Huge claims from Uther Dean about The Wicked + The Divine, the books he’s spent the last five years with. The Wicked + The Divine is the best story released this decade in any medium. I want to be clear here. People often confuse favourite for best when talking critically. I am not saying that … Read more
My YouTube Party of Five is a new series in which we invite people to share their five favourite YouTube videos, the ones hold closest in their heart, the ones they’ll play at 2am while drunk at a party. This week: Spinoff staff writer Jihee Junn. My kind of party is a YouTube party – … Read more
The last show of Lorde’s Melodrama world tour took place this week (aside from two dates in Russia in May and the odd festival). One of the remarkable features of this tour has been the sheer number of cover versions she’s performed. Gareth Shute trawled through them all and presents his top five. The … Read more
With a little help from David Bowie, Craig Stevens, president of the NZ Association of Scientists, surveys the challenges and possibilities of the moment, and the need for science to reach beyond the usual suspects. Five Years I started my schooling in London in the brief four-year space between Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon and … Read more
For James McOnie and his fellow boarders in ’80s Hamilton, David Bowie was a lifeline to a more thrilling and artistic world. He remembers the songs that kept the schoolboys sane. David Bowie was a surprising and ambiguous genius; his music gave common ground to people with polar opposite views and lifestyles. It also shocked … Read more
Jemaine Clement on creating ‘Bowie’s in Space’, the Flight of the Conchords’ paean-parody to their musical hero. In 1999 Bret McKenzie and I were sitting with our guitars in our dingy flat in Wellington trying to learn David Bowie songs. They were catchy, which usually translates to being easy to play. Not David Bowie. He’d … Read more
David Bowie gave Lou Reed a new lease of life when he helped to create the classic Transformer album – and was repaid with jealousy and loathing, according to Howard Sounes, author of Notes from the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed. I do like a biography that doesn’t spare the awful truth about its … Read more