Owl City Tickets

Short Biography

Following the success of his east coast tour in 2011 off the back of the 5 x Platinum & ARIA #1 single Fireflies, Chugg Entertainment are today thrilled to confirm that indie-synth-pop sensation, Owl City, is returning to New Zealand and Australia for a series of headline shows this November. The highly anticipated The Midsummer Station World Tour will be kicking off around North America and Europe in September, before finishing up with a string of shows in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney this November.

The Australasian dates for singer, song-writer and multi-instrumentalist, Adam Young, will start in New Zealand on Friday 16th November at Auckland's Powerstation (Licensed All Ages), followed up by two Melbourne shows on Sunday 18th November at The Corner Hotel; one Under 18s show in the afternoon and an 18+ show in the evening, finishing up in Sydney on Tuesday 20th November at the Metro Theatre (Licensed All Ages).

Back in May of this year, details of Owl City's new full-length album, The Midsummer Station (available to pre-order now on iTunes), were announced for an August release. When it came time to record The Midsummer Station, Adam Young's third album as Owl City, the Minnesota native set himself the following challenge: "Over the past several years I'd become fascinated with trying to capture magic in a jar through simple, concise pop songs," he says. "I saw it as a great challenge to try to come up with catchy, unique, and memorable songs because it was a new method of songwriting I'd never approached before. I believe artists should never look back or repeat themselves and this was a new frontier for me."

Owl City took a bold step forward on the new album by choosing to work with co-writers and outside producers for the first time, enlisting the help of Matt Thiessen (Relient K), Stargate (Rihanna, Wiz Khalifa) and Robopop (Maroon 5), and the team of Josh Crosby, Nate Campany, and Emily Wright (Dr. Luke's engineer).

In addition, Young is joined by two very exciting guests on the new album. On Dementia, Young is joined by one of his heroes, blink-182's Mark Hoppus. The song documents some of the more psychotic thoughts and feelings Young dealt with in the wake of his platinum debut album Ocean Eyes and one of the more rock-inspired cuts on the new album. And on the album's first single, the incredibly infectious pop gem Good Time (written and produced by Adam Young, with Matthew Thiessen and Brian Lee as co-writers), Young is joined in a duet by Call Me Maybe star Carly Rae Jepsen.

Good Time debuted this week on ARIA charts at #15, hit #1 on iTunes and the RIANZ charts in New Zealand, and is also a Top 5 US iTunes hit. When asked about working with Jepsen, Young said "I love Carly's song Call Me Maybe. I remember hearing it for the first time and immediately became a huge fan of hers - it is absolutely contagious. A bit later, I actually found out that she had known of my music for a while and even went to a couple of shows of mine in Vancouver so I definitely knew I wanted to collaborate with her. And Jepsen had this to say about working with Young "This song is pure, sweet summer. Big thanks to Adam for letting me sing on it. I hope it makes people smile. Abandon all plans and take an impromptu road trip!"

Though the songs were written during various sessions in Los Angeles, New York, and Nashville, Young recorded The Midsummer Station at his own Sky Harbor Studios in Owatonna, as he has all of his albums. "I've learned a few tricks over the past few years as a producer that have allowed me to better capture the sounds I envision in my head, and I think this album sounds a lot more polished than my previous records and it's been great to see the evolution of Owl City as a project with an aesthetic change over time and evolve from one thing into another," he says.

Indeed Young has come a long way since his days posting his musical experiments on MySpace and YouTube, launching both an online savvy and radio-friendly career that the New York Times called "a textbook illustration of how the music business needs new and old forms of media to make an artist a star." Before becoming an Internet sensation, Young, the only child of a mechanic and a schoolteacher, attended community college and worked dead-end jobs, including one in a warehouse loading Coca-Cola trucks. He began creating melodies and beats on his laptop as a way to combat insomnia and eventually self-released an EP, 2007's Of June and an album, 2008's Maybe I'm Dreaming, both of which reached the Top 20 on Billboard's Electronic Albums chart.

Come experience Owl City's catchy tunes and experimental beats this November.

In-depth Biography
Owl City is the musical brainchild of Adam Young, who launched the project in 2007 while living at his parents' home in Owatonna, Minnesota. Troubled by insomnia, Young began spending his evenings in the household basement, where a computer and several instruments provided a diversion from his sleeping patterns. He eventually combined those diversions into a blend of electronica and emo-pop, using little more than his computer and various keyboards to record the material. Songs were uploaded to MySpace upon completion, and Young began attracting a surprising amount of attention on the networking site. Of particular note was "Hello Seattle," a fabricated ode to the Emerald City whose viral popularity earned Young a record contract with Universal Republic.

Ocean Eyes, his first album for the label, was released in 2009, coinciding with the launch of Owl City's first national tour. While on the road, Young watched as "Fireflies" became one of the year's most popular singles, eventually topping the charts in several countries (including the U.S.) and selling more than three million copies. A deluxe edition of the album appeared in 2010, featuring seven bonus tracks as well as the original track list, and Universal Records capitalized on the buzz by also reissuing Maybe I'm Dreaming and Of June, both of which had been self-released several years earlier. An Airplane Carried Me to Bed, an album of acoustic pop songs that predated the Owl City project, followed in 2010. Technically a side project, the album was released under a different moniker, Sky Sailing. Young returned to Owl City in 2011 with All Things Bright and Beautiful, his first collection of new material in years. ~ Andrew Leahey, Rovi