Say you’ll stay
With her ground-breaking Drive, Bic Runga helped shape pop music history. But after becoming fed up with record company politics, she took a break and had a family. Now she’s back with a new album – and wearing the occasional balaclava.
Bic Runga helped shape pop music history, but after tiring of record company politics, she took a break and had a family. Now she has a new album.
Bic Runga is departing the 1960s and about to exit through the gift shop when she’s sprung. “Bic!” exclaims a young guy, spinning his wheelchair in excitement. He’s realised the familiar face wandering through Auckland Museum’s Volume exhibition of New Zealand music history isn’t a hologram. She’s the real thing – a genuine, household-name pop star.
He engages her in a one-sided chat, mainly about his enthusiasm for New Zealand music and his record collection, in which she figures repeatedly. She’s happy to stop and talk.
Had she been at the Volume opening the previous night, she might have faced many more interruptions. But Runga didn’t join the industry crowd. Now 40 and with three kids aged between one and nine, she says she doesn’t go out much to things such as openings.
Still, after a long interview the previous day at an Orakei cafe near her home, she is quick to answer a Listener invitation for a wander through. After all, Runga isn’t just a part of local pop history; she helped make it.
Arguably, if Volume was based on sales, Runga would deserve her own gallery. Her albums have sold more than 300,000 copies locally and an estimated 250,000 overseas, making her one of New Zealand’s biggest-selling original artists.
But in the exhibition, she’s represented just by the hand-written lyrics to her second single, Sway. The framed sheet, which sits alongside a sultry photo of a teenaged Runga, is among lyrics by Hollie Smith, Gin Wigmore and others.
This wailing wall features early in the exhibition – a reminder that it all starts with the songwriters.
Nearby, under glass, is one of Lorde’s Grammys and what she wore on the big night – a reminder of where some songs can get you. “Aw, cool. That’s great,” says Runga, skipping past her lyric after spotting the Lorde shrine, which, the previous night, had caused a throng of Mona Lisa- at-the-Louvre proportions.
From there, it’s into a mock recording studio where Runga, who has produced most of her own albums, cracks up when her remix of Che Fu’s Fade Away is judged too unconventional and bass-heavy by the interactive display.
As the exhibition heads back in time, Runga’s pace slows. It seems she has a thing for the misfits. She lingers beneath the sizeable original painting for Chris Knox’s Croaker album, and again in front of
“The legacy award was a real kick in the pants because it was confronting.”
Andrew Fagan’s pink gorilla suit from his Mockers days. She slows down to read almost everything on display about the punk-rock era.
Runga is on the exhibition’s home straight of the 50s and 60s when, after sideways glances of recognition from a few visitors, she encounters her big fan. “It was cool to meet someone who is just a real fan of music,” she says over coffee afterwards. “It’s good to not get cynical about what music means to people.”
If Runga isn’t prominent in Volume, she’s happy about it. “I probably wouldn’t have wanted to give them anything out of my closet.” A look back at her 20 years of photo shoots and videos reveals no pink gorilla suits.
Examining the visual evidence, it’s hard to detect any style choices that might inspire retrospective fashion regrets. Maybe just that necklace thing at the 1999 New Zealand Music Awards that surrounded her face in flying feathers. “Yeah. That thing was weird. There were lots of weird things. I’m glad none of it has shown up.”
Still, in a way, Runga is being consigned to history. She’s been awarded this year’s industry gold watch, the New Zealand Herald Legacy Award at the Vodafone NZ Music Awards, making her the youngest member of the NZ Music Hall of Fame. Her reaction to her 17th New Zealand Music Award? Stop stuffing around and use the attention to release a new album. But one with a difference.
Other than two original tracks, the album Close Your Eyes mixes covers of Neil Young ( Only Love Can Break Your Heart), the Beach Boys ( The Lonely Sea), 80s synthpopsters the Blue Nile ( Tinseltown in the Rain), English folkie Nick Drake ( Things Behind the Sun), hiphop’s biggest star, Kanye West ( Wolves), and more.
It’s got songs from every decade since the 50s – except for the 90s.
“But I guess I
am from the 90s,” she says, laughing.
That pick’n’mix track listing might sound like a throwback to something out of Volume, where 60s stars recorded a bit of everything. But Runga sees Close Your Eyes as both a reaction to her status as a veteran and a reinvention, of sorts.
“I have been busy with family, but also in the broader scheme of things I really wondered if anyone needed another Bic Runga album. Every time I went to write songs, I did think, ‘Have I already written that song?’
“So there was my own sense of apathy towards myself that I had to overcome. The legacy award was a real kick in the pants because it was confronting. It was a moment of ‘it’s all finished’.”
The songs, all personal favourites, took some crafting. She went to a music teacher to learn the intricate finger-picked guitar on the Drake song. She found a tutor to brush up on her French – she lived in
Paris in the early 2000s – to sing Françoise Hardy’s Francopop ballad Viens properly.
And she took a deep breath before tackling West’s Wolves her own way. “It was just a challenge. And I really admire his music. It’s a pretty song. It’s actually a really beautiful melody.”
She liked pulling apart others’ songs and seeing how they worked. It felt like research for whatever she does next. She liked being out of her depth. “It wasn’t until afterwards I saw this great David Bowie quote, which was: ‘You know you are doing something good when you are wading out into unknown places that make you feel uncomfortable.’ I felt wildly uncomfortable covering Kanye West.”
The covers-dominated album was her idea, not a record company plan. Her contract with Sony Music, which she signed as an 18-year-old, ended with a 2012 greatest hits collection – although the new album will be released in Australasia and Asia on the label as a one-off.
She now manages herself – “all you need is an accountant and a lawyer” – and has arranged for the album’s release in North America and the UK through independent label Fire Records, which last year released a new Chills album.
But Runga has other support, artistically and personally, in the form of Kody Nielson, her partner and father of her two younger children. Their musical collaborations have spawned a group, Opossom, and the 2012 album Electric Hawaii.
These days, Nielson, who was the driving force with brother Ruban of chaotic noughties art-pop punk outfit the Mint Chicks, now records and performs under the name Silicon. His album Personal Computer won this year’s Taite Music Prize.
Those who caught a Silicon gig in Auckland recently saw a black-clad band all in balaclavas. One was singing through a voice processor to lower her natural range to something masculine.
Er, Bic, was that you? “I loved sounding like a man. It’s funny-as. I sounded like Rick James.”
And yes, Nielson and Runga’s brood are highly amused at their mum and dad’s dress rehearsals in the home studio. “We practise with balaclavas on because you can’t see, so you have to learn the songs like that. Then the kids walk in and they think it’s so funny.”
It was the creative side of the music business that brought Runga and Nielson together, a pairing that from the outside might have suggested, say, Joni Mitchell taking up with Iggy Pop.
“It’s not that strange, really. I think I had more of a punk streak than people realise and Kody probably has more of a sensitive streak than people realise.”
Their publishers suggested they write together. Later, Nielson produced Runga’s 2011 album, Belle. “I thought Kody was a bit weird at first. It wasn’t until we talked about production that I realised he wasn’t strange at all. He is just smart and kind of awkward. He is really clever.
“I doubt very much he owned any of my records. But I think he could probably appreciate my songwriting.”
Like the rest of New Zealand through the years 1997-2006, he probably couldn’t have avoided Runga’s songs. Her rise in the mid-90s from schoolgirl and placegetter (as half of a duo) in a Smokefreerockquest to major label signing and debut album Drive was a rapid one.
Born and raised in Christchurch, Runga is one of three musical daughters – with Boh and Pearl – of nightclub singer Sophia and the late piano-playing former soldier Joe, after whom her eldest son is named.
She learnt drums, guitar and keyboards. Growing up as a Maori-Chinese kid in Hornby wasn’t particularly hard, she says. Just motivating. “For an over-sensitive kid growing up … it made me driven. It made me driven to be seen as something other than my colour. To be seen for my merits.”
She was signed to Sony after a label bidding war on the strength of the song Drive. After attempts at a band recording, Sony New Zealand’s Paul Ellis decided to go with the original solo acoustic demo.
Ellis: “I remember staring at the carpet thinking, ‘This is it, this is the song …’”
Sony suggested rising music lawyer
“It was boys’ club stuff that was more prevalent to me. It makes me want to punch someone in the face.”
and manager Campbell Smith act on her behalf. When he heard Drive, he thought he would ask to be her manager, an arrangement that lasted until 2008. Now a promoter and figurehead in the local music industry, Smith still acts as her lawyer.
Initially, Drive went unloved by local commercial radio. But student radio thrashed it, a video got plenty of screen time and a tour supporting the Finn brothers helped win over middle New Zealand.
Runga was on her way. The next single, Sway, was playlisted on commercial radio and a few years later it was on the soundtrack to hit Hollywood teen comedy American Pie. The world beckoned. Still, Runga and Smith found being Sony’s new signing from the other side of the world was tough going.
Smith: “To a certain extent they were a little bit square-peg-in-a-round-hole with the way the international labels saw her. Less so in the UK, where I think they, particularly on that second record, had her positioned much better. But in the
US, it was just ‘good-looking girl, writes good songs, get them on the radio, sell the record that way’.”
Which meant Runga found herself increasingly frustrated by a male-dominated record business, one that was about to head into a digital-era tailspin. “Overseas, it was more to do with just being a female. I’ve got lots of minority things to fuel me. It was boys’ club stuff that was more prevalent to me. That stuff does fuel you – it makes me want to punch someone in the face.”
Smith: “That boys’ club aspect of the record industry … you could see that grinding her down. You need to be constantly seeing the thing growing to be able to put up with some of that shit. And if you had periods where it is not moving, then that stuff just becomes bigger. “
Ellis and Smith agree Runga’s international career lost momentum with the five-year gap between the debut and the release of the supposed “difficult second album”, 2002’s Beautiful Collision, which, despite the delay, substantially outsold Drive in New Zealand.
Runga remembers a moment in London in 2006 when she realised maybe she had gone as far as she could internationally. She was playing a sold-out show at the Scala venue – and not just to expatriate Kiwis. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page had requested a backstage meeting and brought his own photographer.
But at the same time, she learnt Sony UK had decided not to push her acclaimed third album, Birds.
“I thought, ‘What else can I do? My hero is at my show, this massive venue is sold out, and the record company politics is going on that I can’t fight.’ So, I went home and had children. I thought it was time to just bow out because I can’t do anything more than this.”
Runga says she had to adjust to a normal, non-music industry, grown-up life and becoming parent at the same time.
“I didn’t even pay my own phone bills. Someone else did everything like that for me and it is kind of pathetic, really. It turns out at the old age of 40, I am perfectly capable. Way more capable than I thought I would be or that people gave me credit for.”
It’s been said that being a touring musician can offer a sustained adolescence. “Yeah, I think it prolongs your childhood and your lack of responsibility too long. Motherhood does exactly the opposite. It all came out in the wash when I became a mum.”
Yes, she did think of giving up music. “I did entertain ideas of doing something else. But not really. I am a musician through and through.”
There’s more proof of that than just her own new album. She’s covered the slavery ballad Redemption Song on a new local
Bob Marley tribute album. She’s joining Brooke Fraser and Benny Tipene on the annual Winery Tour in the summer. It will certainly get her out of the house.
“As soon as I leave the house and say goodbye to the children, I really feel like this is my time and I really appreciate it more. So being on stage is not as awkward as it used to be. I really relish it now like I never thought I would. It’s better than making dinner.”
And after that, it’s on with the reinvention of Bic Runga. And the search for an audience who can join the dots between the gentle singersongwriter of old, the interpreter of Kanye and the occasional balaclava’d art-pop performer.
She gives herself another decade to nail this music thing, once and for all. “When I am 50 in 10 years, I will have teenage children and I think playing live will be harder and harder in a way. It just takes it out of you. Adrenaline-wise, it’s not good for your nervous system for a start. I am just going to try to do as much as I can in the next 10 years.
“If I was only allowed to make music for the next 10 years, I would probably get to the heart of it.
“You can’t expect at mid-career, if that is what this is, that the same people are all going to be there. So you really have to take stock and think of who you are going to be next, and hope it connects with the right people.
“If you are being true to yourself, it will.”
Growing up as a Maori-Chinese kid in Hornby wasn’t particularly hard. Just motivating.