Azalea just became the first artist since the Fab Four to have their first two singles finish at number one and number two on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the same week. The Beatles did in 1964 with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the top spot, followed by “She Loves You.” On this week’s chart, Azalea’s sassed-out humblebrag “Fancy” surged to number one, while her collaboration with Ariana Grande, “Problem,” sits pretty at number two.
Azalea’s seemingly meteoric rise is all the more fascinating, however, when you consider that it wasn’t meteoric at all. Her chart takeover has been staged for more than three years now, when whispers that Azalea could be music’s next big thing first began.
In “Fancy,” she raps, “you should want a bad bitch like this.” But why has it taken so long for us to want this particular bad bitch? And why is everyone acting so surprised that we want her?
For all the talk about how revolutionary and refreshing Azalea’s presence on the charts is, she’s actually the perfect example of that old adage: everything old is new again. “Fancy,” fun and addicting as it is, and Azalea’s delivery of it, flirty and campy-cool as it is, is basically a retread of the formula that Gwen Stefani and Fergie perfected in their respective solo careers.
Azalea’s music is actually quite enjoyable. “Fancy” and “Problem” will duke it out for the title of Song of the Summer and we will be dancing in our ringside seats cheering on the fight. Both songs are catchy earworms that we’ll gladly faux-complain about being overplayed come August, but secretly be singing along to in our head.
The frustrating thing here is the astonishment over it all, over the Iggy Azalea phenomenon. Because there’s nothing phenomenal about it. It’s an example of an artist who is expertly using image, buzz, and the girlie urban-meets-bubblegum-pop formula (should we dub this genre “hip-pop”?) that has worked to catapult the careers of a whole crop of female performers in the past.
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