A fan cheers while watching KISS’s End of the Road tour at the Moody Center on Sunday, October. 29, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman
On a warm November night, Tame Impala broke the Moody Center’s all-time attendance record: 16,389 people, according to the venue. But numbers barely capture what it felt like inside. This was the kind of show that makes you remember what it feels like to be 16, lying on the carpet with your headphones turned up too high, convinced that music could tilt the axis of your life.
Being buried inside that many bodies — all of them convinced they’re witnessing something life-altering — has a way of rearranging you. Maybe this is why we keep returning to arenas: for the strange democracy of collective devotion.
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Fans hold hands as Lorde performs at the Moody Center in Austin on Sept. 17, 2025.
Ana Gutierrez / Austin American-Statesman
Since the Moody Center opened in 2022, it has quietly become one of the country’s most competitive arenas — a place where artists break attendance records and fans snap up tickets in minutes. The venue shared its highest-selling and some of its fastest-selling concerts to date, noting that exact ticket counts vary because each tour alters the building’s capacity with staging, floor plans and production. But what the data does reveal is a portrait of Austin’s shifting music appetites: maximalist pop, psychedelic nostalgia and legacy acts that refuse to age out of relevance.
The highest selling shows at Moody Center ranked:
According to the Moody Center; capacities varied by event.
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Tame Impala performs onstage during the Deadbeat Tour Kick Off at Barclays Center on October 27, 2025 in New York City.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
The top spot belongs to the Australians who made the arena feel like a pressure dome of bass and blue light. Kevin Parker wandered offstage at one point — into a bathroom, caught on camera — a moment in the spectacle that somehow made the whole show feel more human. The production felt like a mothership, a world that breathed. Fans cried. Confetti stuck to their clothes as they reentered the city on Red River Street. A record broken, yes, but also something more subtle: proof that psychedelic rock still owns a piece of Austin’s cultural bloodstream.
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Pop star Billie Eilish performs the first of two sold out shows at Moody Center in Austin on Nov. 13, 2025.
Henry Hwu/Provided by Live Nation
Billie Eilish does not perform so much as conjure. Her Moody Center show was part emotional tribunal, part teen exorcism. She hovered over her band on “The Greatest,” then collapsed whole sections of the arena into whispered silence for “When the Party’s Over.” A crowd young, queer and loud fans sang every lyric as if it counted toward survival. Eilish’s insistence on sustainability — no single-use plastics, vegan concessions — made the concrete dome feel like a small republic of a different future.
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3. Dave Chappelle – Live
Pictured: (l-r) Marcello Hernandez, host Dave Chappelle, and musical guest GloRilla during Promos on Thursday, January 16, 2025
Rosalind O’Connor/NBC via Getty
Comedy at this scale functions strangely — a stadium quieting itself to hear one person think out loud. Whatever your stance on Chappelle, his draw hasn’t dimmed; he remains one of the arena’s top sellers, a reminder that controversy and charisma have always been uneasy dance partners.
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Harry Styles performs on the Main Stage at War Memorial Park on May 29, 2022 in Coventry, England.
Joseph Okpako/Getty Images / WireImage
A multi-night run adorned with feather boas. Harry’s residency years feel strangely sepia-toned now, pre-Charli’s brat cultural takeover. Still, those early Moody Center nights helped define the venue’s identity: a pop cathedral where people came to feel, loudly.
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Drake performs during the 2023 Dreamville Music festival at Dorothea Dix Park on April 02, 2023 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
More than 40 songs, a central square stage and outrageous visuals. He moved between intimate moments and full-blown spectacle, even bringing out 21 Savage for the darker cuts from their joint album.
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Bad Bunny performs during his Most Wanted Tour at The Moody Center Friday, April 26, 2024.
Mikala Compton/American-Statesman
Reggaetón at Richter-scale volume. A full orchestra, a rotating catwalk, 20 dancers and rap-heavy tracks of “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va Pasar Mañana.” He shouted out the Latinas and the Puerto Rican flags in the crowd, and delivered a mix of style, identity affirmations and perreo.
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(L-R) Bassist Jeff Ament (facing backwards), drummer Matt Cameron, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Eddie Vedder and guitarist and songwriter Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam perform live on stage at Moody Center on September 19, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Jim Bennett/Getty Images
The kind of show that smells faintly of denim jackets and legacy. Pearl Jam closed out their pandemic-delayed Gigaton era with two nights at the Moody Center.
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George Strait and Bruce Springsteen arrive onstage during the Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band 2023 tour at the Moody Center on February 16, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Suzanne Cordeiro / Special to American-Statesman
Springsteen’s Moody Center show was something between a revival and a rock ’n’ roll boot camp. He tore through classics flanked by the precision-force E Street Band. Cameos included a George Strait intro.
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George Strait brought special guests Willie Nelson and Randy Rogers Band to the Moody Center on Friday, April 29, in Austin.
BRIANA SANCHEZ/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
The kind of show only the King of Country can deliver. Strait was backed by his longtime Ace in the Hole Band and brought out Willie Nelson for “Sing One With Willie.”
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Madonna performs onstage during “The Celebration Tour: at Copacabana beach on May 04, 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images / WireImage for Live Nation
Camp, spectacle, provocation — Madonna cloaked in towering headpieces, cone bras, and cowgirl leathers, moved from early ’80s hits to iconic moments woven with aerial stunts and drag performances.
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The fastest selling shows (some of them)
Olivia Rodrigo performs at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, Feb. 28, 2024.
Sara Diggins/American-Statesman
Also provided by Moody Center.
These are the artists whose ticket links blinked out almost immediately — a measure not just of fame, but of cultural velocity.
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Sabrina Carpenter
Benson Boone
Billie Eilish
Tame Impala
Olivia Rodrigo
Charli XCX
Lorde
Harry Styles
NBA YoungBoy
Madonna
Morgan Wallen
George Strait & Willie Nelson
Ariana Grande
Olivia Dean
Lady Gaga
The Moody Center is only three years old, but it already behaves like an institution — a place where artists test their power and fans test their devotion.
There will be more records, of course. Someone else will break Tame Impala’s number. Another night will feel like the center of the universe. But for now, the arena stands as a catalog of our tastes and as proof that in a fractured world, thousands of people still want to gather in the dark and believe, for a couple of hours, in something loud.