Iggy Azalea on Canceled Tour: ‘I Just Deserve a Break’
Iggy Azalea shared an official statement with Seventeen Magazine on why she canceled her first arena tour, citing her desire for a new creative direction and need for a mental break in a long message to fans.
“I’ve had a different creative change of heart,” Azalea told Seventeen. “I want to start totally anew, and if I stayed on my tour, that would mean I wouldn’t even be able to start working on that until after Christmas.”
The mental wear and tear of being “on all the time and going all the time” have also had an effect on the Australian rapper. “I just feel I deserve a break,” she revealed in the statement. “I’ve been going non-stop for the past two years, nearly every single day….I need a break from everything to just enjoy what I worked so hard for, and I don’t really feel like I’ve had a chance to do that. I need a break to figure out what I want my sound to progress to, and I need a break to figure out how I want my visuals to progress.”
The shift follows years of performing the same material, as she noted. “Even though a lot of people just discovered it, I am a musician and a creative person and I want to be able to perform new stuff and do new things,” she said. “I feel like I’m at the end of an era now.”
Azalea’s sentiments about a new creative direction echo her original reasons for postponing the tour. Her Great Escape Tour had been originally announced in December 2014 and was set to launch in April with Nick Jonas and Tinashe as opening acts. In an interview with 97.1 AMP following the initial postponement of the tour in March, she referred to herself as a “psychopath” when it came to the creative direction of the tour.
Both Jonas and Tinashe moved on to other live plans, with Jonas joining Kelly Clarkson for part of her tour and Tinashe joining Nicki Minaj on her Pinkprint tour. Azalea revealed to Seventeen that she had difficulty finding new opening acts for the fall dates.
The “Fancy” performer has been working on the follow-up to her 2014 debut album The New Classic. She collaborated with Britney Spears on the single “Pretty Girls,” reportedly part of a new album from Spears. Azalea co-directed the single’s campy new video.