NZ POP MUSIC

The 1970s and 80s saw a sudden rise in pop and rock music in New Zealand, with several New Zealand artists going on to international success. In the 1980s major record labels such as Sony, Warner Music, Universal and the Australian-based Mushroom Records established branches in New Zealand, and started signing and promoting New Zealand artists. 

New Zealand's first pop song was "Blue Smoke", written in the 1940s by Ruru Karaitiana. Pixie Williams recorded the song in 1949 and, although it went triple platinum in New Zealand, the award for selling 50,000 copies of the song was only presented to Pixie Williams on 13 July 2011. The advent of music television shows in the 1960s led to the rise of Sandy Edmonds, one of New Zealand's first pop stars.

While a lot of 'mainstream' pop and rock music lacks the unique 'kiwi' flavour of the reggae or indie scenes, several artists have successfully managed to incorporate New Zealand themes and Te Reo Maori into their work, most notably Split Enz, Dave Dobbyn and the Mutton Birds.

New Zealand pop music tends to be more guitar-based than synth-based, and often contains unusual 'non-diatonic' chord progressions, with it's roots in British psychedelic rock (David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno) rather than American rock or Motown.