Meghan Trainor Can't Sell Out an Arena Tour, So It's Been Cancelled

Times are tough out there. We’re all broke and everything else has gotten too expensive. So, if we’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on a concert, it has to be worth it, all for an artist we adore and who will offer a once-in-a-lifetime experience. That’s a lesson Meghan Trainor has been late to learn. She was supposed to launch her Get In Girl Tour this June, coinciding with the release of her seventh studio album, Toy With Me. The tour included dates at Madison Square Garden, the Kia Forum in L.A., and Chase Centre in San Francisco. These are big venues. And, it seems, she couldn’t sell them. So, Meghan Trainor’s tour is no more. The reason Meghan is given, however? That’s a bit odd.

She took to Instagram to apologize to her fans for cancelling every date, saying, “After a lot of reflection and some really tough conversations, I’ve made the difficult decision to cancel The Get in Girl Tour. Balancing the release of a new album, preparing for a nationwide tour, and welcoming out new baby girl to our growing family of five has just been more than I can take right now, and I need to be home and present for each and all of them at this time.”

This feels like a pretty standard PR-friendly explanation for the admittedly embarrassing reality of low sales. It’s rare for an artist to just say, “we got cocky and thought we could fill out an arena” with this stuff (The Black Keys are an exception.) I hope Meghan and her family are well, but surely she and her team knew the timing of her having her third kid (a daughter, born in January via surrogate) would coincide with their big tour plans?

This tour simply wasn’t selling as designed. Before the cancellation, you could see swaths of empty seats in most locations. As early as February, you could get tickets for $22 on Groupon. An artist does not go to Groupon that quickly without their team knowing things are bad. Even Variety noted in their write-up how fans had called out low sales. The cancellation must have happened pretty quickly, given that iHeartRadio was doing VIP ticket giveaway contests on Twitter as late as Wednesday.

Look, this isn’t to rag on Meghan specifically. I imagine she had a team around her who were convinced she could still sell out the places she was when she was all about that bass. She played Madison Square Garden only two years ago and seems to have sold out that date. And it’s easy for people like me who don’t listen to the radio or use Spotify to claim Trainor’s a nobody now, but she’s still working consistently. She has some popularity on TikTok, she was recently killed off pretty spectacularly in Ryan Murphy’s The Beauty, and she was a judge on Australian Idol. Like every other celebrity, she has a podcast. She writes songs for other artists. In a business this ruthless, just being able to keep working is a big deal.

There’s nothing wrong with not being able to sell out the places you used to. That’s the average musician experience. It is extremely rare for an artist to be both an arena/stadium artist for decades on end and a long-time chart topper. But it is a matter of pride, I think. It’s hard to admit you’re not as big as you once were, that you’re not on the level of some of your peers. You don’t want to have to downgrade to smaller venues or less glamorous cities, even if you could sell those out. And when you have a team of executives, publicists, and Live Nation creeps around you, eager to milk you for every last cent, it’s easy to fall into the trap.

I don’t blame Meghan Trainor for any of this. I think her management had blinders on. Rather than downsize for a smaller and more successful tour, they cancelled to save face. They want to make all of the money, not just some of it. They want the Eras Tour model to be the default mode of concerts: sky-high prices and capital E-Event importance. But a Meghan Trainor tour should be a fun and affordable night out for young girls and their mums (no shade, that is a beloved and highly profitable demographic, and they party!) If I were her, that’d be my plans for my next tour: 2,000 seat venues, good deals for families, great merch, and a fizzy party atmosphere. Don’t we all kind of miss those sorts of concerts?

Mark my words: this will not be the first big tour cancellation of 2026. We’re all broke, guys. We’re not paying $500 for every gig, and a bunch of managers are about to learn that the hard way.