The Streets have cancelled all gigs next year following the “worst week” of Mike Skinner’s life.
The ‘Dry Your Eyes’ hitmakers returned to the stage over the summer with a string of festival shows and had planned to embark on a run of their own shows in January and February next year, but the 43-year-old singer has now confirmed the tour is off because he doesn’t think it is “fair” to sell tickets to fans when the coronavirus pandemic is causing so much uncertainty.
He wrote on Instagram: “It is with a very heavy heart that I have to say that we have decided to cancel all live performances for 2022.
“It is not fair to keep taking your money for tickets knowing that with 1 case of covid, the whole thing has to stop.
“I’m really sorry to disappoint you. This has been the worst week of the worst year of my life.”
Mike didn’t elaborate on the events that led him to cancelling the tour, and hasn’t posted on Instagram for more than two weeks.
The singer recently acknowledged one of The Streets’ biggest hits, 2004’s ‘Fit But You Know It’ – which features lyrics including “See, I reckon you’re about an eight or a nine/ Maybe even nine and a half in four beers’ time” – hasn’t aged well.
He confessed: “I slightly wince at ‘Fit But You Know It’.
“I think the world changes.
“I never revisit material, but obviously others do revisit it and I rely on that because that’s how I pay the bills.
“I just think I’m getting old now and the world gradually becomes unrecognisable to the one that you were born into and that’s OK.
“I think we should probably have empathy for how much the world has changed.”
But Mike thinks social media users need to be more conscious of contextual factors before they criticise his work.
He reflected: “I think social media is going to have to find a way of addressing the context thing.
“I think context exists in the real world, what someone looks like is quite important to what they’re saying. And on Twitter you don’t get that to any sort of satisfactory level.
“And it also works when you’re looking back at stuff. So probably at best ‘Fit But You Know It’ can just be seen as something cheeky that’s maybe of its time.
“In context of FHM culture and Nuts magazine, it’s probably a bit more woke than that, but definitely less woke than now.”