The Weekend: When did you stop listening to new music?

On feeling old, staying home for school and leaving home for safety

Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend with Madeleine Chapman

I will preface this newsletter by acknowledging that I have been old from the day I was born. I was born prematurely but was 10 and a half pounds. A friend once looked at a photo of me at two days old and said, “you look at least nine months old”. Ever since, I have been assumed to be older than I am. 

But only in the past few years (I’m 30 now) have I felt genuinely old in the sense that I don’t know what’s going on. My partner – who is legally older but spiritually younger than me – will occasionally explain a TikTok trend, or play music that I’ve never heard but immediately enjoy. While she’s doing that, I’m finding myself inexplicably pressing play on a random Spotify playlist titled “The 2000s indie scene” and positively strutting to work in the morning. 

There’s a safety in this bubble, and if I was more inclined to feel younger, I wouldn’t have Coast FM and Flava as the two most-used presets on my car radio. 

But once a year, my bubble is unceremoniously burst when I’m made to read the lineup announcement for Laneway. Even with the recent shift to One Big Headliner (Charli xcx), I found myself shocked and troubled by my complete lack of recognition of virtually every other artist on the poster. I felt Old (capital O), and wondered whether I was doing myself a disservice by wilfully ignoring new artists. Beabadoobee, an artist I’d literally never heard of until Wednesday, makes music that is extremely up my alley. Why am I depriving myself of new music discovery, and when did it begin?

Growing up, I had so many older siblings that music genres and tastes were thrust upon me, namely rap, RnB, yacht rock and old pop. As a teenager, I realised there was a whole world of music that no one in my family was interested in and therefore felt bold and new: enter the 2000s indie scene. It became my fulltime job to find new music to share with my friends. I browsed music forums and went down deep Youtube rabbit holes searching for hidden gems. Bon Iver released his first album and I was all over it, having gotten hooked on a Youtube video of him doing a “MySpace session” in 2007. I collected white guys with beards who wrote sad guitar songs. Damien Rice, Ray Lamontagne and Iron & Wine were the holy trinity.

Then came the discovery of Cool Women (Florence and the Machine, Bat For Lashes etc) then more experimental pop and truly random small artists, until I was at university and reading the 2014 Laneway lineup and freaking out because it had genuinely all of my favourite artists playing in one day. Wow, I remember thinking, how impressive that they managed to get the coolest, most popular artists all in the same year. But was it really a stellar lineup or were there 30-year-olds in 2014 looking at the poster and muttering “this is all gibberish” like I was on Wednesday?

The 2014 Laneway lineup and my proud souvenir (Frightened Rabbit setlist)

I can basically pinpoint my musical curiosity cliff to getting a job. Suddenly music went from a hobby that took up a lot of time to something I needed in order to relax in small moments of free time. And in those moments, I wanted familiarity and comfort. That’s why, for the past eight years, my Spotify wrapped playlists have looked eerily similar, with a couple of new artists sprinkled in. 

My relationship to music has changed. And while I don’t have a fear of irrelevance (being 55 when you were 12 really helps with that), I do miss the joy of finding a new artist to follow all on my own, or realising a new discovery has three prior albums and being overjoyed rather than filled with resignation. Maybe it’s impossible to revive that sense of discovery and the world expanding around you as a teenager and to try would only lead to disappointment. But I’m probably too young to have given up already.

Perhaps the Laneway announcements can be a guide instead of a youthful threat. I probably won’t go to the festival but I’ve saved beabadoobee’s albums to my library so that’s a start.

This week on Behind the Story (LIVE)

Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith are arguably New Zealand’s best observational documentary makers. After two award-winning feature-length documentaries (The Ground We Won and How Far is Heaven), Chris and Miriam turned their attention to the shorter form, and dived deep on home education – parents who teach their kids at home. The six-part series follows six different families approaching education in six unique ways. From a dahlia farm to a bus, to a simple living room, Home Education explores the many reasons parents choose not to send their kids to school. Chris and Miriam joined me, live from the series launch at The Spinoff offices, to discuss observational filming, the allure of conviction in beliefs and how making the show changed their own views as new parents.

Listen here, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Read more: Shanti Mathias’s beautiful personal essay on homeschooling.

• Watch the first episode of Home Education here, or on Youtube.

Discover By The Bottle: New Zealand’s leading boutique wine retailer

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How my collection of Funko Pops ended up in Te Papa

Somewhere in Te Papa’s vast storage facility sit 13 bug-eyed plastic figurines, most of them bought from The Warehouse by Ben Fagan. Funko Pops are small vinyl toys depicting characters from TV, film, sports and memes but with blank soulless eyes. They had their big moment during the Covid nostalgia boom, before interest fell so hard that last year their maker threw away $30 million in stock.

Ben, a collector, woke one day to realise his Pops were bad to look at, cluttering his life, and had a vaguely threatening aura. Before he could dispose of them at his local Vinnies, though, fate intervened. He became aware of an iconic Spinoff video series called Get It to Te Papa. The show features Hayden Donnell travelling the length of the country to acquire classic New Zealand memorabilia (the Waitangi dildo, the Queen Street Santa, Suzanne Paul) and trying unsuccessfully to “get” them into the national museum. It gave Ben an idea. This is the story of what happened next.

When the flood came for South Dunedin, this time it was ready

When Shanti Mathias saw the warnings about flooding in Dunedin on Thursday, curled on her sister’s couch where she had arrived to stay for the weekend, she didn’t imagine that she would spend her weekend interviewing people affected by floods. On Saturday, she was walking the fast-draining streets and knocking on doors. Faye opened her door on Surrey Street and told Shanti how she’d stuffed towels down the tubes of her toilet, to stop it bubbling over.

Reporting from the sodden ground of South Dunedin, Shanti gives an informed updated to her article last year which asked “What do you do when flooding is inevitable?”

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The fight for the toheroa of Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe

Toheroa were a staple in the New Zealand diet until the mid to late 1900s. Traditionally, Māori would collect toheroa not only for kai but also as a valuable trading resource. The tongues are bigger than tuatua and they are sweeter and creamier. So delicious in fact that a lucrative commercial industry led to the species almost becoming extinct. Liam Rātana visited the coastal communities along Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe, or Ninety Mile Beach, where toheroa were once a vital source of kai. The Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe Board, with representatives from four of the five local iwi – Te Rarawa, Ngāi Takoto, Te Aupōuri, and Ngāti Kuri – along with councillors from the Northland Regional Council and Far North District Council, is now fighting to restore the beach and its toheroa populations.

Aware and alive: Why motorcycle safety is an issue for car users too

The weather is warming up, and with it motorcyclists are dusting off their bikes and heading out on the roads. But it’s not only motorbike owners who should be brushing up on their road skills – car drivers also need to have motorcyclists’ safety in mind when they get behind the wheel. This Motorcycle Awareness Month, Z Energy is appealing to all road users to help keep motorcyclists safe. Read why here.

The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week

• Duncan Greive delves into the mood of the boardroom and determines that the business community has no time for David Seymour’s culture wars

• Hayden Donnell had the good news scoop of the week: Ferry crosses the Cook Strait without crashing into anything 

• Described by one reader, a mental health nurse, as the most accurate summary of current mental health services in New Zealand, Gabi Lardies's Cover Story: Prison or nothing: The ‘self-perpetuating downward spiral’ in New Zealand’s mental health system

• Hayden Donnell with less of a scoop and more of a plea to be understood: Traffic is made of cars 

• Real-time analysis from me, Liam Rātana and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith of the Seymour-Modlik Te Tiriti o Waitangi debate 

Recommended reads for your weekend

• Reese Witherspoon is co-writing a thriller. Claire Mabey was annoyed at first, but then she did a full 180. Here's why.

• Remember singing ‘Fish and chips’ at primary school? Lyric Waiwiri-Smith tracked down the iconic song’s virtually unknown creator.

• In light of recent events, Madeleine Chapman reviews a timeline of New Zealand’s friendship with Samoa, uncovering that we’re a shit friend.

• For a young Alex Casey with a tape recorder, ‘Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit of….)’ would always come in at the top spot with that big farting trumpet. 25 years later, she’s watching in horror as The Warehouse desecrates the song.

• Tour of New Zealand invites players to race their way around the board, their path lined by scenic highlights. Toby Manhire has created a Fast Track Edition to freshly torment his mother and tour the projects.

• The Spinoff guide to life, here to tell you how to avoid being a pain in the arse while you’re swimming in a public pool.

• We’ve all cried little first world tears when seeing olive oil prices recently. Madeleine Holden asks if local producers could come to the rescue.

• Want to get your kids reading? Need a nice present for a little one? Look no further than Unity Books children’s book review spring roundup.

• Not everyone will agree, but Hera Lindsay Bird hates and repudiates our new ersatz, pretender moon.

• Today is Bookshop Day, and Books editor Claire Mabey is feeling the feels. Read her ode to indie bookshops.

• Alice Neville is back to being the thorn in the government’s side. She investigates how a chronic shortage of nurses became ‘too many’.

Reader feedback of the week

• On ‘Primary school LOTR’: The principal giving Peter Jackson a run for his money

"I love this! In 1984 I was in the third form at Wainuiomata College and my teacher was Moana Jackson. As a class project that year, we made a short film - a sort of Jekyll and Hyde-type horror film. I was the producer. With exactly $0 budget, we shot it on location at the college but some of the filming was done at night which felt particularly grown-up. One of my favourite memories from school, thanks to an inspiring teacher."

• On I hate and repudiate our new ersatz, pretender moon

"How are we supposed to moon anyone if there's some second, smaller, temporary moon? Do we need a second bum?"

• On When the flood came for South Dunedin, this time it was ready

"Thank you Shanti, I live on the hill above Surrey St and we were among the many self-evacuating like you in the early hours of Friday morning as water flooded through our house. We lived there in 2015 too, when I got an urgent phone call to come collect the kids from the St Clair primary school. This is the most authentic article I have read on the floods, perhaps you need to experience it. I agree the Council did a great job both preparing over the last few years and in advance of the rain and during it. Our house is damaged and we don’t quite know what will happen right now, still I have hope for my community going forward with the lovely people in your article."

Thanks for reading.

— Madeleine Chapman