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Six60 is as much a deal as a band, and has achieved unprecedented historical success with a very unconventional approach, writes Six60 hater and music critic Duncan Greive.
New Zealand has never known a band like Six60. Their success is complete and spotless – so vast that it can make the milestones of other petty and childish artists in comparison. The numbers that they produce are amazing. For six consecutive months, from November to May, they aired the most-played song on the radio, "Do not Give It Up" only yielding first place when another of their songs, "Closer", was ready to go. Twelve singles have become platinum or better, and their two albums are quadruple platinum. While Lorde is globally popular, in New Zealand, Six60 are ahead
Their current version is a six-song EP, imaginatively titled Six60 EP . In addition to platinum, he had an absurd dominance of the Top 20 NZ Singles, perfectly illustrated by this week's release:
If you count at home, it's the entirety of the version contained in the top 10 Total has therefore owned this chart that its RMNZ directors had to put together a separate chart called "Hot Singles" that values the volatility on sales. This is partly because the Spotify and YouTube era has made hits last longer than before, but also a response to the fact that Six60 have actually broken their charts.
Yet despite this backdrop, an announcement on June 28 a level of ambition almost scary. They were playing at Western Springs, an open air stadium in the suburbs of downtown Auckland. If that does not tell you anything, it's probably because it's not particularly common. There are very few artists in the world capable of filling it.
In recent years, there have been The Police, Guns N Roses and Bruce Springsteen. Heritage megastars deep in their careers, often playing long-awaited reunions. At 49,000, the capacity is too big for everyone except the taller one.
For New Zealand artists, it's not even really an Everest – it's just not something something that they would never consider. You might as well talk about planning a show on the moon. Even with the immensely popular Six60 live show and the prevalence of streaming and radio, there was still a huge risk – a show with no data points to predict results safely. To put it in perspective, only one other New Zealand artist has ever directed a show there, more than half a century ago in 1966, when Larry Morris shot 18,000, according to the promoter Six60, the legend of the Brent Eccles industry. When tickets were on sale, even this supremely confident group was tense.
They do not have to be. The pre-sale saw 13,000 tickets disappear. Within 24 hours, they were well over 25,000. Today, a few weeks after opening and more than six months after the big day, they are over 42,000. That's more Great as all but the biggest festivals in New Zealand history – more tickets than most Big Day Outs and about twice as much as would have been sold at this year's Auckland City Limits. A repurchase is almost assured
As extraordinary as their success is the paradoxical indifference of most institutions that propel it normally. While they dominate the radio, even though it was a tough march, Mai and Flava, two of the country's biggest resorts, have only really arrived recently. The mainstream publications treated them as any other big-ish group, especially in the cover of the Western Springs show itself. This is arguably the biggest musical story of the year in New Zealand, a historically daring event – but it has generated little stories at the time, and none since.
This is partly because the music media have been indifferent and hostile from the start. When I was a music writer, I regularly wrote cruel reviews of their singles, describing "Rise Up" as "meaningless lyrics and feelgood vibes plastered to a pulp of dubstep and Starbucks drum & # "N bass" in 2011.
I was hardly alone in this perspective. And because critics largely decide who to cover, too, the group was not first selected. Compare them with Marlon Williams and SWIDT, both highly regarded by the public, with tiny fragments of the size of Six60, which regularly receive large and complex stories in the audiovisual media. (A notable exception: Chris Schulz's excellent profile of Six60 from last year.)
As were the media, so went the industry. They were courted, but not as aggressively as they should have been. And as a result, they learned how to run their business in their own way. Having started as a cover band at Dunedin in 2008, they have learned to forge deep ties with an audience of parties and concerts. A few years later, they end up in uni and decide to record an EP as a momento. They booked a studio in a few weeks, resolving to write originals in the meantime. Having no connection with the formal industry, they entered a local section of the Rock Shop and asked the guy behind the counter if he knew any producers, and that's how the guy behind the counter of the Rock Shop ended up producing his first EP.
This EP contains a number of songs that will become must-haves and huge hits, including their best-known song, "Do not Forget Your Roots", which consists mainly of lyrics "Forgotten" not your roots my friend / do not forget your family yeah ", and yet has become almost a hymn for fans.
They release themselves EP on their own label and sell thousands of copies, which they ship from their practice space, and their weird combination of DIY tactics and d & # 39; 39, huge commercial success is absent. Shortly after, they booked their first show in Auckland. The place? The town hall. It's sold well, of course
It was largely a combination of Otago students who had gone home, and new fans converted through the new social media phenomenon of Facebook. The group has 300,000 fans, who are essentially a giant vault of committed customers, ready to be mobilized at any time. A classic example of this is the video "White Lines". They asked the fans to present sequences of themselves by singing on the song, then edited the best of these submissions together. They billed it as "run by New Zealand," and it now has nearly 2m of views, while it costs almost nothing to create. Over the years, they have become more professional: they have a large US leadership (even though they have not done much abroad yet) and work with external promoters like Eccles. Although still under their own label, they have a long-term promotion and distribution contract with Universal Music New Zealand.
Still, they feel like a group outside of the industry. Despite the dominance of their EP, they have not been nominated in this year's Silver Scrolls. Their Western Springs show is a mini-festival, with four numbers of support – but there are no women on the bill, something almost unimaginable at that time. It's not that they're hostile to other artists, but simply that their values are very different – exemplified by their conception of the group as a "high-growth business." This is supported by their diligence: they have a full time studio, with workstations and fixed hours, and work with the coach of the mental skills of All Blacks Gilbert Enoka
Other Artists cultivate an air of mysticism and separation from their fans. , while Six 60s seem supremely relatable – even in their success, they do what New Zealand aspires for. The one drives a BMW last model, others own their homes. When I met them to shoot a segment for The Spinoff TV, bassist Chris Mac had a crust on his face falling while walking. What's more typically New Zealand than that?
By all this normality, they become an enigma – the largest band of the country by far but hardly recognized by many cultural institutions. The best thing to happen to the local industry in the years, just as oddly far from it. Able to fill our largest place without seeing it as much as a step on the way elsewhere. Incredibly cheesy, but deeply and affectionately sincere.
A band whose music I find really difficult to listen to, but whose story is the most daring and fascinating of New Zealand music since Lorde
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