Pop stardom is about the big moments. Securing one, and nailing it. Keli Holiday’s arrival at the 2025 ARIA Awards was a moment that many of us would rate as the stuff of nightmares, a phobia right up there with heights and massive, fangy spiders.
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Holiday had the honors of opening the ARIAs with a performance of his viral smash “Dancing2.” Just Holiday, his hair teased like a mane, chest out, staring down the barrel of national TV cameras. Right on cue, he strutted through the industry tables at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, singing and cutting a path to the stage where an all-star band awaited. No worries.
Big moments, if and when they come, rarely do so with such a high degree of failure. He nailed it. Later, he nabbed an ARIA Award for best video, a fan-voted category.
In the five-plus months that have passed, Holiday has been gliding like he did at the ARIAs.
Holiday’s second studio album Capital Fiction, opened at No. 3 on the all-genres ARIA Albums Chart in February, and topped the national Australian albums tally. His tour in support of the LP got underway in March and went deep into regional Australia, visiting the capitals with a string of sellouts, and expands with his first-ever run of dates in North America, followed by more shows Down Under, and then the United Kingdom and Europe.
On April 29, Holiday has two chances of adding to his collection. He’s a first-time nominee for the APRA Music Awards, including the coveted song of the year for “Dancing2,” which took flight on TikTok, where fans clamored to its message of love, connection and positivity.
This new chapter for Keli Holiday is a “representative of love,” he tells Billboard over Zoom. “The core of it, it’s really joyous. It’s really about love. Human beings, we’re constantly craving love. We constantly hold on to love. It’s top of the rock. There is something to be said for the fact that, with all the madness going on in the world, any skerrick of sunshine we can clutch onto, whether that be through a song, or a movie, or a conversation is welcomed with a wide embrace. That’s what I represent with my shows and what I want to do it, because I really feel it, so I got to give it back.”
Holiday has been here before, but all of this is new. He’s the alter-ego of Adam Hyde, who alongside Reuben Styles is co-founder of Peking Duk, the multi-platinum, ARIA Award-winning electronic duo which has accumulated more than 400 million streams across such songs as “High,” “Take Me Over,” “Stranger” and “Fire.” The duo’s debut album, Paradise, is due out Aug. 14 and features the cut “Thrills” with Rico Nasty.
Want a job done, ask a busy person. Holiday is that person. He’s already making headway on a new album. “I’ve written the majority of the next record,” he tells Billboard. “I want to get that album as close to ready as possible before embarking on those shows. Because I have a lot of ideas coming out of me at the moment, and to not act upon them while they’re creating a little buzz within would be remiss. It’d be a disservice to the idea itself, so I’m really looking forward to that.”
And how far along is the process? “As far as the agonizing part goes, I’d say I’m about 60% now. The most important thing is the bones of it, the writing. So, I’ve really hunkered down. I think I’ve written all the songs for the record. I could be wrong.” Holiday plans to “get with some people in L.A., throw some different sonic ideas around. We’ll see where we land.”
Next stop, The Echo in Tinseltown on May 1.
For those fans about to experience Keli Holiday for the first time, he sets the scene with the “wild, sweaty, beautiful union of people getting down to a bunch of new music” on his Australian tour. “It felt so refreshing to be able to bring this show that I created around this country, and to have it received in a warm embrace. It was gorgeous. I’m still kind of humming from it.”
That confident ARIAs performance last November, and hanging out backstage with Olivia Dean and his peers, was like a gate opening for Holiday. “Buzz is definitely the word,” he recounts of the experience. “It was, like, a different kind of nervous energy. It was a real excitement. To be able to walk through the room, sing this song, meet all these wonderful people, it was just a great way to introduce Keli Holiday to Australia, in a really kind of formal way. Even though I wasn’t wearing a shirt.”
Visit keliholiday.com for all tour dates.
