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The profile · researched 3 October 2026
Michael Marcagi: an unfinished demo, a billion streams, and a year spent opening arenas
The Cincinnati songwriter spent a decade in a band that played to empty rooms before a TikTok snippet of "Scared to Start" made him a Warner signing in 2024. His debut album arrived in February 2026, and he has spent the autumn playing arenas across Australia and New Zealand ahead of Noah Kahan.
Anderson High, a Christmas guitar and the Heavy Hours
Michael Marcagi grew up in the suburbs east of Cincinnati, Ohio, and went to Anderson High School. A guitar turned up as a Christmas present when he was in seventh grade, and the singer-songwriter records his mother played set the frame for the sort of writing he would do later. He graduated from Thomas More College in 2014, where he played collegiate golf — a detail that has outlasted the degree, since he now golfs with Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers and with Noah Kahan.
Before any of the solo work, he played in the Heavy Hours, a band that grew out of school friendships. It played a great many shows to near-empty rooms and then came apart without a rupture, as members married and started families. Marcagi told Illinois Entertainer in June 2026 that through those years he assumed his Midwestern background counted against him in an industry run out of the coasts, something he had to unlearn: "I think that I've really learned to love where I'm from."
The song that did the work
In November 2023 he posted a snippet of "Scared to Start" to TikTok. The song had been knocking around since the band years and the recording was not finished. It ended up used in more than 70,000 videos on the platform. His actual debut single, "The Other Side", came out that December; Warner Records signed him in January 2024 and issued "Scared to Start" on 12 January. He wrote it with Andrew Yorio and David Baron produced it.
The chart run was wider abroad than at home: number four in Ireland, nine in the UK, 12 in Australia, 13 in New Zealand, 20 in Canada, and 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. Certifications followed at five-times platinum in Canada, three-times platinum in Australia and double platinum in both the UK and the United States. By the time Warner announced his album in January 2026, the label was putting the song past a billion global streams. Marcagi's own account of it is blunt: it was the first song he recorded, it "magically caught on fire", and it opened an enormous number of doors.
Two EPs, and a mentor
Rather than rush a record, he spent two years releasing short. The American Romance EP arrived on 8 February 2024 and gathered both early singles. "Good Enough" followed on 25 October 2024 and "Keep Me Honest" on 13 December. The Midwest Kid EP came on 18 April 2025, trailed by the title track in January, "Flyover State" in February and "Follows You" in March, with "Humbling" and "Unlocks Me" after it.
That stretch also produced "Wish I Never Met You" with Wesley Schultz, whom Marcagi describes as a friend and mentor. He had been listening to the Lumineers since he was 16 and ended up opening for them, which is the sort of circuit-closing that recurs in how he talks about the last two years.
Under the Streetlights
The debut album was announced on 16 January 2026 alongside the single "Don't Include Me (American Dream)" and released on 6 February through Warner Records: ten songs, 32 minutes. He made it with David Baron in Woodstock, New York, co-wrote "Anna Lee" with Dan Wilson in Los Angeles, and wrote the duet "Rocksteady" with Jade Bird over several days after Baron introduced them. His brief for the production was that the lyrics and the songwriting should do the heavy lifting and the music should support them.
Apple Music's editorial read placed the record in a post-Noah Kahan landscape where campfire songwriters are free to reach for stadium scale, and singled out "Don't Include Me (American Dream)" — an ex settling into domestic happiness with somebody else — for carrying that misery with the grandeur of a 1990s Britpop single. The same piece picked out "I Should Know Better" and "Falling" as country-rockers, "Anna Lee" as a stomp-and-clap singalong, and the acoustic "Thanksgiving Eve" as a portrait of small-town dysfunction. Marcagi's stated method matches the result: the more specific the lyric, the more people find themselves in it.
Where he stands now
2026 has been close to continuous touring. His biggest headline run opened in Lisbon on 20 January and finished at the Roundhouse in London on 21 February — 21 shows across 15 countries, including Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland, with London and Dublin among the strongest rooms. He was back in the United States for Stagecoach in Indio on 25 April, then joined Sam Barber's American Route Tour from 7 to 23 May, played Zootown Festival in Missoula on 20 June and Rock the Park in London, Ontario on 15 July, and took dates with the Head and the Heart.
Since late September he has been on the Oceania leg of Noah Kahan's Great Divide Tour: Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on 25, 28 and 29 September, Afterpay Arena in Sydney on 2 and 3 October, and two nights at Spark Arena in Auckland on 9 and 10 October. He returns to the United States immediately after, with Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado on 15 October and REDWEST Fest in Salt Lake City on 16 October. He lives in Boulder when he is not working.
What the set looks like
The headline show and the support slot are two different animals, and he is currently playing the second. On the Australian arena dates his set has run roughly half an hour to forty minutes — 7.20pm to 8pm at Rod Laver Arena on 25 September, nine songs; 7.20pm to 7.50pm in Sydney on 2 October — against the eleven-song sets he was playing on his own bills in August. Setlist.fm's running totals put "Scared to Start" at 63 performances, "The Other Side" at 60 and "In the Light" at 58, which is the spine of any version of the set.
The Roundhouse finale on 21 February showed what the full headline version does. He played with a four-piece band and opened straight into "The Other Side", working through "Keep Me Honest", "Stick Around", "Rocksteady" and "Scared to Start". Evan Honer, who had opened the European run, came back out for "Humbling". Production was deliberately plain — no large visual element, the performance left to carry it. The one piece of showmanship was a cover of Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger", which turned the room into something closer to a stadium singalong, young crowd and older indie audience both. Marcagi used the night to point out that his first solo London show, two years earlier at Omeara, had played to a fraction of the same people.
The show, now
Marcagi is in support mode at the moment, so the current show is a compressed one: roughly 30 to 40 minutes and nine songs on Noah Kahan's Oceania arena dates, against the ten or eleven he plays on his own bills. He works with a four-piece band and almost no production — no large screen content or scenic element, the set built on the songs and his voice rather than staging. The shape is consistent: an uptempo opener, two or three from the Midwest Kid EP and the new album in the middle, and "Scared to Start" late, which is the song most of the room has come in knowing. Setlist.fm has it as his most-played by some distance, with "The Other Side" and "In the Light" close behind. On the February headline run through Europe, which ended at the Roundhouse in London on 21 February 2026, the fuller version added an Oasis cover — "Don't Look Back in Anger" — sung back by a crowd that mixed a young streaming audience with older indie regulars, and a guest spot where opener Evan Honer returned for "Humbling". Reviews of that night described a stripped-back show that met a high expectation without dressing itself up; what people tend to single out is the singing-along rather than anything happening on stage.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · songwriteruniverse.com · illinoisentertainer.com · broadwayworld.com · music.apple.com · wepluggoodmusic.com · setlist.fm
Pictures
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, credited
JAS Labor Day Experience · CC BY 3.0
