Jackson Andrews, Campus Carrier photographer

Beside it sounding extremely pessimistic, that headline is valid for two distinct reasons: venue locations and ticket prices. To start, the venue locations for Hozier’s 2025 tour are arranged so sporadically that the artist will go from the U.S. to Canada, then from Canada to the U.K., and then back to the U.S.. While this isn’t uncommon with popular artists doing world tours, an issue I have with this structure is that many of the U.S. tour dates return to the same city or state. For example, there are many repeat shows in New Jersey, New York and Illinois spread out across the entirety of the tour. Because of this, Hozier cannot tour a large percentage of the U.S., including much of the South and parts of the Midwest. For us in Georgia, the closest shows available to us are in Manchester, Tenn., which is roughly two and a half hours from Rome.

If that’s all of my issues with Hozier’s 2025 tour lineup, then why am I writing an opinion piece on it? Well, if you search for the venue for this specific tour date, it will tell you that Hozier will be performing at the Bonnaroo Festival. This festival is one of the most popular American music festivals, taking place over four days and having a strong lineup like Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler, the Creator, Hozier and tons of indie groups and bands. For those of you who have experience in buying festival tickets, you will know exactly where this is going. The problem with the closest tour dates to Georgia taking place in a festival of this capacity is that the general four-day admission tickets are $460 each, enough to discourage any Berry student from even thinking about purchasing one. This is extremely heartbreaking as the second closest tour date is located in Bristow, Va., which is about 10 hours away from Berry. The worst part is that the tickets at this location are extremely affordable, with many of the prices between $45 and $150 for good seating.

While this is a depressing reality for Hozier fans, it is not the artist to blame, as the tour lineup is determined by an artist’s tour/road manager. Ticket pricing is an entirely different story, with there being companies we can blame, likeTicketmaster. This will not be Hozier’s last American tour, but it will most likely be another couple of years until his next one, as his previous American tour took place in 2023. I hope that whoever manages Hozier’s future American tour dates blesses us Georgians with reasonably close venues that will not require us to take out bank loans to attend them.