Omar Apollo will embark on a world tour in support of his upcoming sophomore album, “God Said No,” the Grammy-nominated singer announced Thursday via Instagram.
The God Said No tour will kick off in Melbourne on July 15, with additional international performances in Indonesia, Japan and Canada. The U.S. leg will begin in his home state of Indiana on Aug. 20, with a Los Angeles stop scheduled for Oct. 5 at the Hollywood Bowl.
The album will be released through Warner Records on June 28, and will feature contributions by Canadian poet Mustafa and Chilean actor Pedro Pascal. Ahead of its launch, the Mexican American songwriter released “Spite” and “Dispose of Me.” Both singles currently have more than 10 million streams on Spotify.
“It’s kind of my take on ‘it is what it is,’ ‘lo que sera sera’ kind of thing,” Apollo told ABC News of the album’s title. “It’s not really biblical but if you want to go there, you could.”
Apollo spoke of his relationship with religion in a 2022 interview with Times music critic Mikael Wood.
“I used to have an insane amount of Catholic guilt. I was afraid to say certain things when I was first making music because of it. It was like, ‘Oh, you’re damning the world to hell.’ It’s kind of scary,” he said, later adding that “I don’t think that I could live the way that I want to live if I was a die-hard Catholic.”
The ballad singer has also voiced his struggle with coming out in his 2023 single “Ice Slippin,” which explains the complicated emotions that come from expressing one’s sexuality and receiving an “Icy” reception.
“[The song] is about reliving the thoughts I had passing through my mind the winter I came out to my family, [and] receiving cold judgment, as opposed to the acceptance I felt I deserved,” he said in a press release. “This song is a reflection and reaction of all the emotions I had to face before and after I decided to leave the icy streets of Indiana.”
