This is brand Anika
Anika Moa loves her kids. Mostly. She 78.8 per cent loves her kids. ‘‘That’s pretty high!’’ she chortles down the line from her Auckland home, where she’s looking after 5-year-old Soren and 9-month-old Marigold.
It’s a very different life for Moa, 39, who is married to TV news reporter-turned-producer Natasha Utting and also shares custody of her 8-year-old twins with her ex-partner.
‘‘I don’t perform as much as I want just because I want to be home for my kids,’’ she says. ‘‘I work as much as I can and then I’m at home with the kids as much as I can.’’
That’s why she’s recently released her third Songs for Bubbas album, full of nursery rhymes and learning songs.
‘‘I am a creature who loves to write what she knows,’’ says Moa. ‘‘In your 20s you write about love, in your 30s you write about angst and breakups and all that, and in your 40s – I write about my kids.’’
This is brand Anika
Moa: happily married, mum-of-four homebody, even if the off-beat sense of humour is still well and truly intact.
‘‘I have a gift for baby whispering,’’ she says modestly. ‘‘Now when I’m tired all I do is put on Songs for Bubbas and I lipsync to myself.’’
Among the adult set, Moa is arguably better known, now, as a television presenter and radio host than musician. She recently joined the Drive team at The Hits, her unconventional interview series Anika Moa: Unleashed has proven so popular for TVNZ OnDemand that the platform has greenlit a new show, Anika Moa: Reunited, for next year, and she’s a fanfavourite guest host on Seven Sharp.
Moa’s not even sure she’ll record another adult album (her most recent, Anika Moa, came out last year). ‘‘I’ll never rule it out, but right now I’m too busy.’’
Instead, she’s developing a new TV show, another interview series that would focus on working mothers. ‘‘I don’t feel there’s enough support for working parents, especially mothers,’’ she says.
‘‘It would be real and honest and raw and there would be crying and there would be laughter. You talk and you laugh about it and you just get through it.’’
She’s also working on a line of Anika Moa branded baby products. It’s a logical next step for an influencer to more than 79,000 followers on Instagram and another 88,000 on Facebook, and whose recent spon-con posts have seen her promoting everything from stemware to picture framing to eco-friendly sand toys.
Moa says she’s ‘‘very fussy. If you’re kind in your email to me and clever, I’ll work with you and your brand. If you are a bit uppity I won’t’’, she says.
‘‘I do everything for Kiwi businesses for free too, because I believe we need to support each other, especially women. But if you’re a big brand don’t bother asking me to do it for free because I won’t.’’
Her family are a big part of the brand too, with photos of Moa’s wife and kids regularly appearing in social media posts.
‘‘I’m not the type of ma¯ ma¯ who keeps her kids away from
‘‘I’m not the type of ma¯ma¯ who keeps her kids away from social media.’’
social media. I know there’s that argument of, ‘Oh but they don’t have a choice’ – but yeah, you don’t have a choice, you’re my child, I’m the mum.’’
But the reasons for putting her family front and centre go deeper, and Moa says she’s very aware of the influence that she can have as a member of a rainbow family.
She wants to ‘‘show my life as a lesbian, like an out lesbian with another woman who’s just trying her best at life’’, she says.
‘‘If there were role models like that in my day I might not have been in the closet for as long as I was. You wouldn’t feel as distracted by what people think and that kind of s...’’
These days, Moa is trying to go with her instincts. ‘‘I don’t think things through too much because if you need to think it through, don’t do it.’’
In the background, Soren is chatting away, at one point asking his ma¯ ma¯ if she’d like a coffee, and Marigold tunes in with a few energetic screeches. This is the hub of brand Anika Moa. ‘‘My brand is just real, that’s it,’’ is how Moa puts it. ‘‘It’s just honest and real.’’
Songs for Bubbas 3 is out now.