Oh my, Gin’s animal instinct gets the better of her
Gin Wigmore is busy, all the time. She is a musician, business owner, wife, brand creative, mother, and co-writer. If that’s not enough to make any normal person’s head spin, she’s about to go one more and fulfil a childhood dream of becoming a vet nurse.
‘‘My big dream is to open an animal sanctuary, but I need to know what the f... I’m doing with animals, rather than just giving them extra cuddles and all the hugs I can get.
‘‘I need to know a little more from an ethical background,’’ Wigmore excitedly explains down the phone line.
‘‘I’m too f…... lazy to become a vet, so I’m going to do the next best thing.’’
A statement hurtling right out of left-field like this isn’t entirely surprising from an artist who won the nation’s heart by speaking her mind.
Her on-stage persona is as recognisable as her music, and hits such as Oh My, Black Sheep and Under My Skin are now deeply ingrained in modern New Zealand pop culture.
Early next year, LA-based Wigmore is bringing those songs back to New Zealand for the first time in three years.
The shows will be in support of her fourth studio album, Ivory, released earlier this year with long-time label Universal. This album is headstrong, liberated, and the melancholy found in past releases has been traded in for songs that lend themselves to a fun live set.
It’s a bold pivot, but one Wigmore says she didn’t fear making. She’s never feared releasing music, not in the anxiety-riddled, self-tortured way many creatives feel when putting a part of themselves out into the world.
Something that did shift with Ivory was her why.
‘‘I have different intentions behind it [making music] and they’re far less exhausting,’’ she says.
‘‘I’ll make a record and put it out and that’s it. It doesn’t need to do anything for me. It just needs to exist, and it’s already doing that by virtue of just writing the songs.
‘‘It’s actually a really Zen space. It can just be. It doesn’t need to put me on a chart or do all this s... for me, because I’m on a different track.’’
This Zen-like space has turned her into a guru she likens to being an ‘‘old wizard that lives in the woods’’. She sees herself reflected in the ‘‘little young guns’’ she writes for, but doesn’t envy them.
It’s this self-assured, sociallyconscious space that led Wigmore to the #GirlGang
project, in which she handed her song Girl Gang – a striking, percussion-heavy ode to women everywhere – to five female creatives.
Where many artists might feel protective over something they created, Wigmore wanted to ‘‘breathe new life’’ into the song, showing people ‘‘women can coexist in the same field beautifully’’ and that there ‘‘doesn’t need to be competition.’’
The second layer of the album comes in the way it makes the listener feel. It’s rich with emotion, but doesn’t project insecurities.
There is no feeding into those thoughts or expectations she knows are predominantly driven by men in suits who think they know what women want.
‘‘I’ve seen so much of that in my music career because hey, ‘If you just got most of your gear off in the video you’ll sell so much more. Don’t you want to be a winner? Don’t you want to be a star?’ It’s like, ‘What the f... are you talking about?’ ’’
These days when she writes songs, Wigmore asks, ‘‘What kind of message is this saying to myself and to others, and is this what I want the world to look like if I have a daughter, and even for my son?’’
It seems simple, but she does see standing by her own values as necessary.
This awareness of the industry and its subtle manipulations inspired her to make adjustments to more than just her music. She dyed her hair, put other women at the forefront of her music videos, and really let her ‘‘music the shine’’.
‘‘I think that’s the beauty of music if you can stay in the game long enough – you get to really see everything. It’s almost like you get out of the picture then you start seeing things for what they really are, and you can make really informed decisions on how you want to proceed.’’
The ‘‘wise old wizard in the woods’’ might not have plans to move back home, but Kiwis can count on Wigmore continuing to champion what’s right, no matter where in the world she may be.
‘‘I’ll make a record and put it out and that’s it. It doesn’t need to do anything for me.’’ Gin Wigmore
Gin Wigmore will play Wellington on February 5, Christchurch on February 6, Dunedin on February 8, and play the headline set at Auckland’s North West Wine, Beer & Food Festival on February 9.