It looks like the real reason Iggy Azalea’s ‘The Great Escape Tour‘ was cancelled is finally coming out. As you remember Iggy initially delayed the summer tour til the fall, citing creative differences that were being worked out. As a result her opening acts Nick Jonas and Tinashe both jumped off the tour and booked other gigs. The tour’s status was then looming, until last week when it was announced that it was being pulled entirely.
More creative differences as well as Iggy wanting the show to be perfect visually were being cited and apparently, the type of show she wanted to bring to her fans was just not shaping up. She promised that the tour would come following the release of her second album in 2016.
“I just feel I deserve a break,” she revealed in a 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.”
Well now according to a new report by Billboard courtesy of AEG’s Debra Rathwell & CAA’s Cara Lewis, the tours demise was less due to “creative direction” and more to the fact that they couldn’t find any suitable opening acts to replace Jonas and Tinashe. It is further speculated that as previously suggested, ticket sales were not doing what Iggy and her team had hoped.
…more details have emerged from promoter AEG Live and Azalea’s booking agency, CAA.
As Azalea outlined to Seventeen, replacing original openers Nick Jonas andTinashe after re-scheduling a planned spring arena run proved to be a major hurtle for the fall dates. “I began the search, and to be honest, I never found someone who was available on those dates that I thought was a good fit for the tour,” Azalea said.
company’s senior VP Debra Rathwell tells Billboard. “As we were not able to fill the support slots on the tour in the fall, due to so many artists already having commitments and working this summer, we had not advertised or promoted the new shows since last winter,” she says.
Still, Rathwell adds, “The dates were selling well and were going to do fine,” despite multiple sources who shared figures with Billboard suggesting that certain dates were only 20 percent sold. CAA and AEG stood by Azalea’s creative decision to take a break and did not explore a move to smaller venues — “there was no reason to do so,” Rathwell adds.
read more on the report HERE.
