Was 2024 the best year for live music ... ever?

Some of the best shows to grace a stage in Aotearoa happened last year. So, another question: how can 2025 possibly top it?

Kia ora and Happy New Year! Welcome to Boiler Room in 2025. To kick things off, I’ve got a piece I’ve been planning to run for a while now, a retrospective of all of the incredible live music that happened in 2024. I kept putting it off because I kept seeing shows that could easily make the list. That happened right up until December 30 with The Roots in Tauranga. So, today, I’m doing that, and examining what could top it in 2025. I’ve been ocean swimming every day and soaking up plenty of sun, and I feel excited and energised about what lays ahead. Wherever you are, I hope you’re doing things that make you feel the same way.

Chris :)

Black Thought, the focused and intent front man for The Roots, is into his third straight minute of spitting bars. Words tumble out of him at such a speed my ears struggle to pick them all up. There are couplets and metaphors and references. There are stories and callbacks and shout outs. Sometimes, he pauses to sip on coconut water, then picks right up where he left off. He can’t stop, won’t stop. It’s dizzying.

Behind him, drummer Questlove ticks away like a metronome, his deceptively complex rhythms morphing from originals to James Brown snippets to Kool & the Gang covers with ease. Also on stage is the full team locked in from 15 years as the in-house band on The Tonight Show: two horn players, a keyboardist, a samplist, a guitarist, a bassist, and Damon Bryson, aka Tuba Gooding Jr, who dances across the stage while blowing into a huge sousaphone wrapped around his torso.

Black Thought and The Roots in Tauranga. Photo: Chris Schulz.

It could be a mess of noise and personalities. But, at a pre-New Year’s Eve party turned into a one-day festival in Tauranga called Summer Haze, The Roots put on a masterclass in musicianship, a band so tight, so in the pocket, so put together, so dialled in that they moved and morphed around the stage as a single organism.

Mistakes didn’t happen because everyone in that group knows exactly what everyone else is doing at all times. The Roots ooze history and class. They portray precision and perfection. They’re masters of timing and structure. The skills on display were exceptional. They might be the tightest band I’ve seen live. They were phenomenal.

So, for much of their two-hour set, I just stood there in the middle of it all and grinned. I have lost count of the times I have heard people rave about The Roots’ last performance here in 2005, a St James show one critic said left her “mouth open, eyes popping, laughing in disbelief”. I missed that show, but Monday night’s performance had the exact same effect on me, my head spinning at all the references and samples, the deep knowledge of history being showcased on that stage. (Some mad musical mega-genius has managed to catalogue the entire show on Setlist.FM.)

It was a hell of a way to end 2024, a performance so good it’s got me mulling over a few things. The Roots capped off what was very clearly the best year for live music since Covid messed everything up in 2020. But I have questions. Did we just see the best year for live music in Aotearoa – ever? Where does 2025 begin to try and top that? Is it even possible?

Can it do better than March’s surprise Fred Again show, when the UK producer born Frederick Gibson turned up on a whim, sold out every venue he played in, then put on a stunning display of intensity and intimacy on a grand scale, a show that moved and morphed across the EDM spectrum just like The Roots did with hip-hop?

Fred Again at Spark Arena in March. Photo: Chris Schulz.

Could it top Princess Chelsea, who again proved to be an unmissable talent at The Others Way festival when she played early and stole the entire night by cooing “Everything is fine” over and over while ignoring the lava flowing across the screen behind her, her bassist smashing his guitar into bits all over the stage, and her guitarist doing full head stands while playing his searing solos?

Is it possible to better Thom Yorke’s two nights at Spark Arena in October when the Radiohead front man fucked the club up with glitchy beats and twitchy bangers, putting on a witchy trip-hop dance party in between all of the exquisite Radiohead ballads he dropped into his set at random intervals for his trainspotters?

Thom Yorke at Spark Arena. Photo: Tom Grut.

Could it surpass the singular first Pearl Jam show in November that came just a few days after the American election, a genuinely healing performance that featured the gentle, generous front man Eddie Vedder holding his arm up to the crowd to prove that even he was getting goosebumps from what was happening around him?

Could it compare to any time Dartz performed, their infectious enthusiasm, ‘how-are-we-still-getting-away-with-this?’ attitude and wave-your-beer-and-shout-along choruses – my fave: “God, it feels nice, I'm a piece of shit in paradise,” from ‘Paradise,’ – stealing every damned stage they played on?

In December alone, I saw one unmissable show after another: Mannequin Pussy delivering snarling punk spite at The Tuning Fork; David Dallas bringing PNC back to a stage in Tāmaki Makaurau for the first time in eight years for a show that had the old school hip-hop heads nodding in approval; and Jack White, who delivered back-to-back shows so jacked it was like he had his finger jammed into a power socket.

So, 2025, you have some questions to answer.

• Can Laneway survive its underage fans being banned?

• Will I get Covid at the JPEGMAFIA show again?

• Will Electric Avenue level up and justify its expansion to two days as the biggest festival across Australasia?

• Can Drake makes those super-expensive Spark Arena tickets worth it as he hides out down under during Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl showcase?

• Will Fazerdaze fill the Powerstation for her Soft Power showcase? (My answer: yes; I can’t wait for this one.)

• Will Slipknot bring the maggots out in force?

• Will Supergroove and Troy Kingi deliver the best local show this year?

• Will Shihad justify their break-up with a killer send-off?

• As the only stadium show booked in 2025 (besides Luke Combs, bleargh), will Metallica make those $4000 tickets worth it?

• Will it be worth making the trek to Australia for those Oasis reunion shows in November?

• What else will happen in 2025 that we can’t even predict yet?

I don’t know the answer to any of this, but I can’t wait to find out.

What were your best shows of 2024? And what are you looking forward to in 2025? Let me know - I’d love to hear from you…

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