Last week, Billboard revealed its year-end Boxscore charts, ranking the top tours, venues and promoters of 2023. That coverage included analysis of the new wave of genre diverse artists crashing stadium stages and in turn, our charts. This week, we are breaking down the year’s biggest tours, genre by genre. Here, we continue with R&B.
R&B has some humongous contemporary stars – Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Usher and more – but in the last decade, it’s been too reliant on those stars to keep it afloat. The graph below shows how the genre has experienced severe spikes and drops, often victim to the scheduling whims of a small group of headliners.
In 2016, when Beyoncé mounted The Formation World Tour, R&B spiked from 3.5% of the overall top 100 gross, to 8%. But in 2019, after Bruno Mars wrapped his globe-conquering 24K Magic Tour, its share plummeted from 11.5% to 2.7%.
In 2023, R&B is hitting from all sides. The established superstars named above – Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Usher – were all active, joining forces with next-gen headliners such as SZA and The Weeknd. More than that, Lionel Richie, New Edition and others are harnessing their legacies to build the next phase of their touring careers. All of that builds to the genre’s biggest share of the top 100 tours, dating back more than a decade.
That mix of classic artists and ascendant stars bodes well for the genre, even when its biggest icons are off cycle.
Keep reading to check out the top 10 highest grossing tours by R&B artists, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. All reported shows worldwide between Nov. 1, 2022 – Sept. 30, 2023, are eligible. Here, we define R&B acts as artists who have recently featured on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums or Hot R&B Songs charts.
