How This Agent’s ‘Superpower’ Propelled Gracie Abrams, Tate McRae and More Into Arenas

CAA's Shirin Nury's intuitive understanding of young fans informs her approach to advising the pop's next generation of headliners. Courtesy of Shirin Nury Trending on Billboard Shirin Nury can still remember how she felt going to concerts as a teen in the San Fernando Valley — andtoday, she calls those memories her “superpower.” “I understand fandom and have a very strong barometer for what young women are looking at as fans,” she says. “I can still access a part of me that is that young 16-year-old, going to the Roxy [in Los Angeles], and have that guide a lot of my decision-making.” Related At CAA, Nury, 36, has used this intuition to develop one of touring’s preeminent pop rosters, working as primary agent for Gracie Abrams and Tate McRae; co-primary agent for Conan Gray, Omar Apollo and Young Miko; a member of Charli xcx’s booking team; and with a slew of other rising artists including BellaKay, Devon Again, ADÉLA and Skye Newman. While Nury explains that “there’s been a lot of groundwork and foundation-building behind each of these acts” over “many, many years,” she’s currently seeing the fruits of her labor as multiple clients establish themselves as part of a new generation of arena headliners. Propelled by the zeitgeist-seizing success of Charli’s 2024 album, brat, the tour of the same name grossed $21.3 million, supplemented by major festival plays and her co-headlining outing with Troye Sivan, which brought in $28 million; she’s hitting arenas in the coming weeks and headlining San Francisco’s Outside Lands and Austin’s AustinCity Limits. McRae, meanwhile, grossed $110.8 million on her Miss Possessive Tour in 2025, including two sold-out nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden that grossed $4 million total. And after graduating from theaters to multinight arena runs midway through her 2024-25 The Secret of Us tour, Abrams will kick off her next outing, Look at My Life — her biggest yet — in December, with impressive bookings including four sold-out shows at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. “Gracie could have sold out many, many, many more Barclays [shows] than four,” Nury says, nodding to the sky-high postpandemic demand not just for Abrams but for major pop tours. “We decided collectively to take a bow at four, and we were always going to hold the line at four.” Abrams Gabriella Hughes The reasoning points to Nury’s broader philosophy on nurturing her clients’ careers. “It’s really important to keep the bigger picture in mind,” she says. “We’re not in this to capture a moment. We’re in this to create careers and build a sustainable ecosystem around each act, so that the fans will want to followthem for years to come.” And that’s where Nury’s superpower comes in. In a touring world that can sometimes feel impersonal — for both artist and fan — she draws on her own background to create “a sense of belonging” that lingers long after a show’s final note, from getting tickets into the hands of real fans at a fair price to strategizing the floor seating arrangements that make the most sense for a given artist and their audience. For Nury — who dipped her toes into the concert business by booking artists like Big Boi, Beach House and Santigold at Wesleyan University as a student before joining CAA as an assistant straight out of college 14 years ago — this approach is also guiding her work for the headliners of tomorrow, like Kay and Devon. “Women are defining the marketplace, and we’re watching one of the most powerful generations of female live artists in history,” she says. “It’s pretty incredible to be living in this moment.” This story appears in the Aug. 1, 2026, issue of Billboard. Daily newsletters straight to your inbox Sign Up More From Pro