Iggy Azalea performs live at Converse Get Dirty at Arena in Vienna, Austria.
There are few careers riskier than music.
What’s in style can change at a moment’s notice. Potential career-ending scandals loom. Maintaining creativity while under intense public scrutiny is daunting. And of course, there is the catch-22 of needing to craft an album with fresh sonics that still keeps the level of consistency fans have come to expect.
Artists of all genres encounter these dilemmas and manage them as best they can. Some survive long-term, others only for a short while.
Yet, pop music itself is a whole other level of tumult, sucking in and spitting out artists at such a rapid rate that it’s often hard to keep track of who’s still relevant. In fact, I theorize major pop stars go through four phases, with a select few able to rebound or avoid the cycle: the burst into stardom, the honeymoon, the post-honeymoon and the fall from the throne.
The career arc of Iggy Azalea serves as a perfect example.
The burst into stardom
Before 2014, Australian-born Azalea was a moderately known figure in the rap scene. She boasted three EPs, two mixtapes and a handful of singles — the most successful being “Work,” which peaked at No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. Neither a household name nor an unknown commodity, the 25-year-old found herself at the precipice of either making it big or fading into obscurity.
On Feb. 17, 2014, the soon-to-be megahit “Fancy” featuring Charli XCX saw daylight as a single, and Azalea’s ascension into the public eye was all but guaranteed. With Azalea’s energetic flow, Charli’s infectious chorus and the track’s electro-hop beat, the song climbed to the top spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 and held it for seven straight weeks. Most of the U.S. had never heard a Azalea song before, and consumers ravenously ate up her fusion of pop and rap.
The honeymoon
Following the success of “Fancy,” Azalea dropped her debut studio album The New Classic on April 21, 2014. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 200, and claimed the top spot on Billboard’s list of top rap albums. The album’s fifth single, “Black Widow,” sustained Azalea’s growing success after its July 8, 2014, release, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
There was just something about Azalea. Perhaps it was her idiosyncratic role as a blonde, conventionally beautiful white woman in a historically black genre. It could also be that she made rap music accessible to a swath of the population that never before gave it credence. Or maybe, after all, we were all just bored with yesterday’s stars and Azalea provided us with a temporary excitement fix. Either way, Azalea was omnipresent in pop culture without much pushback. Forbes wrote that rap was being “run by” Azalea — at least before publishing a correction — and most of us were just happily bopping our heads as we sang, “I’m so fancy/ You already know.”
The post-honeymoon
No matter how many times it threw a party into a frenzy, it wasn’t long before we all grew tired of “Fancy.” Both that track and “Black Widow” received significant radio play at the same time, and Azalea’s music soon overstayed its welcome. Released on Oct. 24, 2014, “Beg for It (Feat. MO)” was met with mixed critical and commercial reception. For many, it sounded like a rehash of “Fancy,” and it went no farther than No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 2015 twerk anthem “Trouble” featuring Jennifer Hudson received even harsher reactions, only reaching No. 67 on the Billboard Hot 100 and minimal radio play.
Accusations of cultural appropriation began to surface, as many rappers of color began to question Azalea’s rap dialect that sounded forcibly “gangsta.” A 2011 song from Azalea with questionable lyrics — “When the relay starts, I’m a runaway slave master” — started to circulate. A series of racially insensitive tweets only added fuel to the growing flames of resentment many had for Azalea, including one that read, “Just saw 5 black men get arrested out the front of Popeyes. #damn #stereotypes.” No longer was Azalea the newest face of rap — instead, she was quickly losing steam and public approval.
The fall from the throne
Where is Azalea now?
On March 10, 2015, Azalea and her team had to reschedule her Great Escape Tour “due to tour production delays.” Later reports, however, claimed it was due to insufficient promotion and disagreements with management. Two months later, the tour was canceled, with a new one slated for sometime in 2016.
Now — and this is solely anecdotal — it seems that the majority of people, including those who used to love Azalea, are increasingly ambivalent or dismissive toward her. Her music saturated innumerable facets of life and she acted like a hothead under the spotlight of fame. Celebuzz ran a piece in June exploring how Azalea fell from her pedestal.
Azalea’s rapid rise and fall from fame starkly contrasts the treatment of musicians in other genres, like country. In that genre, the biggest names largely remain in good standing for years upon years. Kenny Chesney has seen exceptional success since his debut 1994 album, and Tim McGraw, active since 1993, released his 14th album this year. There are plenty of explanations for this — including country’s niche fanbase and themes of tradition and consistency — but the phenomenon only underscores pop’s volatile nature.
Of course, pop stars can avoid this trend. Just look at Adele. After transforming into an international icon on the heels of 2011’s 21 and its monstrous single “Rolling in the Deep,” the British singer was everywhere. In total, she released five singles from that album, with three reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the other two making it to the top 100.
Instead of sticking around, however, she fell back into the shadows, only to return this year when the dust from 21 had settled and the general public was clamoring for her return. That strategy worked out perfectly, ensuring a commercial and critical success in “Hello” and smashing the record for most album copies sold in an opening week with 25.
So, the lesson here is to maintain a level of distance as a pop star, as too much attention can sour your image. The other option is to fervently hope you can establish a committed fanbase that will stick around, no matter what the general public thinks. It’s worked for the likes of One Direction and Justin Bieber, who can count on their hordes of teenage girls to buy whatever they put out.
Maybe it’s a statement on our nation’s attention span, or an indictment of our modern conception of what makes a pop star, but either way, we seem to consistently love one popular music icon. We groan when their hit single comes on for the fifth time in one day, but we beg for them to come back once they disappear from the public eye.
So, the question is, how long can Adele stay out for this round before the melodramatic sound of “Hello” grows irritating? It’s hard to tell, but it’s a good way to test just how long we can stomach one particular pop star, no matter how talented.
