This article is best paired with THIS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST, and a good white wine from somewhere down under (Matuā’s Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough Valley, NZ is a personal favorite).
Step One: turn on playlist
Step Two: follow NoSpace Productions on Spotify
Step Three: enjoy this nice article
soundtracked by some bomb ass Kiwi ladies
New Zealand is paradise, all you have to do is a simple google image search to find that out. Something less obvious, perhaps, is the thriving music scene on the archipelago. In the last couple years alone, New Zealand has produced some truly incredible artists that have captivated the world in unique and major ways. There’s no telling if artists coming from Australia and New Zealand benefit from starting off in an Antipodean cradle before making their mark on the global music scene but these Kiwi femme fatales took the wild success and support, garnered in their home country, and used it to propel them to global fame.
Kimbra aka Kimbra Lee Johnson broke onto the scene with her debut album “Vows”, which was released in Australia and New Zealand in 2011. Singles "Settle Down", and "Cameo Lover" took off almost immediately, winning her an Australian Recording Industry Association Award. On the back of this regional success, she reworked the album and released it to US and European audiences. The rework featured Mark Foster from Foster the People and DJ A-Trak, pushing the album to the top 5 in New Zealand and Australia and number 14 on the Billboard 200. Later in 2012 she was featured on the song of her career, the multi-platinum single “Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye, still stuck in our heads 8 years later. The mesmerizing alt-pop breakup anthem went to number-one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and earned the collaborators two awards at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards solidifying Kimbra's place in modern music history as an artsy alt killer queen.
Lorde aka Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor has been a force since childhood. Coming from a literary background, she read and edited the theses of her mother, an award-winning poet, in her early teens. Raised in the Auckland suburb of Devonport, Ella regularly performed at local venues throughout her teens in an acoustic duo before signing a development deal with Universal Music Group in 2009. This led to her introduction to producer Joel Little in 2011 yielding the pair's first collaboration: "The Love Club EP”, in 2013. The multi-platinum lead single off of the project, “Royals”, almost immediately went viral on Soundcloud. Her debut studio album “Pure Heroine” catapulted her into global stardom; it was a departure from pop music but maintained its essence. The hits were there, the bass was there, the synths stabs, but between it all was space, space for Ella’s lyrics which are sculptural, visual, experiential, capturing, in perfect form, the living breathing perspective of smoldering youth. The following year, she curated the soundtrack for the 2014 film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and followed it up with a second studio album "Melodrama" in collaboration with Bleachers frontman, Jack Antonoff. A pop princess still, she remains hauled up in a beachside cottage somewhere in NZ, writing her next set of spells to captivate the planet.
BROODS is a sibling duo from Nelson, New Zealand, fronted by Georgia Nott, with multi-instrumentalist Caleb Nott on production and backing vocals.Their debut "Bridges", an etherial break-up banger shrouded in femme glory, hit No. 8 on the New Zealand single chart grabbing the attention of Capitol and Polydor Records. They followed up the successful single with their self-titled debut EP, "Broods" in January 2014. Riding this momentum, they released their debut full-length album, "Evergreen", in August of that same year. They were on fire and on track to make a huge splash on the global music scene with their raw emotion and processed vocals. The band went on to tour with Ellie Goulding, HAIM, Sam Smith, and Taylor Swift, go on their own headlining world tours, win ten New Zealand Music Awards, and play giant festival stages across the globe. Georgia’s sweet tone and emotional lyrics create a high energy soundscape that will have you crying in the club while simultaneously dancing like a maniac.
Vice Magazine once described Chelsea Jade as New Zealand's "Accidental Dream Pop Hero” and we, over at NoSpace Productions, can’t help but agree. As a songwriter, she has collaborated with numerous artists including The Chainsmokers, Wet, and ATTLAS, but her voice and wit truly shine as a solo artist. Her first full-length album “Personal Best” was released in July of 2018 to critical acclaim. With her whimsically sparse art direction, piercing and honest lyrics, and infectious pop production, she has won over hearts and ears all over the world. Her brand new single “Superfan” serves as proof that this pop sorceress extraordinaire is here to stay.
BENEE aka Stella Rose Bennett from Auckland is a pop rocket on her war to global superstardom. In 2019, Benee won 4 New Zealand Music Awards, best known at the time for for her 2018 single "Soaked", which was certified double-platinum in NZ. She released her debut EP, "Fire on Marzz" in June 2019 to major national and some global success but nothing compared to what was waiting in the wings. Her second EP, "Stella & Steve", was released in November 2019 with the lead single: “Supalonely” pulling the chariot. Her achievements up to this point were enough to land her a feature from Gus Dapperton, a US artist with a much larger following at the time of release. Gus, while delivering his signature e-boy alt style, pales in comparison to BENEE’s wit and tone, making her look like the real star in the collaboration. Nevertheless, this feature, in combination with her incredible momentum, and the magic ingredient: TikTok virality, has made “Supalonely” a global hit in a matter of months with hundreds of millions of streams. There’s no telling how far BENEE will take her success, but her accomplishments so far are nothing scoff at.
As you can see, New Zealand is chock full of supernatural femme electropop energy and should not be underestimated. If you hated this article and found it absolutely irrelevant to your life, you are a coward with bad taste. If you enjoyed this article, congratulations, welcome to the upper echelon of intellectuals with good taste; we’ll mail you a badge of honor, and honestly if you've read all the way to this point, you deserve one. But in all seriousness, please follow NoSpace Productions on social media, and on Spotify, to be bombarded with more kickass content like this.
Until Next time,
The NoSpace Team
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