By: Christie Eliezer
Joel McDowell
Six60 plays Wellington, New Zealandcover of Pollstar 3/8/21 issueOn a warm Wellington, New Zealand, summer evening, on Feb. 13, 2021, rock band Six60’s lead singer Matiu Walters stood before a sell-out crowd of 32,000 at Sky Stadium and yelled “Haere Mai [‘welcome’ in the indigenous Maori language] Wellington! Welcome to the biggest show on earth!”
The fans chanted back, “This is forever, yeah!” from the chorus of their early hit “Forever.” Walters was not in any way being hyperbolic.
Thanks to New Zealand’s successful response to COVID-19 and with no social distancing restrictions or bans on mass gatherings, no other act in the world has played to an audience that size in 2021 as well as for most of 2020 to boot.