Celebrating NZ music throughout May: 21 – Keith Urban / The Adults / Estere / Jess B

I’m back! I hope @sift666 kept you entertained, in my absence, with his quite different musical tastes. Since I’ve just come back from a few days in Australia, I started thinking about some of the musicians who could be claimed by both countries.

And I’ve picked…

Keith Urban! What, you thought he was American? Quite understandable, since he puts a lot of twang into his country songs, and has been mostly based in the States. Although he’s mostly known as an Australian musician, he was actually born in Whangarei, New Zealand, and didn’t move to Australia till he was about 17. So in my mind, that qualifies him for this series.

It’s probably a bit naff to admit it, but I do enjoy a bit of American Idol, and have been watching since about Season 10 or 11. Until Keith replaced Stephen Tyler in Season 12, I knew his name but not his music. So this performance on AI was my first experience of his music, and although I’m not specially a country fan, I really liked it! Here’s “A Little Bit of Everything”:

Then I had to go out and check out more of his music. Some of it is just a tad too country for my taste, but a lot of it I really enjoy. Here’s “Where The Blacktop Ends”, one of his rockier ones, but with an almost bluegrass twang in it:

Between 1991 and 2018 he’s released 11 studio albums and four compilations, and had more than 20 number 1 singles. One of those was “Making Memories of Us” from 2005, which one of the Youtube commenters described as the greatest love song EVER!

Possibly my favourite is “You’re Not My God”, which wasn’t released as a single, but is from 2002’s “Golden Road” album. (Listen out for a misheard lyric at 2:39 – he sings “your evil grin” but my friend misheard it the first time as “your evil twin”, which always made us giggle.)

Featured on the NZ Music Month website today

I’m pleased to be able to report that I quite like today’s song. Not entirely my gig, but there are aspects to it I like a lot. It’s The Adults with “Bloodlines” (feat Estère & JessB).

Wikipedia says:

The Adults is a New Zealand rock supergroup. Originally started as solo project for Shihad frontman Jon Toogood in 2010, it grew into a musical collaboration involving many established New Zealand musicians, including Shayne Carter, Julia Deans, Anika Moa, Tiki Taane and Ladi6.

The Adults released a self-titled album in 2011 which reached number four in the New Zealand album charts. The Adults has also been nominated for Album of the Year at the 2012 New Zealand Music Awards, and the single "Anniversary Day" was on the long list for the 2012 APRA Silver Scroll award.

In June 2012 The Adults performed a concert with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra at CBS Arena in Christchurch, New Zealand. A special edition of their album The Adults with live tracks from the concert was released in November 2012.

If you’ve been following all the music posts this month, you might remember some of those names.

Here’s one of their old songs. “One Million Ways”, and I’m enjoying hearing Jon Toogood’s voice coming through on this one.

Let’s also have a quick look at Estère and Jess B, who were featured on “Bloodlines”.

Estère is also known as the Empress of Electric Blue Witch-Hop. Her first album, from 2015, was self titled and she will shortly release a double album “My Design, On Others”. Here she is with “Pro Bono Techno Zone”:

Jess B is fairly new on the hip hop scene and has just released her debut EP “Bloom”. Here’s “Take It Down” (feat. Rubi Du):

Thanks for listening

Videos from Youtube. Top image is the official logo and appears everywhere. This copy came from Eventfinda.

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