acts across genres, from Kenny Chesney and Lady A to Katy Perry and Harry Styles, helping to broaden her footprint and bridge the gap for fans of country and pop. Pounding the pavement, so to speak, in support of reliably beloved material has slowly but surely expanded her reach to the point where she’s charting alongside the biggest live acts in the world, from Elton John to Billie Eilish.
In all, Musgraves has grossed a reported $31.8 million and sold 447,000 tickets in her career, more than half of which came from Star-Crossed: Unveiled. She is scheduled to play a string of festivals in the U.K., Australia and Japan this summer.
