The 20 Most Iconic Aotearoa Music Moments Of All Time

Much has been written about the birth of Flying Nun in the early 1980s and the effect of its busy first decade, with acts like The Clean, Chris Knox, and The Bats resonating far outside NZ. In the years that followed, other independents followed suit, as Pagan Records emerged in the mid-Eighties, and Southside Records near the end of the decade. More followed, each introducing crucial artists to an expanding, multicultural scene.

The turn of the decade saw a growing interest in post-punk, led in part by Propeller Records, home to The Screaming Meemees and Blam Blam Blam. When Roger Shepherd founded Flying Nun and signed bands from Dunedin, it created a whole new style of indie pop, dubbed ‘the Dunedin sound’, which influences bands around the world to this day. 

Trevor Reekie’s Pagan meanwhile was a hotbed of talent, pioneering work by Shona Laing, Prince Tui Teka, Ardijah, and Bic Runga. Murray Cammick and Simon Lynch’s Southside was similarly diverse, including Moana and the Moa Hunters, Upper Hutt Posse, and Head Like a Hole among their roster. 

The template was set to think outside genre and focus on talent, setting the stage for a vibrant and growing number of local indies. 

In 1999 millions of people watched around the world as Hinewehi Mohi (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe), sang the New Zealand National Anthem in te reo Māori at the opening game of the Rugby World Cup, shocking fans and officials, and highlighting the lack of focus on the language within Aotearoa. 

Already a Platinum-selling artist, Mohi had grown up surrounded by te reo, and studied at Waikato University’s Māori department, under Sir Tīmoti Kāretu and Dr Hirini Melbourne. She’d asked to perform bilingually and was told to stick to one language, with the assumption it would be English. 

When she chose to sing ‘E Ihowā Atua’, she was unprepared for the backlash. She told the NZ Herald in 2021, “I found it enormously difficult to reconcile the degree of anger over it and it has kind of haunted me for two decades”.  

Subsequent years have seen a huge resurgence in the use of te reo, and hearing the anthem sung in Māori is now commonplace. Mohi’s choice that day played a big part in that change. She’s gone on to co-found Waiata / Anthems, an album and documentary series that sees popular artists translate and re-record their songs in te reo. 

Founded in 1972 by Tim Finn and Phil Judd, Split Enz had already achieved some success by the time Tim’s brother Neil joined the band in 1977 (replacing Judd). Their first two albums Mental Notes and Seconds Thoughts charted in NZ and Australia, and their penchant for theatricality was established.

The first album to feature Neil, 1977’s Dizrythmia, marked the start of their turn from art-rock to a more pop sound, continuing on ‘79’s Frenzy, which saw Neil starting to contribute songwriting. The change was cemented on 1980’s True Colours, their first major commercial success. Its single “I Got You” (written by Neil), hit Number One in NZ and Australia.    

Tim Finn’s solo career kicked off in 1983 with his Number One album Escapade, and he departed the band, leaving Neil to front Split Enz’ final effort, See Ya ‘Round. 

In the decades since, Tim’s solo career has continued, as has Neil’s. The brothers have also collaborated as a duo, and Tim has spent time in Neil’s outfit Crowded House. That band has sold over fifteen million albums worldwide, and has been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. In 1993 the Finns received an OBE for their contributions to New Zealand music.

In the early 2000s, New Zealand experienced a golden run of local hip hop releases from genuine stars like Che Fu, King Kapisi, Nesian Mystik, The Deceptikonz, P-Money, Scribe, Savage, and Dei Hamo. The rise of Aotearoa hip hop was a long, slow burn, and when it finally exploded, it captivated the country like nothing else. Between 2001-2005, the energy and audience built at a feverish rate. The record sales and show attendance rates were unreal.

Although the era is often remembered for hit singles such as “Stand Up” and “Not Many – The Remix!” by Scribe, “Stop, Drop and Roll” by Mareko and Deceptikonz, and “We Gon Ride” by Dei Hamo, it’s well worth reminiscing over what else was going on at the time. Some of the most crucial albums from this period included Navigator by Che Fu, Savage Thoughts by King Kapisi, Polysaturated by Nesian Mystik, and The Crusader by Scribe. 

During these years, a generation of hard-working artists carved out a South Pacific hip hop sound and brought underground concerns into the very heart of the mainstream in Aotearoa. It didn’t stop there either, Scribe’s success in Australia was a remarkable thing to witness.

Founded in 1969 as a Capping Week stunt, Auckland university-based station 95bFM went on to produce many of NZ’s best broadcasters, and champion countless local musicians who would have otherwise been passed over. In the 1970s, Radio Active in Wellington and RDU in Christchurch were born, and the 1980s saw Dunedin’s Radio One come to be. Eventually, the SRN was formed, flying a unified flag for counterculture around the country.

In a countercultural sense, student radio in Aotearoa occupies a similar social space to community radio in Australia or college radio in America. In the Eighties and Nineties, student radio around the country was inextricably intertwined with the rise of hip hop, dance music and alternative rock in Aotearoa. 

As we entered the 2000s, it helped support the rise of a generation of nationally loved local soul, dub, and drum and bass acts like Fat Freddy’s Drop, Shapeshifter, Ladi6, The Black Seeds, and Trinity Roots. Later that decade, it was ground zero for a new wave of indie rock and electro acts including The Mint Chicks, Connan Mockasin, Ladyhawke, Shocking Pinks, and The Naked and Famous. In the 2020s, it continues to provide a crucial launchpad for new talent.

Launched in 1977 by the legendary New Zealand music journalist, photographer and record label founder Murray Cammick, and Alastair Dougal, Rip It Up set the tone for several decades of music journalism in New Zealand. By the time the magazine had ceased publishing in 2015, it had provided crucial local support to the rise of punk rock, new wave, the Dunedin sound, and a multitude of local scenes that followed.

In 2012 word began to spread about an EP called The Love Club, released by an unknown musician and represented by one slightly fantastical illustration. It turned out to be the work of a teen from Auckland’s North Shore, and when her single “Royals” was released as a single the following year, the world met its newest pop juggernaut.

In 2022, drum and bass remains one of the key sounds of New Zealand. Big songs enter the Top Forty, fans pack arenas and festivals to see their favourite DJs and producers from overseas, and we’re sitting on several generations of globally respected local talent. The fire really started burning in the late Nineties when promoter groups like Subtronix, Bass Frontiers and Scientific built the scene a rock-solid foundation. There can’t be many places in the world with a drum and bass scene quite like New Zealand.

Launched in the late Seventies, TV2’s Ready To Roll pop music chart TV show introduced generations of New Zealanders to several waves of music: late Seventies pop rock and disco funk, the Dunedin sound, synth-pop, electro, early hip hop and beyond. As local as it was international, Ready To Roll provided priceless memories to many.

In the late Noughties, a new generation of NZ indie rock and synth-pop bands bubbled up from the underground and made their way into the heart of the mainstream, before striking out overseas. Some of the biggest successes included The Mint Chicks (whose second album Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! went Gold in New Zealand), The Naked & Famous, and Ladyhawke, all of whom went on to have substantial international successes.

When Wellington supergroup Fat Freddy’s Drop released their debut album Based on a True Story in 2005, it represented the culmination of an intersection of live soul, dub, house, techno, and DJ culture that had been bubbling up in the capital for close to a decade. BOATS went Gold on its day of release and was eventually certified nine times Platinum in New Zealand. It marked a seachange within the local musical landscape, and Freddy’s went on to become slow-burning international stars.

Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement and Brett McKenzie began performing live musical comedy in the late Nineties, going on to produce a radio series for the BBC, and in 2007, an HBO TV show. It was the launching pad for their respective careers in acting and music, and a somewhat unlikely insertion of the Kiwi sense of humour into the global consciousness

NZ has seen its fair share of music festivals, but you could argue The Gathering was the most important. Running from 1996 to 2022 (reaching a high point at the turn of the century when fifteen thousand attendees were treated to three days of rain and mud), the alcohol-free event took place outside Nelson in the South Island, and saw fans of electronic music attend from around the country, lighting creative fires in each that would nurture multiple scenes and subgenres in the years to come.

In the early Nineties, the late British music producer and DJ Andrew Weatherall visited New Zealand for a series of shows that helped kickstart New Zealand’s Nineties rave and warehouse party scene. Over the years that followed, the local audience for house, techno, jungle drum & bass grew into a phenomenon.

In 2018, the New Zealand band Six60 made national history by selling out Auckland’s Western Springs Stadium, previously only filled in the past by international stars such as Eminem, The Rolling Stones, and Fleetwood Mac. The following year, they repeated the same feat.