Each year, the highlight of the annual Silver Scrolls aren’t the speeches, but the covers. In advance of tonight’s ceremony, Sam Brooks runs down his favourite performances since 2010. Tonight is the 2020 APRA Silver Scroll Awards, New Zealand’s most prestigious prize for songwriting (and you can stream them right here from 7:30pm). The nominees … Read more
To celebrate Valentine’s Day and the launch of DB Export’s new campaign, The Spinoff pays tribute to New Zealand’s most famous love stories. Love isn’t something that’s always come easily to New Zealanders. Our “man alone” colonial history has often demanded feelings be suppressed, and emotions were traditionally something to be bottled rather than expressed, … Read more
These days, when people wave their hands at a gig, more often then not there’s a phone in them. RNZ Music’s Melody Thomas lays down the rules for using your phone at a concert. Imagine you’re in a packed stadium, watching one of your favourite musicians tearing it up on stage. All around you fans … Read more
Hussein Moses attempts to assess all 20 songs on the longlist for this year’s Silver Scroll Award. Take that New Zealand Music Month t-shirt back out of your cupboard because supporting local music this year is not over yet! Without any hype preceding the announcement whatsoever, the longlist for this year’s APRA Silver Scroll Awards … Read more
In 2000, Fur Patrol dominated the New Zealand singles chart with ‘Lydia’, a song that merely a year later would be voted the 19th best New Zealand song of all time. And finally, 18 years later, ‘Lydia’ is streaming on Spotify. Tom Augustine pays tribute to a New Zealand classic. Some of the songs that … Read more
Nine musicians and producers from this year’s SongHubs, a collaborative song-writing retreat presented by APRA AMCOS with support from NZ on Air, share their experiences. Five rooms at Roundhead Studios, each containing three songwriters and a producer, pumping out a brand new song every day for a week – could there ever be a more … Read more
Our regular round-up of new songs and singles, featuring Julien Barker, Julia Deans, Hopetown Brown, the handsomer Gallagher and more… SONG OF THE WEEK Julien Baker – ‘Turn Out the Lights’ A new song for communal despair The Fader recently described 21-year old Memphis songwriter Julien Baker as an artist who “writes songs for communal despair” … Read more