“So that was bad!” Azure shouts during the middle of her Rolling Stone AU/NZ ‘In My Room’ session. It’s not self-admonishment for the quality of her singing – which is good – but the title of the second track she performed – which is “Bad”.
That’s just one of the singles that’s been earning the Sydney singer-songwriter commercial success in the last few years. Azure’s confident brand of emo-pop and pop-punk – think Billie Eilish but with flaming red hair – has been racking up sizeable streaming figures and appearing on notable TV shows: Azure was ecstatic to have “Bad”, for example, play in both Home and Away and The L Word: Generation Q.
For her ‘In My Room’ session, Azure and her guitarist James performed directly from the former’s room (behind them are images of Taylor Swift, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Wednesday Addams), with “Bad” bookended by two other tracks.
First, they offered a moving rendition of Azure’s latest single “Avril Lavigne” (another hint at her sonic palette), which she penned on the verge of a momentous trip to the US.
“I wrote about all the intrusive thoughts that were in my head before I got on a plane to LA,” she says. “I did it to get the episode out rather than keeping it in. I hope you guys like it.”
Azure concluded with an older single, “Prince Ego”, written last year. “I could see a girl going into a situation I had just been in and I felt like she was about to make all the same mistakes I just did,” she explains about the meaning behind the track. “I wrote this song as if we were at a party together and I could tell her everything she’s about to experience and save her from it.”
You can watch Azure’s full ‘In My Room’ session above. “Avril Lavigne” is available to stream now here.
