Poppin’ Off! Sombr’s Late Nights & Young Romance Breaks The Touring Mold

“It’s been fucking crazy,” says Sombr when asked how he’s handling his skyrocketing success, which over the last year has propelled the singer, songwriter, producer—and hell of a live performer—to stratospheric heights. The striking rock-pop phenom is in L.A. in late November, having just closed out the U.S. leg of his career-changing “Late Nights and Young Romance Tour.” It’s the day before Thanksgiving and the next day the 20-year-old will celebrate with his family. A few days later, he’ll jet off for the New Zealand/Australia leg of the tour.

“I’m just figuring it all out—it’s all a new experience,” Sombr, a.k.a. Shane Boose, says of his ascendant career. “It’s definitely a different thing being where I am now. Unfortunately, it’s not just about the music all the time, which is not what I want. I’m trying to find that groove where I block out everything to do with being well-known and just focus on the art and the live show, because that’s why I got into this.”

It’s not easy honing your craft when the hype machine is in overdrive, and at this moment it’s palpable. His new album, I Barely Know Her (Warner Records), dropped on Aug. 22, and had three singles chart on the Billboard Hot 100. “Back to Friends,” with its yearning, lush dream pop and deft production hit the Top 10 and now boasts 1.25 billion Spotify streams; “Undressed,” with its swirling, baroque, Beach Boys–like harmonies, reached No. 16 and has amassed 683 million streams; and the rock/dance banger “12 to 12,” has 322 million streams and counting and a steamy video starring Boose and pop star Addison Rae.

Two weeks after the album dropped, on Sept. 7, Sombr performed a medley of “Back to Friends” and “12 to 12” at UBS Arena for the MTV VMAs with the former winning Best Alternative Song honors. On Nov. 7, he earned a Grammy nomination for 2025’s Best New Artist; and on the following night, he performed on Saturday Night Live, hosted by Nikki Glaser.

It’s an impressive run, even more so considering he doesn’t have conventional management, it’s Shane himself making key decisions along with his father Andy Boose and Ann Perkins of The System along with UTA agents Matt Meyer and John “JT” Taylor and Alexandra Baker at High Rise PR who have helped steer his incredible year.

All that said, what may best reflect Sombr’s meteoric rise over the last eight months is his “Late Nights and Young Romance Tour,” a run that’s sold well over 100,000 tickets and represents something of a new live-industry paradigm shift in how the business reacts to massive viral fame, which today can spread like wildfire after an onsale. Announced in April, the trek began as a club tour and was upgraded—not once, but twice.

“It’s crazy. We booked the U.S. tour—the New York venue and the L.A. venues—in some of the smaller clubs in those cities,” says Sombr. “And then it turned into arena-level demand, and we couldn’t get all the arenas. It was insane. I’m so grateful for it. It was just so shocking, expecting to play smaller clubs in each city—which, by the way, I would have still been so grateful for and happy to do—and then it turning into that. It was like, ‘OK, now we have to build a crazy production and have three buses.’ It’s something I never thought I’d experience.”

Pollstar Boxoffice Reports for Sombr’s touring over the past half year tell a fascinating story. In early May, he was opening for Nessa Barrett, a singer-songwriter and social media personality. By the end of that month, on May 25, Sombr kicked off his “Late Nights & Young Romance Tour” at Academy Green in Dublin, Ireland, grossing $33,000 and selling 845 tickets. By October, he upgraded in New York City to two nights at Pier 17 selling 7,100 tickets and grossing more than $220,000. By the end of that month, he would play San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, grossing $453,000 on 8,600 tickets. In March 2026—less than a year later for the tour’s kickoff—Sombr returns to Dublin to play the 3Arena, with a flexible capacity of 13,000.

“Skipping steps,” as the agency world calls it, was once considered verboten. Conventional wisdom held that to ensure an artist’s sustained career, agents should build touring methodically, increasing venue size incrementally and ensuring rooms were always sold out—or close to it. The goal was to never get ahead of yourself and play less-than-full rooms, which in theory could dampen shows, fan experience and momentum.

What hadn’t happened yet, though, was COVID. The desultory lockdowns of 2020 decimated the live business. The resulting deprivation, however, poured jet fuel on the industry. By late 2021 and early 2022, there was insatiable consumer demand for live, which Pollstar dubbed “The Great Return,” ushering in record-high grosses, ticket sales, and prices. That demand was further accelerated by the increasing global reach of social media and streaming, which opened new international territories and unearthed more music, artists, and viral moments than ever before.

Now, when an artist like Sombr drops a few singles, announces a club tour, and those singles rack up billions of streams and the buzz becomes deafening, maybe you should skip steps—or, in this case, take several at once, spanning clubs, theaters, and arenas.

“It’s his first proper North America tour,” explains Matt Meyer Sombr’s co-agent at UTA alongside John “JT” Taylor. “He’d been touring a bunch—we supported a little bit and did 12-date runs. This was a proper 28- to 30-date run. The queues were just absurd. We were seeing eight, 10, 12, 15,000 people in queues for rooms with 400- to 800-person capacities. So it came down to, ‘OK, let’s move a smidge more,’ and we upgraded to 1,000- to 2,000-cap rooms, which in itself felt ambitious.”

But that was only the first upgrade.

“We blew out everything,” Meyer continues. “We were also mindful of price sensitivity for fans and making sure people could actually get tickets. We weren’t willing to change dates, offer refunds or cancel tickets. And any upgrade had to respect format— if there was a GA room, it went to a GA room,. We went on sale again, and again it was just lightning. So we said, ‘OK, we’re not necessarily skipping a step if we move up to Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco (8,500 cap),  WaMu Theater in Seattle (7,200-9K-cap), or Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center. (12,508)’ That became the third upgrade.”

Moving venues mid-tour without burning bridges—with promoters, venues, and agents—is no small feat. And then try moving other artists’ shows.

“We rehomed artists in New York and Seattle and Portland,” Meyer says “We basically took some of our marketing budget and paid Peter to rob Paul to move that room.”

This is the textbook definition of “agenting your ass off.”

“We politely moved artists,” Meyer continues. “In L.A. and San Francisco, it was collaborative—never forced. JT and I have strong relationships with a lot of agents. There was one market where the artist in the larger room didn’t want to move. We respected that.”

Meyer, who’s been in the business for 15 years and also reps Halsey and Christina Aguilera, says they only missed upgrading four venues. Still, assuaging promoters in each market can’t be easy.

“We made sure to include every promoter who was in at the ground floor,” he explains. “In San Francisco, we started at the Rickshaw (350–400 cap) with a local Live Nation promoter. We moved to the Fillmore, but there was a European band booked, so we moved their date and they were cool with it. Then we moved to Bill Graham, which is Another Planet, but we kept the Rickshaw promoter involved.”

All of that effort would be meaningless if Sombr couldn’t deliver live. On starge, he’s a preternaturally gifted performer who has “lived and breathed music” since growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side. His father, Andy, played in bands including the satirical René Risqué and the Art Lovers, which lampooned the privileged 1%. Sombr attended famed NYC public arts school Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

“I was a vocal major,” he says. “Italian arias, German arias, French—I was classically trained. It was an amazing school.”

What’s surprising about LaGuardia is that underclassmen can’t study rock, pop, hip-hop or other contemporary styles. “When you’re a junior or senior, you can do electives. I got into the contemporary music elective, but before I could take it, I’d made ‘Caroline,’ got signed, and dropped out.”

“Caroline,” Sombr’s bedroom-crafted breakout smash, showcased his multi-octave, melancholic croon. Written and posted when he was just 16, it quickly went viral and led to a deal with Warner Records.

Tall, gaunt, and chiseled, leather-clad with his chest bared through unbuttoned shirts, Sombr sends his predominantly young audience—especially young women—into states of delirium. His leonine stage presence—standing on monitors, leaping off sets, tackling his guitarist, rolling on the floor—injects a badly-needed sense of rock ’n’ roll danger too often missing from today’s live performances.

There’s a bit of Elvis Presley in his lusty appeal and a dash of Julian Casablancas’ insouciance. But when asked about his performance inspiration, Sombr cites a performance master.

“I’d say my movement inspiration would be Mick Jagger,” he says. “I also like the way Jim Morrison moves. The question I ask myself before going onstage is, ‘Would Mick Jagger wear this?’ And when I try different movements: ‘Would Mick Jagger do this?’”

It’s a great question—and one that helped lead Sombr to his UTA agents.

“I’ve been an agent for 15 years, and I haven’t seen someone so young command the stage like this,” says Meyer. “When he played the Troubadour a few years back, it didn’t sell out. But JT and I were blown away. His stage presence, communication with fans, vocal range—it was all there. He was built to be onstage.”

At a sold-out early November show at L.A.’s Fonda Theatre—one of the few dates not upgraded—Sombr is in fine fettle. He stalks, preens, throws faux karate kicks, and dives off set pieces and rushes and wrestles his guitarist to the ground. The mostly young, female crowd screams deafeningly. The show features cameos by Laufey on a faithful cover of George Michael’s 1984 classic “Careless Whisper” and follows an earlier cameo by Cigarettes After Sex’s Greg Gonzalez, one of Sombr’s biggest influences, who joined him for “Apocalypse.”

The production, while simple, is narratively sharp. One side of the stage features a talk-show desk; the other, a dressing-room mirror. A prerecorded version of Sombr, playing an overbearing late-night host, interviews himself onstage, peppering him with vapid questions about fame rather than his music. The frustration builds until he trashes the set.

It’s a potent metaphor for the whirlwind of the past year. Offstage, though, Sombr seems grounded.

“This time last year I was 19, depressed, and not knowing where to turn,” he posted on social media the day after his Grammy nomination. “I wrote all these songs alone in my bedroom. Looking back, I’m so thankful to everyone who encouraged me to keep going—especially the fans. You’re the reason I get up in the morning and keep doing this, even when I’m at my lowest.”

“We hit a home run, I mean we hit a grand slam,” says UTA’s Meyer looking back on what he and his team accomplished. “It was very rewarding as an agent to be a part of the process, with Jess Braunstein, John ‘JT’ Taylor and Cori Gadbury on our team who helped push this forward.” Ultimately he says, “it’s Shane’s world we’re all supportive of it.”