A Style Analysis of Nature's Best

In the past two decades, the study of New Zealand popular music has grown as an academic sub-discipline. In the past five years alone, there have been three edited collections on the subject, with authors addressing New Zealand popular music scenes and artists from a range of historical, socio-cultural, geographic, and economic perspectives. That said, very little of the work has involved musical analysis. This paper, therefore, has a fundamental aim of bringing analytical techniques to the academic table. While it is, perhaps, self-evident that analysis should be a part of New Zealand popular music studies, it is less clear what purpose analysis may serve: what techniques may be useful? What questions may analysis answer? Or, as Allan Moore puts it, ‘so what?’ And thus, there is a secondary aim of considering the nature of the analytical framework in which one may address New Zealand popular music. In what follows, I do not seek to present the only way of analysing New Zealand popular music, but I hope that my approach will be able to serve other analysts profitably. One of the prominent debates within the field has been the issue of stylistic originality and derivation. The commonly held view, espoused above all by Lealand, and Shuker and Pickering, is that most New Zealand artists follow the styles and sounds of artists from America and Britain, although their appraisals have been of a very general nature (Lealand 1988, Shuker and Pickering 1994). It is clear then that style analysis and related techniques could usefully be brought into this debate then in order to relate the New Zealand artists to overseas trends. The problems, however, lies in the way this debate has been framed, with the emphasis on ‘whether or not’ a New Zealand artist is stylistically derivative or original? Implicit in this formulation is the value judgment that bestows prestige on any artist that is seen to move in any way beyond overseas stylistic models. Second, this framework serves to close off the analytical field; once the ‘whether or not’ question has been answered, there is no little more to say. What I propose here is a reframing of the fundamental questions that might underpin such analysis: a more useful approach may be to ask, ‘what styles and sounds have New Zealand artists employed?’ With this non-exclusive question, the doors are then opened for a raft of further questions, such as, where do the styles and sounds come from in the world of popular music? How have the sounds been treated? And, why does one hear certain sounds on the New Zealand popular music landscape and not others? This paper presents several findings from a large-scale realisation of this methodology. I began with a corpus of 100 songs from the three Nature’s Best albums, released in 2002 and 2003. Decided by a vote of songwriters, critics, and industry figures, the collection documented New Zealand’s ‘Top 100 Songs of AllTime’ in a manner similar to the ‘Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs’ list. Like the Rolling Stone list also, the songs can be regarded as a canon of New Zealand popular music (Kärjä 2006), as well as offering a reasonable representation of the New Zealand recording industry between the years 1970-2000. It is thus useful for understanding the styles that have been popular in New Zealand music through this time period, and for understanding how cultural themes and ideas may have shaped the sounds of this segment of New Zealand popular music. For each song in the corpus, I conducted a style analysis that sought to relate individual songs to wider examples from the popular music repertoire. This was done using a relatively robust method; I assessed six key musical elements of each song— texture, harmonic language, drum groove, production techniques, and vocal techniques—as well as noting up to three extra features of a song that appeared stylistically important in that particular context. Finally, for each song, I noted up to five examples that correlated musically with the Nature’s Best entries. This is not to say that these international songs necessarily influenced the New Zealand artists; more that from a stylistic perspective, we understand the New Zealand examples as belonging to a similar ‘musical world’ (Covach 2003, 1994). Here is an example of this process with respect to ‘Nature’, which was voted the top New Zealand pop song (Audio). One can note several features of the song that are stylistically unimportant, as well as several features that are stylistically important, such as the modal harmonic inflections, the high register male vocal harmonies, and the acoustic instrumentation. One can draw comparisons with these songs, notably those by the Beatles, and accordingly, one might tag ‘Nature’ as belonging to the 1960s folk rock style with influences from ‘Baroque’ pop. Of course, this particular conclusion is utterly unremarkable in and of itself. The point of this method is not to focus on individual tracks, per se, but rather identify trends relating to the stylistic attributes of larger numbers of New Zealand songs. Thus, in the remainder of this paper, I am going to focus on two separate trends evident from the Nature’s Best corpus and then aim to draw the pair together into a third trend. I am going to start with a generation of artists, all of whom began their careers in the 1970s, and many of whom have continued to write and perform up to the present day. Indeed, this set of songwriters and bands contributed thirty-four songs to Nature’s Best. If Nature’s Best represents a canon of New Zealand popular music, then these artists form the basis of this canon. Furthermore, songs written by these artists are frequently regarded as forming the basis of the ‘Kiwi rock’ genre. Matthew Bannister has commented on elements of this genre, and its relationship to broader cultural themes. Bannister has suggested that Kiwi rock is defined by the ‘austere’ and ‘formalist’ approach of songwriters, an observation which is initially borne out in the work of this generation: songs tend towards conventional formal and harmonic structures, chorus melodies are straightforward and catchy, the instrumentation based on two guitars, a piano, bass and drums. Bannister has further argued that the same artists tended to find inspiration from a ‘circumscribed range of mainly white and masculine musical influences’. This practice reflected the traditional settler identity of New Zealand culture, a key ideal of which was the need to ‘repress and avoid references to foreign ideas and traditions, because this would compromise their claim to originality’. It is here that I wish to pick up on Bannister’s arguments and draw the New Zealand songs into these themes. It seems that for many of the 1970s generation songs, the various influences on their work come from a reasonably narrow range of sources; and, there is a further aversion to extra style flavours. ‘Blue Lady’ by Hello Sailor offers a representative example of this idea. The song was one of the group’s early hits in 1977; here is an excerpt from the opening of the song. With its driving riff, straightforward harmonic loops, and guitar-based instrumental texture, the song sits comfortably alongside Australian rock songs of the 1970s, such as Peter Frampton’s ‘Something’s Happening’ or ‘Show Me Away’, or Little River Band’s ‘Hope Is On Its Way’. Looking further abroad, one can hear shades of Graham Bonnet’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” or the Rolling Stones’ sound from It’s Only Rock and Roll (1974), or even going back to one of the Eagles’ rock tracks, such as ‘Heartache Tonight’. In other words, one can situate ‘Blue Lady’ within the mainstream of mid-1970s rock music, with the various elements of the song coming from that single stylistic pool. Equally, however, it is worth noting the influences that are not present—there are no direct blues influences either by way of a boogie guitar pattern or a twelve-bar blues structure; any hard rock influences are pared back through the prominence of the piano; further, there are no gestures from country music, nor are there expansive vocal arrangements that marked the West coast style of the 1970s. Thus, to return to Bannister’s points, the stylistic influences appear to be both ‘circumscribed’ insofar as they stem, essentially, from one segment of the popular music landscape; equally, the ‘foreign’ influences that may flavor the group’s rock style are more or less absent. Although I do not intend this in a pejorative sense, ‘Blue Lady’ is stylistically plain. Across other songs by artists from this era, there are differences in their individual influences, but collectively they also stem from a relatively narrow range of sources— new wave, post-punk, and pub rock dominate, and extra surface flavours, such as hard rock, ska, or disco are missing. Into the 1980s, a number of songwriters from this generation can be heard as continuing along this path, such that further stylistic flavours are stripped away altogether. The 1990s songs by Dobbyn, Neil Finn, and Don McGlashan each display their songwriting fingerprints, but within a highly conventional pop-rock framework—instrumental textures are consistently based around two guitars; songs are structured in verse-chorus oriented forms; diatonic harmonic loops predominate. I have drawn out these points in order to set up a potential comparison with the 1990s generation of songwriters. It is important not to overstate the differences between the older and younger generations, given that some elements remain constant. Both generations of songwriters, for instance, rely on the same ‘formalist’ approach to songwriting, in terms of conventional formal and harmonic structures. What we can identify, however, are some variations in terms of the stylistic construction of both individual tracks and the musical landscape, in general. Bic Runga’s work is an excellent example of this first approach, and ‘Suddenly Strange’ neatly demonstrates the way she fuses different stylistic elements in her songs. he general texture of this song is consistent with other singer-songwriters from her era—the acoustic guitar, shimmering electric guitar, electric keyboard, and lush string section recalls in various ways Lisa Loeb, Natalie Imbruglia, The Cranberries, or Suzanne Vega. Her vocal stylings, with the pronounced lean on consonants, on the other hand, are evocative specifically of Bjork’s quirky singing style. Finally, in the second verse, one can note the presence of the mellotron keyboard, as well as descending bass lines; both traits reference the Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ although, unlike the Beatles track where the mellotron outlines the descending bass line, Bic Runga has separated these characteristics in ‘Suddenly Strange’. Overall, then, one can hear the song as a amalgam, somewhat, of different musical flavours. I would argue further that this example acts as a microcosm of the general musical landscape in NZ in the 1990s. There is a similarity again with the 1970s generation insofar as the stylistic flavours are often easy to pick out; overall, however, the range of influences is much more diverse. Within several years, the following songs all made a splash on the New Zealand singles charts: ‘Can’t Get Enough’, ‘Bitter’, ‘Liberty’, ‘Sweet Disorder’. Individually, the songs compare reasonably well to international models. Supergroove clearly took their inspiration from Lenny Kravitz’ rock-funk fusion; ‘Bitter’ by Shihad withstands close comparison with Faith No More; while Greg Johnson’s ‘Liberty’ appears to ape aspects of Britpop artists, with his emphasis on the straightforward driving guitar playing and the unembellished vocal traits; while, ‘Sweet Disorder’ adopts many of the traits, such as the sampled voice and washed synthesizer, from trip-hop. I could have selected other examples to make this point—ranging from the mainstream pop ballad of EyeTV’s ‘One Day Ahead’ to the grunge of Zed’s ‘Renegade Fighter’ to the R&B vocal stylings of King Kapisi’s ‘Screems from tha’ Old Plantation’. Thus, compared with the 1970s generation of music, it is difficult to see the collective range of stylistic influences as being ‘circumscribed’, with sounds from across the popular music world coming to rest on the New Zealand musical landscape. As suggested earlier, one must be wary of setting up a strict homogenrous/heterogenous dichotomy between the two generations of songwriters given that there are musical consistencies through the years, and more so given that Nature’s Best only offers a sample of each generation’s work, and only a sample of each artist’s work. Nonetheless, it is worth trying to understand a little further the nature of this increasing stylistic diversity. Or, more precisely given that canonical status of Nature’s Best, we should be asking, what picture of New Zealand popular do these trends paint? What ideas do these findings convey? First, it simply suggests that New Zealand popular artists in the 1990s continued to follow overseas trends. Bic Runga’s references to the Beatles, along with similar 1960s references in other artists’ work is entirely consistent with the work of Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, and other power pop artists from the same era (Moore 2012). Second, Nature’s Best conveys the idea of a weakening settler identity in New Zealand musical culture. As the preeminent New Zealand historian Michael King noted, by the turn of the millennium, many of the country’s cultural traditions were in the process of changing or being dismantled. This trend went hand-in-hand with the development of New Zealand’s own national identity, which had been forged in the Springbok rugby tour protests and anti-nuclear protests of the 1980s. Somewhat paradoxically, it appears that as New Zealanders developed their own unique sense of identity in the world, there was less need to ‘repress and avoid’ foreign ideas. This resonates with several comments from songwriters whom I interviewed in an earlier guise of this project. The late Dave McCartney, of Hello Sailor, commented that ‘New Zealanders have always been afraid of being bold’. Contrast this with the views of Sean Sturm and Julia Deans, from EyeTV and Fur Patrol of the 1990s, both of whom suggested that one of the great advantages for New Zealand songwriters was that they had access to any musical they wanted from around the world and could use it accordingly. There is, perhaps, a different outlook on the musical world from the different generations of songwriters. Third, this trend from Nature’s Best ties into prominent narratives within the history of New Zealand popular music. One of the primary ideas conveyed through the local discourse is that of growth and development from 1970s onwards—the idea that the early generation were the pioneers who showed New Zealanders that it was possible to enjoy local and international success as a band. The later groups were then given the opportunity to forge their own, distinct place in the musical world. This narrative is conveyed through John Dix’s Stranded in Paradise, the first major history of NZ popular music; and indeed, a secondary book by David Eggleton is actually entitled Learning to Fly: the Story of New Zealand Rock. To tie the various strands of the analysis, I would tentatively suggest that one of the major themes coming from Nature’s Best is that it both celebrates what New Zealand popular has been, in terms of the prominence of the 1970s generation, as well as highlighting how far New Zealand popular has come, in terms of presenting a wide range of 1990s popular styles. To conclude, there is certainly much more to be said about Nature’s Best and New Zealand popular—the 1980s were overlooked completely, and, of course, there would be scope to extend the study further into the new millennium to see how the ideas presented above either continue or change through time. What I have hoped to demonstrate, however, is the both the need for analysis of this subject matter, as well as the insights that may stem from employing such techniques. I hope that this approach of tying New Zealand songs into their wider international contexts helps to both understand local songs as well as their place in the musical world. And I anticipate that future work along similar lines may help us develop an even greater understanding of New Zealand popular music. [2664] Covach, John. 1994. Destructuring Cartesian Dualism in Musical Analysis. In Music Theory Online. Covach, John. 2003. "Pangs of history in late 1970s new-wave rock." In Analyzing Popular Music, edited by Allan F. Moore, 173-195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kärjä, Antti-Ville. 2006. "A prescribed alternative mainstream: popular music and canon formation." Popular Music 25 (01):3-19. doi: 10.1017/S0261143005000711. Lealand, Geoff. 1988. A foreign egg in our nest?: American popular culture in New Zealand. Wellington Victoria University Press. Moore, Allan F. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Shuker, Roy, and Michael Pickering. 1994. "Kiwi Rock: popular music and cultural identity in New Zealand." Popular Music 13 (3):261-278.