Lily Allen poked fun at her own tour for Halloween this year, dressing up as a sea of unsold concert seats amid struggling ticket sales for her US concerts.
Allen was forced to downsize several venues on the North American leg of her West End Girl tour earlier this year after failing to sell out stadiums.
The singer, 41, shared pictures of her tongue-in-cheek costume on Instagram over the weekend, wearing a white puffer jacket and matching bodysuit decorated with blue dots, alongside a black top emblazoned with the word “Stage”.
“Never beating the allegations. #bluedotfever,” she captioned the post, referencing Ticketmaster’s interactive seating maps that show blue dots for unsold seats.
Allen captioned the post: “Never beating the allegations. #bluedotfever”
It comes after Allen’s Chicago show was relocated from the 23,500-capacity United Center to the 3,500-capacity Chicago Theatre.
Her San Francisco concert was also moved from Chase Center to Oakland’s smaller Paramount Theatre, while a planned Montreal show was cancelled.
Allen later addressed the decision head-on, admitting that the original venues had simply proved too ambitious.
She said: “The ticket sales weren’t there.”
The “Smile” singer explained that venue choices were largely based on promoters’ expectations, although she had questioned whether the proposed scale of the tour was realistic.
She recalled: “I said to my manager, ‘Are you sure? This seems like a stretch.’ And he was like, ‘This is what they’re telling me.’ So we accepted it.”
Allen also insisted that cancelling the shows altogether would have had consequences for the people working behind the scenes.
She explained that around 50 members of her crew were relying on the tour for work, which was one of the reasons she opted to move the concerts into venues better suited to demand.
The singer has also questioned the transparency of the live music business, claiming she has received messages from fans who managed to buy cheap tickets on the day of shows that she had previously understood to be sold out.
She said: “I think the live industry is a minefield, and I don’t know how it works. I’ve gotten messages from people on the day of a ‘sold out’ gig saying, ‘I got a ticket for $22 today.’ So obviously a bunch of tickets are released last minute, but on our end, we’re told those tickets were sold out the day they went on sale. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. Someone knows, but it ain’t the artist.”
West End Girl was heavily inspired by the breakdown of Allen’s marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour, with the album exploring the emotional fallout from their split and the complexities of their relationship.
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