
Nature’s Best? 30 Great New Zealand Songs

Welcome back for the 4th and final episode of my run through of New Zealand’s 30 greatest pop songs – today we look at the final 6 songs. If you missed them, the first three installments are part 1, part…


Welcome back for the 4th and final episode of my run through of New Zealand’s 30 greatest pop songs – today we look at the final 6 songs. If you missed them, the first three installments are part 1, part…

This post is part of the collaborative blog series on compilations organised by Vinyl Connection. Welcome back for the 3rd installment of New Zealand’s 30 greatest songs, as voted by APRA in 2001. Today I’ll count down from #15 to #7…

This post is part of the collaborative blog series on compilations organised by Vinyl Connection. Welcome back for the 2nd examination of New Zealand’s 30 greatest songs, as voted by APRA in 2001. Today I’ll count down from #25 to #16…

Welcome to the Various Artists/Various Blogs Festival! Check out this page at the Vinyl Connection for all the posts as we go along! ———- In 2001, members of the Australasian Performing Rights Association voted for the top 100 New Zealand songs…

Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly doesn’t have a lot left to prove with the 23rd studio album of his career. While he’s never broken big outside of Australia, he’s a beloved songwriter in his own country; he’s a member of the…

Tommy Keene passed away unexpectedly in his sleep this week at the age of 59. The critically acclaimed power pop musician had recorded an album with Robert Pollard, and collaborated with The Goo Goo Dolls, Paul Westerberg, and recently with…

Mark Kozelek has steadily released a handful of brilliant songs on most of his albums, ever since the Red House Painters’ 1992 sad sack, slo-core debut Down Colorful Hill. His songs are usually coloured by his own nylon string or…

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog so far with music from the 1960s and 1970s, and it’s always a relatively easy task; generally, I find that most artists that have stood the test of time for 40…

As a piano playing singer and song writer, North Carolina’s Ben Folds is almost inevitably going to draw comparisons to Elton John, the godfather of piano pop. But the first single from Folds’ second solo album, 2005’s Songs For Silverman,…

Neil Finn is a respected elder statesman of New Zealand pop, with a recording career that stretches back to Split Enz‘s 1977 art rock album Dizrythmia, when he joined the band as a guitarist at the age of 18. He…