Remember the X Factor pop star who caused a riot in a New Zealand mall? He’s coming back

Sunday, 12 July 2026

When Reece Mastin did a CD signing at Auckland’s Sylvia Park Mall in early 2012, a mob of screaming fans forced the teenage heart-throb to cut the appearance short after crowd surges left some people fainting.

The 17-year-old was in New Zealand on a whirlwind trip, playing a sold-out show at Spark Arena, plus arena concerts in Wellington and Christchurch - where an extra show was added due to demand.

Mastin had just won Australia’s biggest music show, The X Factor Australia, at 16. The final drew 1.998 million viewers and earned him a contract with Sony Music Australia. His debut single, Good Night, shot straight to No 1 in both Australia and New Zealand.

Now 31, Mastin is returning to New Zealand this August and September for The New Dawn Tour, but it will look a little different. His jeans are baggier. He’s cut the side-swept fringe. His music is heavier. And the venues hold hundreds rather than thousands.

It’s exactly how he wants it — despite spending years worrying it wasn’t enough.

Mastin lives in Kyneton, a small town in regional Victoria.

“When I get off the road now and drive into town, I just actually feel a weight off my chest,” he says. “Like I’m actually at home. Safe.”

He spends much of the year touring — about 200 shows annually — travelling in a van with his band. But these days he can walk into a pub and, if someone recognises him, he loves it.

It’s a far cry from being mobbed at Auckland Airport in 2013 and causing traffic jams after being chased down the street by screaming teens.

“Now people will come up and just say g’day,” he says. “I love that. It doesn’t feel like a stressful interaction any more.”

After his breakthrough, Mastin spent years criss-crossing Australia and New Zealand on back-to-back tours, promoting his debut album and playing to packed crowds almost nightly. To many, he was Down Under’s Justin Bieber - “only a little more bad-ass”, a Post reviewer wrote in 2012.

The next few years followed a cycle he describes as relentless: Travel, perform, interview, repeat.

“There’s videos of me wearing a beanie, under an air conditioner with glasses on, and I look like an actual dick. I wasn’t trying to be. I was just exhausted. It was relentless.”

The rockstar lifestyle took its toll in more ways than one.

He had trouble eating as he always assumed there was a camera somewhere. Grown men would stand outside his apartment building when he was 17, ring his doorbell, and beg for pictures. He doesn’t remember being on stage in most places, including the 12,000-strong Auckland crowd.

“Not because I was drunk, I never drank on stage, but because it was so intense,” he says. His anxiety became almost “schizophrenic”.

“I’ve still struggled saying it was tough, because a lot of kids would dream for it, and I did - I loved it. I had some amazing times. But it was a very different world.”

What made it harder was that the music was never quite his. His first album, Reece Mastin, contained covers of famous songs - aside from Good Night, which he didn’t write.

On his second album, Beautiful Nightmare, each song was produced by a different person, his lead single got changed last-minute, and the songs sounded “nothing like what [he’d] recorded”.

“I’m a 16-year-old kid with a leather jacket and ripped jeans, thinking I’m a rockstar in a room with all these old men in suits, very egotistical, power hungry people,” he says. “There was no option to object. It was more like: ‘shut up, you’ve got a really good opportunity here.’ And I was scared to miss out on it.”

These issues ultimately lead to his departure from Sony in 2015. What came next was his third album, Change Colours, an “attempt to prove himself” as a semi-independent rock musician.

“I was just always throwing darts and hoping something would stick.” Fifteen years later, he has stopped throwing darts.

He latest tour — The New Dawn Tour — will visit Mt Maunganui, Auckland, Gisborne, Napier, Wellington, Queenstown and Christchurch, and feature new music that is, in his words, classified as metal.

“I told my mum. She almost shit herself.”

The first single, Wembley, released in November, is the first taste of an album more than 11 years in the making — a new era that feels entirely his own. He’ll eventually release a fourth album, and he knows it will ruffle feathers. Even people close to him have said they probably won’t listen to it as much.

“If I’m being really brutally honest with myself, and not thinking about anyone else — I just love [metal] music. Happy, sad, whatever. I just always liked it and never gave myself the opportunity to give it a go, because it was — I mean, it’s pretty far from Good Night.”

Fans can expect a show that’s “a little harder” than previous concerts. But of course, he’ll play covers and his hits.

“I spent so much time trying to separate myself [from those songs], where at the end of the day, that is like semi-imprinted on people’s younger minds, mine included.

“You can’t deny the profound joy it brings the fans.”

Mastin has spent a lot of time struggling with his identity, wondering what people think of him and whether he’s a failure.

“And it’s like damn, people still rock up to the shows. People are still so happy. They’re singing these songs. That’s success.

“I can live off the back of creating music I really like, pay my bills, and get to play. Surely that is a massive win nowadays.”

Tickets for the New Dawn Tour can be found at reecemastinofficial.com.au.