As I entered the O2 Academy in Oxford last Saturday, something felt strange. The air was thick, the bar was crowded and the DJ was already playing in anticipation of the headline act. It all seemed perfectly normal. Yet, something was amiss.
And then my friend turned round to me; her face pale, a mildly disturbed look in her eye.
‘Why is everyone here aged 12?’
Oh, yes.
While 12 is possibly a slight exaggeration, it was clear that a substantial portion of the audience at Azealia Banks’s seventh UK show in her 2012 Fantasea tour were teenage girls, all dressed in Banks’s signature style: wool hats, cut-off shorts, dark lipstick. In many ways, it made perfect sense. Azealia Banks, who exploded on to the music scene in 2011 with her single ‘212’, is as much a brand as an artist. It is easy to see why her self-consciously controversial lyrics, brash confidence and distressed-cartoon style would endear her to a gaggle of 14-year-old girls.
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