Every New Zealand #1 single… 9 Chains Topped the NZ chart: from 4 August 1996 for 5 weeks ‘Chains’ is like New Zealand hip-hop and soul’s equivalent to Queen and Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’. Two musicians from different bands quickly improvised…
Introduction New Zealand is presently enjoying a strong crop of female singer-songwriters. Along with Hollie Fullbrook of Tiny Ruins, we also have the weirdness of Aldous Harding and the imagery-laden writing of Nadia Reid. Pop superstar Lorde isn’t a singer-songwriter but shares the…
Growing up in Auckland’s North Shore, Don McGlashan and Harry Sinclair deferred their chosen careers when they returned from their OEs. McGlashan was a musician. He had already drummed for the Auckland post-punk trio, Blam Blam Blam. He penned the…
They’re barely known outside New Zealand, but The Dance Exponents were reliable hitmakers in the 1980s. They kept enjoying success through the 1990s after they shortened their name to The Exponents. They weren’t edgy or pretentious, a pop/rock guitar band…
In January 1994, Straitjacket Fits played their last gig at the Big Day Out festival. Disillusioned by the music industry, Shayne Carter returned to Dunedin and spent years largely away from the music industry. He later described this period to…
While it has a comparatively minuscule population base to draw from and is located in the deep south of New Zealand, Dunedin’s Flying Nun record label produced a string of critically acclaimed and influential guitar bands throughout the 1980s including…
New Zealand indie band The Phoenix Foundation was formed by Wellington High School students in 1994. The group features two singer-guitarists – Polish-born Luke Buda and Samuel Flynn Scott, the son of a prominent NZ cartoonist. Conrad Webbe on keyboards…
Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor was born in Auckland, New Zealand, the daughter of a poet and a civil engineer. She grew up immersed in poetry and literature. She built a profile through SoundCloud and talent shows, and in June 2013,…
Marlon WIlliams grew up in Lyttleton, New Zealand. He toured Europe as a member of the choir of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament and started playing guitar in high school. His band The Unfaithful Ways, formed with two friends…
Breaking up Split Enz, Neil Finn retained drummer Paul Hester from the final Enz lineup and created a more streamlined band. They recruited Australian bass player Nick Seymour (brother of Hunters and Collector’s lead singer Mark) and secured an American…
I’ve already covered the Split Enz and Crowded House catalogues separately – this page covers Neil and Tim Finn’s solo albums and duo projects. I’ve only covered a handful of Tim’s solo albums, but I’ve written about most of Neil’s…
The Beths are from Auckland, New Zealand, where they met at jazz school. Guitarist Jonathan Pearce stated that playing jazz provided a “very clear idea of what we didn’t want to do”. Instead, the quartet reverted to the music they…
Don McGlashan kicked around the arty end of the New Zealand alternative scene during the 1980s. He played the drums in Blam Blam Blam, providing lead vocals for the iconic and ironic ‘There Is No Depression In New Zealand’. On…
Emma Paki was born in Whakatane, the New Zealand town closest to where White Island erupted in December 2019. She was born to a Maori heritage; and received her first guitar at the age of 8. Paki’s debut single was…
Neil Finn joined the band Split Enz as a guitarist when he was still a teenager. His brother Tim was the band’s leader, writing most of their material, but Neil Finn wrote many of the band’s successful singles in the…
Every country has a songwriter who’s very successful in their own territory, but hasn’t translated well elsewhere; Australia has Paul Kelly, and Canada had Gord Downie from The Tragically Hip. New Zealand’s equivalent is Dave Dobbyn, a songwriter who emerged…
Fat Freddy’s Drop | Fly My Pretties | Aldous Harding | Kerry Logan | L.A. Mitchell | Supergroove Fat Freddy’s Drop Based On A True Story 2005, 6/10Polynesian dub band Fat Freddy’s Drop hit the mainstream in New Zealand in the…
As a New Zealander, this site’s naturally biased towards New Zealand artists, so I’ve collated them all onto one area of the site. New Zealand pop music didn’t really start in earnest until later than the rest of the world.…
Ed McWilliams and Geoff Maddock met in art class at high school in Auckland, New Zealand, and formed the trio Breast Secreting Cake with drummer Joel Wilton. The group were forced to change the name of their band, and chose…
Kimbra Johnson was earmarked for stardom early. There are videos online of her singing as a pre-teen, while she placed second in New Zealand’s national secondary school rock quest at the age of 14. But after a generic debut single…
Singer-songwriter Nadia Reid hails from Port Chalmers, a port suburb of Dunedin, New Zealand, that’s known for alternative life-stylers and artists. Her mother is a local jazz singer, and operating in the singer-songwriter genre, it’s easy to overlook what a…
Every New Zealand #1 single… Slice of Heaven by Dave Dobbyn and Herbs Topped the NZ chart from 5 October 1986 for 8 weeks. 10 Every country has a musical act that’s part of the national identity, yet obscure internationally.…
My favourite musical discovery of 2018 has been Nadia Reid. Reid is from Dunedin in the south of New Zealand, and ‘Richard’ is from her second album, 2017’s Preservation. Preservation was runner-up for album of the year in Mojo magazine,…
Don McGlashan is up with Dave Dobbyn and the Finn brothers as New Zealand’s best mainstream guitar-rock writers. He’s best-known for his work in 1990s rock band The Mutton Birds, but they were the third group he recorded with. His…
The small city of Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand, produced a lot of great music in the 1980s – The Flying Nun record label distributed acclaimed albums by acts like The Chills, The Clean, The Bats, and Chris…
Formed by a group of Auckland students in 1972, Split Enz are an iconic New Zealand band. With a distinctive visual image – percussionist Noel Crombie designed their costumes and album covers – their career had two distinct phases. In…
New Zealand’s Bic Runga has only released four albums of original material, starting with her 1997 debut Drive, but despite her limited output, she reigns supreme as the queen of New Zealand pop music. Runga comes from a unique cultural…
Prominent popular music from New Zealand in the late 20th century was often Caucasian in origin, with the most internationally recognised musicians coming either from the Flying Nun stable of twisted guitar pop or the mainstream pop of the Finn…
