Corbyn Besson plays Emo’s Austin on Tuesday, June 9 — and the booking tells its own story. Three years ago he was an arena-headlining member of Why Don’t We, a multi-platinum boy band with a global fanbase. Now he’s in a 1,700-cap club on East Riverside, two days after a House of Blues Dallas date, touring behind a debut solo EP called HEAD FIRST. That’s not a demotion — it’s a reset. For an artist rebuilding an identity after a very public unraveling, Emo’s is exactly the right-sized room.
About Corbyn Besson
Besson co-founded Why Don’t We at 17 in 2016. The band grew fast — arena headliner, global touring, the full infrastructure — until it didn’t. A protracted management dispute that the members publicly described as emotionally and financially abusive ended in 2025 with the group losing the rights to its own name. Besson emerged with a carefully sequenced solo rollout: debut single “Love Me Better” in 2024, then collabs with Armani White and Jeremih, then “Tied Up,” a choreography-heavy video that drew Timberlake comparisons. The breakthrough was “BLINK” — a 2025 collab with TZUYU of TWICE, produced by Tenroc and filmed in Seoul — which cleared 17 million Spotify streams, 13 million YouTube views, and earned a 2026 iHeartRadio Music Award nomination for Favorite K-pop Collab. HEAD FIRST, a six-track debut EP on BMG blending smooth R&B-pop with early-2000s textures, followed in January. The Pop’n Out Tour is the live argument for all of it.
Direct support comes from Soulidified — Landon Boyce, Malik Heard, Shade Jenifer, and Bradley Rittmann — a four-member pop and R&B group assembled on the Netflix competition series Building the Band, where they placed third. They cite Boyz II Men, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Usher, and Beyoncé as their primary reference points and dropped their debut single, “What’s Your Name,” in February. Their presence on this bill makes sense: they’re telling a story about boy-band lineage too, just earlier in the arc.
The Venue
Emo’s Austin at 2015 E Riverside Drive is not the Emo’s that opened on Sixth and Red River in 1992 — the current room opened in September 2011 in the former home of The Back Room, Austin’s longtime metal club. The 1,700-capacity space has since broadened its programming well past its punk-metal roots into rap, pop, and electronic territory. For a tour like the Pop’n Out Tour, it’s a practical read: real enough to make the show feel like an event, not so cavernous that an artist in Besson’s current chapter disappears inside it.
Tickets
Corbyn Besson and Soulidified bring The Pop’n Out Tour to Emo’s Austin on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, with doors at 7:00 PM. Tickets are on sale now — get them before the Austin stop fills in.