Knox Plays His First Ever Melbourne Show at The Corner Hotel

First things first: not the shopping centre. This Knox is the American pop-punk kid with 241,000 Instagram followers and a pile of early-2000s emo influences, and he's making his Australian live debut in Melbourne next March. He opens the whole tour at The Corner Hotel on Wednesday 3 March 2027, which is a very good excuse to dig the studded belt out of the bottom drawer. Mine still fits. Emotionally, if not literally.

The facts, before the group chat asks

• What: Knox, his Australian live debut, on his first world tour, touring his album 'My Midwest Best'.
• When: Wednesday 3 March 2027, the opening night of the tour.
• Where: The Corner Hotel, Melbourne.
• On sale: Now, from 10am local time on Thursday 16 July, through Destroy All Lines.

Why this one's worth it

Knox announced the run in the only register pop-punk allows, all caps and a landslide of question marks, calling it his first ever world tour and promising to bring the new record to the biggest venues he's ever headlined. (There were also, for reasons known only to Knox, several corn emojis. I've decided not to ask.)

The excitement is earned. Since arriving in 2022 with 'Sneakers', he's played Lollapalooza and Hangout Fest, collaborated with Bilmuri and HARDY, and picked up co-signs from Ed Sheeran and Matt Healy. That last one's a nice touch, given one of his songs is literally called 'Not The 1975'. He was raised on Fall Out Boy, All-American Rejects, Boys Like Girls, Panic At The Disco and Hawthorne Heights, which, if you were a certain kind of teenager, is basically your old iPod on shuffle.

That's 'After The After Party', one of the singles off the new album. Consider it a taste of what the room's going to be screaming back at him.

The new record, in his words

Knox's sophomore album 'My Midwest Best' is set for release on 2 October (you can pre-save or pre-order it here), and it's a deliberate trip back to his roots after his debut LP 'Going, Going, Gone'.

"'My Midwest Best' is my proudest work to date," he says. "It's the culmination of all the music I grew up listening to and all the music I learned how to make along the way. A representation of where I'm from and what it sounded like growing up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio."

He's already shared the singles 'Go For Broke', 'Long Story Short' and 'After The After Party', so you've got homework between now and March.

The full 2027 tour dates

It's a short, sharp run of intimate club shows, three cities in three nights. Here's the lot.

How to actually get tickets

Tickets went on sale at 10am on Thursday 16 July, so this one is live right now. And here's the honest bit: The Corner Hotel is a proper band room, not an arena, so there are only so many tickets to go around. A debut show in a small room is exactly the sort of thing that sells out while you're still deciding what to wear.

So don't sit on it. If it's already busy when you get there, a good on-sale puts everyone in a fair, first-in queue rather than rewarding whoever refreshes hardest, and I wrote up how fair ticket queues work if you want to know what's happening behind the loading spinner. Have one person buying, not your whole group on separate phones fighting over the same four spots.

And while you wait for March, and quietly rebuild your emo playlist, have a browse of what else is on around town.

That's your night sorted. A sweaty club show, a room full of people who know every word, and one slightly-too-old bloke near the back mouthing the lyrics to songs about being nineteen. If that's me, and it will be, just let me have it. We don't grow out of this stuff. We just get better shoes.