Guns, god ... and Chumbawamba? The year's best music journalism.

Bookmark 2024’s best stories to savour over your holiday break.

A few weeks back, I asked every local music journalist I could find about their year. They weren’t happy. They were struggling, staring into oblivion, wondering what their options might be. The industry felt like it was in mourning – for itself. “It feels a bit like I’m screaming into a void,” said one, which seemed to neatly sum up the situation.

I can’t call it a stunning year for music journalism, mainly because it hasn’t been. But, sometimes a sliver of light shines through the cracks. Someone knocks it out of the park with a review, interview, or angle that leaves me full of admiration or cackling with delight over what they’ve created. Sometimes I’m jealous about where they’ve taken things.

It’s the end of the year. The past is the past. This, then, is a celebration. Of everything that can happen when music journalism is done right, when a subject is chased, a rabbit hole is explored, a situation is explained, or a topic is uncovered in expert detail. It still happens. You just need to find it, and praise it when it’s done right.

These, then, are the stories that left me falling in love all over again with this crazy, frustrating, intense thing that precious few of us still do every day. Please join me in a round of applause for all that was accomplished this year, and as you’re reading through them, remember that it was achieved against great odds. Let’s get into it…

Anika Moa goes there with Pip Brown.

Anika Moa gossips. She goes off script, peppers her interviews with anecdotes and frequently hoots with laughter. She’s delightful. It works. Guests let their guard down around her, and this allows Moa to take interviews to places others don’t get to go. The Kiri Allen interview that never aired was worst-case scenario, but at the opposite end of the scale was Ladyhawke. This was a revelatory interview: scandalous and shocking, Pip Brown detailed every terrible thing that had happened to her in her career in detail, admitting: “This is stuff that I'm still working through to this day.”

Australian media declares war on Live Nation.

It was eye-opening. It was vindicating. It was delicious. The year’s most terrifying piece of journalism came out of Australia where a documentary crew uncovered the impact of Live Nation’s growing monopoly has on everything from new artists to small venues to music festivals. They finally said the quiet part out loud. In Aotearoa, everyone is talking about this, but I haven’t seen a single headline about it. Everything that’s happening there is absolutely happening here. So why the radio silence? (For more, see The Spinoff’s story on a rift between Live Nation and the Powerstation.)

Don’t treat Chumbawamba like chumps.

Sometimes it’s as simple as asking one question. That’s all The Spinoff’s Gabi Lardes had to do to spark nationwide headlines after NZ First began using Chumbawamba’s 1997 hit ‘Tubthumping’ at Winston Peters’ speeches. She asked the UK group for their thoughts and they quickly denounced the party’s “divisive, small-minded, bigoted policies”. It kicked off an entire news cycle. Soon, front man Boff Whalley was talking to Tova O’Brien for a lead story on Stuff during what may have been the best week in 2024 for local music journalism.

Kid Rock finds god - and his gun.

I’ve been in plenty of interview situations that have turned awkward, weird or just plain nasty. But I’ve never had a gun pulled on me. That’s just one of the many crazy things that happened to Rolling Stone writer David Peisner while researching his Kid Rock rollercoaster Devil With a Cause. At one point, Peisner is nearly kidnapped. At another, the nu-metal-figurehead-turned-Trump-supporter yells: “Do you think you could whup the shit out of me?” What a ridiculously entertaining-slash-terrifying ride.

Jon Toogood goes solo and EVERYONE covers it.

For a while there, the Shihad front man was absolutely everywhere: here, The Post, talking to Anika Moa, at my local coffee shop, performing at a tiny bar near my parents’ house in Kapiti, even appearing on this financial podcast and on prime time TV, where ads played for his solo album. He had a grand, emotional story to tell, but, for me, the best effort came from NZ Herald writer Greg Bruce, who did the mahi, spotted the angle, showed up to all the events, and made a story that was getting blanket coverage fresh and interesting. On the one hand, I’m happy that a music story managed to go as far as it did in this day and age. On the other, Greg Bruce is a good friend of mine and he’s absolutely banned from writing about music ever again. (See also: Karl Puschmann’s coverage of Shihad’s split that ran just a month later.)

Webworm’s Brooke Fraser coverage.

In June, Brooke Fraser broke a Spark Arena record by attracting the largest crowd for an Aotearoa solo artist at that venue. From the stage, she thanked her former manager Paul McKessar. David Farrier stepped up to cover something few would go near, finding out McKessar had been reinstated to his former role following revelations he’d “crossed professional boundaries” with some of the artists he’d managed. Then he dived into Fraser’s religion, Hillsong, to work out who the real Brooke Fraser is, wrestling with a tricky, knotty situation in a level-headed and enlightening way.

Why Kanye West destroyed his stunning home.

It reads like a great crime novel. There are heroes, villains, grifters and charlatans. At the centre is an everyman who takes on a random job opportunity and finds himself involved in a true scandal. That job turned out to be gutting a multi-million dollar beach front mansion crafted by famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando and owned by wayward rapper Kanye West. The rest? You’ll need to read it and find out. (As a companion piece, I recommend John Safron’s novel Squat, in which the author breaks into a different Kanye West house and spends a week living there.)

The closure of local underage venues.

The Spinoff’s excellent Lyric Waiwiri-Smith has stepped up to cover this issue in-depth, examining how important all ages venues are for young music-lovers and why they’re slowly dying out. “You know the cycle – kids come, they find out it’s a place you can just go drink outside in the car park, and gradually [the owners] have to get stricter and stricter because they’re getting in trouble,” says one expert. Importantly, her coverage seems to be having an impact: The Others Way included an all ages stage for the first time just last month, and Double Whammy recently had its first all ages show with Dartz and Dune Rats headlining. Lyric was there to celebrate.

The eight-hour Prince doco we may never see.

It is the longest story you’ll read in 2024. Heck, it may be the longest news story you’ll ever read. I thoroughly recommend you invest the time. In her absolutely massive yarn for the New York Times ($$), writer Sasha Weiss reveals there’s an incendiary eight-hour Netflix documentary about Prince that makes people cry and we may never get the chance to see it. Weiss has seen it, and she talks to everyone else who’s seen it too.

And how about … me?

This newsletter is pieced together on evenings and weekends with whatever spare time I can muster between my full-time job and raising two very hungry teenagers. It gives me great joy to be able to do it, so I’ve tried my best to contribute, to add my name alongside all the others still keeping this music journalism dream alive. I’m incredibly proud of the work I’ve done this year: I persuaded the elusive Daniel Johann to sit down for a lengthy interview; I found someone who owned what might be Aotearoa’s biggest vinyl collection; I was the first to talk to the promoters of cancelled festival Bay Dreams. And I’ve turned up here several times a week to talk about the things I obsess about a little too much. Thanks for joining me. I can’t wait to do it all again in 2025.

I have big plans for Boiler Room next year. To see what they are, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’m running a special for the rest of the year with 20% off annual subscriptions. You can access that special here. Thanks to everyone who reads, responds and supports what I’m doing - I’m truly grateful for everyone single one of you. Rock on!