Courtney Barnett’s Creature of Habit tour is growing new limbs.

The award-winning singer and songwriter adds an Australia leg to her 2026 world tour, an east coast run that includes dates in Brisbane (​The Tivoli, Nov. 4), Sydney (Opera House, Nov. 6) and Melbourne (Palais Theatre, Nov. 7).

Produced by Frontier Touring, Barnett’s homecoming tour is her first in four years, and follows an extensive jaunt on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Courtney Barnett is a truly singular artist,” comments Sydney Opera House head of contemporary Music, Ben Marshall, “a songwriter whose wry, observant voice and magnetic stage presence have cemented her as one of Australia’s most distinctive artists of her generation. To welcome her back to the Concert Hall with such a poignant new body of work promises a performance that is both expansive and intimate – one that draws you in and holds you there.”

Before heading home, Barnett will work the crowds in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe and across North America, a stretch that expands with her first solo concert in Hawaii (June 12 at Blue Note in Honolulu) and a third San Francisco show (Aug. 28 at The Fillmore).

The acclaimed songwriter is supporting her fourth studio album, Creature of Habit, written after her relocation from Melbourne to Los Angeles and the closure of her long-running, award-winning indie label Milk! Records. Creature of Habit is the result of Barnett reaching that junction, processing it, and shaping music from all the confusion.

In her homeland, Barnett has collected six ARIA Awards, multiple AIR Awards, the J Award for best Australian album and collected the 11th annual Australian Music Prize (AMP) in 2016 for her debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, which crashed the top 20 in the United States and United Kingdom, and went to No. 4 in her homeland. That breakthrough earned Barnett a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist.

Her followup, Tell Me How You Really Feel from 2018, peaked at No. 2 in Australia, No. 9 in the U.K., and No. 30 in the U.S., and her third solo effort, Things Take Time, Take Time, cracked Australia’s top 10, and impacted the Official U.K. Albums Chart and the Billboard 200.

Courtney Barnett’s “Creatures of Habit” Australian Tour 2026:

Nov. 4 — ​The Tivoli, Brisbane

Nov. 6 — Sydney Opera House Concert Hall 

Nov. 7 — Palais Theatre, Melbourne

While the British prime minister, PepsiCo and David Schwimmer, among others, are publicly denouncing the artist formerly known as Kanye West, Aubrey O’Day has other plans.

In a series of posts and replies to other users on X, the former Danity Kane member is defending her decision to attend both of Ye’s sold-out comeback shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, last week. O’Day was first called out for going to the shows after an X user reposted a video of the singer talking about seeing Ye for the second night in a row and asked why she didn’t talk about going to the concerts on X.

“Now why wouldn’t you share with Twitter that you went to see Kanye 2 nights in a row??” the user posted, tagging O’Day. “All that hootin and hollerin about Diddy’s abuse, but you fail to keep that same energy with Kanye.”

O’Day has spoken out against Diddy for years. Danity Kane was formed on Diddy’s series Making the Band and signed to his label Bad Boy Records. O’Day was kicked out of the group in 2008, and in an appearance on Call Her Daddy, she alleged that the falling out happened because she refused to comply with non-musical requests from the rapper. In the years since, O’Day has continued to speak out against Diddy, including in the recent Netflix documentary Sean Combs: The Reckoning.

To X users, O’Day’s support of Ye stands in direct opposition to her outspokenness against Diddy. The original X post ended by calling the singer a “f—ing hypocrite.”

Rather than ignoring the post, O’Day replied with a defense of her decision to see Ye.

“I can hold two truths at once,” she starts before saying that she’s lived through and does not excuse abuse. She then says that she does not believe that “engaging with someone’s art” is the same as “[co-signing] every opinion or action they’ve ever had.” O’Day says that if this were the case, many people in the entertainment industry would not have careers and that there is more “nuance” to these situations. “If supporting art required endorsing every belief of the artist, none of us would have careers, or playlists.”

I can hold two truths at once.
I’ve been vocal about abuse because I’ve lived it, and I don’t excuse it, ever. That hasn’t changed. But I also don’t believe engaging with someone’s art means I co-sign every opinion or action they’ve ever had. If that were the rule, most of this… https://t.co/ThOn6iG5A8

— Aubrey O’Day (@AubreyODay) April 6, 2026

This explanation was not enough for people who do not agree with her stance, with another X user replying to her post by calling her a hypocrite and saying “by your logic we should ignore all of the things you said about Puffy because he makes good music.”

O’Day again took to the social platform to double down on her statement, explaining that a “blanket ‘cancel everything’ stance” is not realistic for her as an artist and that the user she is replying to is “not accounting for real-world complexity.”

“The idea that you have to erase art to prove morality, or perform constant outrage to stay ‘consistent,’ isn’t integrity..it’s a simplified version of ethics,” she continues. “I’m allowed to hold nuance.”

The singer then says that she has remained consistent on her position on Diddy for 20 years and had her life and career negatively impacted by doing so “in ways you’ll never fully understand.” She concludes by saying she will no longer be “outsourcing my values to a comment section anymore.”

In another response, she wrote: “You’re pushing a binary moral model-good people get total support, bad people get total rejection. Real life doesn’t work like that. Humans hold complexity all the time.. we love people who’ve hurt us, we consume work from imperfect creators. We live in nuance and still know exactly where our values stand.”

Although she claimed to be done interacting with comments, O’Day replied to a few more users who questioned her position. In these follow-up interactions, she continued to reference “nuance” and push her idea that engagement does not mean endorsement. In one reply, she brought up the Epstein Files, saying, “A lot of $ in the Epstein files funded a lot of sh– that you like.”

O’Day eventually concluded the conversation on X with a standalone post, not responding directly to anyone anymore.

“Most people want clean heroes & clean villains, because it’s easier. I’ve seen too much in my lifetime to simplify people in that manner,” she wrote. “I understand the complexity, and I choose every day how I engage with it consciously.”

O’Day’s X back-and-forth defense of Ye happened the same day the rapper’s appearance at London’s Wireless Festival was thwarted by the British government when the entity denied his entry into the country, citing his history of antisemitism. As a result, the festival — which previously lost four corporate sponsors when Ye’s headlining spot on the lineup was announced — was completely canceled.

Following Pershing Square’s bid to acquire Universal Music Group (UMG) on Tuesday (April 7), the music giant has confirmed that its board of directors received the “unsolicited and non-binding proposal” in a brief press release in which it expressed “complete confidence in” the company’s strategy under chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge.

“The Board of Directors, together with its advisors, will review the proposal in accordance with its fiduciary duties and analyze its implications for shareholders, employees, artists, songwriters and other stakeholders,” the release reads.

It adds, “The Board of Directors has complete confidence in UMG’s strategy and the leadership of Sir Lucian Grainge and the Company’s management team. UMG will have no further comment on the proposal until the Board of Directors completes its review.”

The offer from the Bill Ackman-founded investment firm values UMG at more than $60 billion. The proposed deal, which would entail a 9.4 billion euros ($10.85 billion) total cash or 5.05 euros per share ($5.82) offer to shareholders, would result in UMG merging with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings and would move the new entity’s headquarters from the Netherlands to Nevada, while its stock would move from the Euronext Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange.

“While business performance has been strong, UMG’s share price has languished,” Ackman wrote in a Tuesday letter to UMG’s board of directors that mentioned uncertainty over UMG investor Bolloré Group’s 18% stake in the company, its decision to delay a U.S. stock offering and the under-utilization of the music company’s balance sheet as reasons for the stock’s overall downward trajectory since its closing price on the first day of trading. “Notably, none of the above issues relate to the company’s execution of its music business, and importantly, all of the above issues can be addressed in a merger transaction.”

Ackman, who held a call to address analysts’ and shareholders’ questions about the proposed deal earlier on Tuesday, wrote that he expects the deal to close by the end of the year.