This Niamh Crooks interview is part of a new Scene Report on Dunedin. Check out the series here.
Niamh Crooks has made it — kind of.
During an Air NZ flight from Dunedin to Auckland last week, a familiar sound played over the speakers: her own song, “If I Forgot”.
“Hearing MY SONG play on my country’s national airline was NOT on my 2025 bingo card,” she wrote in a social media reaction video.
Crooks hopes to collect more of those pinch-me moments in the future.
The Dunedin local, 20, first rose to prominence two years ago when she won the Spark Open Audition competition at the age of 18, thanks to her original song “Devotion”.
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She received a one-on-one mentorship with Edward Liu at BIG FAN, and the pair remain close today — Crooks was actually flying to Auckland to record with the producer, also known as EDYONTHEBEAT.
[I]t was just by chance that I got partnered with him for the Spark competition, because I wasn’t supposed to be with him, but he’s so versatile and I’m mostly just vocals and songwriting,” she tells me after their recording session wraps.
“[W]e just kept in touch… he’s so versatile, he’s amazing. He’s popped off this year a heap. He’s been doing heaps of live videos while he’s been in sessions with people on TikTok. We did a live today and we had over 600 people joining, which is bonkers.”
After self-producing her music from a remarkably early age, Crooks has made collaboration a key part of her career in recent years.
“I started self-producing when I was like 13, 14, 15 kind of age. The first five songs that I put out were all mostly self-produced, which I look back at them now I’m like, ‘How did I do that?’ Because I would try and sit down today and I wouldn’t be able to — I don’t know how I did it.”
Crooks released her debut EP, Blush, in 2024, a proud moment for the independent artist.
“It was a stressful thing to navigate independently, but it was a really cool experience and [I] have had a lot of support behind me,” she says.
“I’m so stoked. The collaborations that I’ve done with people on there — it would not be complete without the people that I have met along the way. So I’m so stoked.”
While she loves being an independent artist, going it alone has been challenging for the young artist.
“It’s not like I’m going from having all this backing and then having it all taken away,” she continues. “I guess I’m just learning as I go. What works? What doesn’t? Connections. It’s all connections. Everyone knows everyone and someone will know someone in this area and all that kind of thing. It’s weird to navigate because I’m only 20, and the Spark thing happened when I was 18.”
Moving to Christchurch after leaving her family home aged just 17 only added to the challenge.
“[Finding a job, being able to fund myself, that was really tricky. It was really intense, then I moved back home with my family now and it’s honestly such a beautiful place for me to be.”
Crooks says she hasn’t encountered “a lot of people” making pop music like her in Dunedin, but she still feels part of a close community. She knows the majority of rising alternative rock band IVY through school (her mum, she says, gets “real Radiohead” vibes from her old schoolmates’ music), and being back with her family has been massive.
[My] parents and my friends are so supportive. I’ve never met anyone more supportive of what I do,” she says, revealing that her mum even giddily joined Crooks’ and Liu’s Instagram Live from their Auckland recording session.
Crooks’ debut EP is pure pop, powered by big emotions. It’s easy to see why Billie Eilish is her musical North Star.
“I went to her concert in 2019 and then again in 2021 or 2022, whenever she was last in Auckland,” she recalls. “I was 15 in 2019 and that was like the peak of me trying to figure out what kind of music I made, and it was a huge transition into the stuff that I make now.”
She also bonded with her dad over a shared love of Coldplay.
“My grandparents used to live in Christchurch, so we’d drive up and the whole way, back when Bluetooth wasn’t a thing, [and] we’d just listen to Coldplay’s albums on repeat. That’s so nostalgic for me… the vibes that it gives me is my dad singing to me when I was little, like singing me to sleep.”
Crooks contends that it’s difficult to become a breakout pop artist in Aotearoa.
“You get the younger pop artists that are doing really well, but they’re from up north. And they go down and do tours and stuff. Their demographic is almost like teenage girls… My demographic would probably be people my age, but people my age don’t want to listen to new music from small artists.
I tell Crooks that ASHY, the Christchurch-based artist, told me something similar a few years ago: that it’s difficult to get recognised as a young pop artist in New Zealand, particularly one based in the South Island.
“Like, when the rest of the world is obsessed, that’s when people [here] want to listen,” Crooks adds.
Still, Lorde’s global success has given her hope.
Pure Heroine has been a seminal record for Crooks, and she admires how Lorde approached her verse on Charli XCX’s “Girl, so confusing”. “I really loved the way that she did that because she didn’t necessarily fit a writing scheme and that was really cool and unique.”
Crooks is excited about the direction her music is going in. Her reference artists during her Auckland recording session were Halsey and Zara Larsson, because the latter is “popping off right now.”
“I just had some stuff going on back home so [I] was like, ‘I just need to write about this stuff,’ and it’s honestly probably one of my favourite songs that I’ve ever written with Eddie. It’s got dark-pop vibes.”
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But while helpful producers like EDYONTHEBEAT might be based in New Zealand’s biggest city, Crooks is happy about being in Dunedin again.
“I’ve done the whole moving away thing and honestly I think having Dunedin as my home base actually seems to be working out better for me,” she says. “I can save a whole heap of money for music stuff while I’m at home… with the competition I was able to get a bunch of recording equipment so [I] can record at home… that’s actually sometimes way easier than sitting in the studio and your vocals aren’t feeling right and then you just don’t get the takes you want.”
Stream Niamh Crooks’ Blush EP here.
