Grammy-nominated singer JP Saxe announced earlier this week that he would be canceling his entire upcoming tour and refunding all tickets, and he’s now opened up about why.
JP Saxe, known for his hit song “If the World Was Ending,” warned his fans last month that if he did not sell thousands more tickets to his tour, it would be canceled.
“I’m extremely embarrassed to tell you this, but I’m going to tell you anyway,” JP Saxe said in a video posted on Instagram on July 28. “If I don’t sell 20-or-so thousand tickets to my tour in the next 48 hours, it’s going to be canceled.”
Unfortunately for JP Saxe, he did not sell the required tickets, and his tour was indeed canceled. And he’s now speaking out about it.
This week, JP Saxe wrote a guest article for Variety where he broke his silence on the decision to cancel his tour as well as his decision to be so open about the struggles his tour was facing.
“Self-image is delicate on a good day, fragile on a bad one. As an artist, your sense of self is tangled up with your ‘brand,’ and it becomes hard to separate how you’re actually doing from how you’re perceived to be doing,” he wrote for Variety.
“And if you’re only as successful as you appear to be, then success starts to depend on your ability to shape perception. In scroll-world — where there’s no time for nuance — the flash becomes the fact. That’s why if a show is over 80 percent sold, you call it sold out. It’s not a lie, it’s marketing. We’ve all seen it work. You create the illusion of buzz, people get curious, the crowd grows — and suddenly the buzz is real.”
“That’s the game. If the ship is sinking, you announce you’ve decided to be a submarine,” he added.
“Instead, I told everyone the ship was sinking.”
JP Saxe explained his decision to be radically honest about his situation.
“I’m scared I’m only ever as successful as I’m perceived to be. That to feel successful, I need to look successful — to my peers, my friends back home, my family, their families…” he wrote. “But how much of that is just… lying?”
Ultimately, JP Saxe was able to sell a few thousand more tickets to his show, but it wasn’t enough to save it.
“Even though a few thousand more people showed up in just a few days — which was emotional and the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me on the internet — it still wasn’t enough to save the tour, and I will be humbly refunding every ticket,” JP Saxe wrote.
Clearly, however, he learned something from the whole process.
Grammy-Nominated Artist Breaks His Silence After Canceling Tour first appeared on Men’s Journal on Aug 9, 2025