Spotify Wrapped

Taylor Swift’s Australia’s Eras Tour ran across seven stadium shows, selling more than 600,000 tickets. There were forests, bicycles, columns of light, a doll house, fireworks, beaches, pumpkins, diamonds, flickering bracelets, trains, candles, smoke shows, snow, witches, tuxedos, neon golf clubs, and shooting flames. Snakes, confetti. Perfect storms.

The result was captivating from start to finish. Swift pulled off the impossible – the encapsulation of the good girl with the seductress, folklore with the snake. She was all four mythological Sex and the City characters in one. From Charlotte to Samantha, Miranda to Carrie, and back again using diametrically opposing forces to pinball the audience from one extreme to the other.

Swift's seven concerts helped generate more than $300 million for the Australian economy.

Taylor Swift has been criticised for her private plane usage, but claims to have bought double the amount of carbon credits needed to offset her flights for the Eras Tour. The pop star allegedly produced 138 tons of CO2 emissions in three months while commuting to visit Kelce, Newsweek reported.

Coldplay in contrast, announced that they reduced their touring carbon footprint by 59% compared with their previous world tour – via some creative methods that include kinetic dancefloors that allow dancing fans to generate electricity, recyclable LED wristbands and the band travelling by train.

The band’s pledge for the Music of the Spheres world tour, which began in 2022, was to reduce their carbon emissions from show production, freight, band and crew travel by “at least 50%”. Two years later, the band say they have surpassed that figure – with the help of their fans.

During the show, fans are also encouraged to hop on power bikes, which, along with solar installations and the dancefloors, charge smaller stage areas during concerts, as well as phone, laptop and tool-charging stations for the crew.

Coldplay’s data was collated by sustainability business Hope Solutions and their claims were verified by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT Prof John E Fernandez praised the band for “leading by example … to move the entire music industry toward true and humane sustainability”. Eighteen shows were powered entirely by a tourable battery system, made from recycled BMW batteries. For every ticket sold – 7 million so far – a tree has been planted through the global reforestation nonprofit One Tree Planted.

Will Oasis survive reformation? Definitely, maybe.

So the reunion could go either way. Its commercial success is obviously assured – the Oasis faithful are very faithful indeed, as demonstrated by the fact that even their most lacklustre albums sold millions; moreover, the crowds at Liam’s biggest solo shows suggested that their ranks were bolstered by an audience who couldn’t remember Oasis first time around: their streaming figures suggest that, almost uniquely among their peers, their music has cut through to younger listeners. One suspects its artistic success depends on whether the Gallaghers think they have something to prove 30 years on, in an era when their influence on current British pop appears to be nil. Or whether they approach it cynically, as a cash-grab into which they’ve been corralled by circumstance – it can’t be a coincidence that Noel’s attitude to reforming seemed to soften in the wake of a divorce that allegedly cost him £20m – and that’s going to be so rapturously received that what they sound like is besides the point. On one level a sure thing, it’s also attended by a sense of uncertainty: you can’t be 100% sure what’s going to happen, which I suppose makes it worth seeing.

Oasis will tour Australia in October and November 2025.