Bic Runga performing to a sold-out audience last night. Photo / Tom Grut
Bic Runga performing to a sold-out audience last night. Photo / Tom Grut
REVIEW
Bic Runga’s music makes you feel at home.
Like the warmth you you get when you’re back at your parents’ house for the summer, fighting over who gets first dibs on the CD selection.
The Kiwi music legend is wrapping up a nationwide tour in celebration of the 20-year anniversary of her 11-time platinum, best-selling album Beautiful Collision. And in her penultimate show last night at Auckland Town Hall, Runga, alongside her band and opening act Georgia Lines, brought down the house.
Perhaps it’s that shared melancholy of missing home we can relate to, or the “all over the place” nature of the album which mimics real life, but it struck a chord with Kiwis then, and still does now.
Lines, a fellow New Zealand artist, warmed up the crowd with powerful vocals and audience engagement on I Was Made For Loving You.
“As a young gal, I listened to Bic growing up and so it’s a real honour and a privilege to be here. A real pinch-me moment to be honest to be opening the stage for her and such a beautiful album. I said beautiful again, but it was a beautiful album which I loved it, it was called Beautiful Collision.”
With a voice like Lines’, one that makes your heart feel things you may not want to, it’s not hard to see why she was chosen to perform.
There was also something very personal about both Lines’ and Runga’s periods of solo stage time. It made the hall shrink in, you forgot there were more than a thousand others sharing the experience.
Fellow Kiwi artist Georgia Lines opening for Bic Runga at the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Tom Grut
Runga told the Herald last month it was a special but difficult album to make as there was “a lot of expectation to make a better record than your first one”.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years, but it’s still very much me, the songs still mean a lot to me, and remind me of that time in my life when I’d been living between New York and Auckland. Most of the themes on this record are about homesickness; coming of age; separation; and exhaustion,” she said in June.
In her set she brought the same playful enthusiasm as someone without her decades of experience in the industry.
“Twenty years ago, I don’t miss anything about being whatever that age was, 10? No, wouldn’t be 10 then,” she told the crowd.
The chats between songs were brief and left you wanting to hear her speak more. Yet at the same time they felt familiar, like an old friend who left town relaying how they felt missing their family back home.
Someone who’s emotions you can hear through the music.
As well as paying homage to Beautiful Collision, Runga treated the crowd to her new song You’re Never Really Here (Are You Baby).
“I’ve just come out of, you know, retirement. I just put some shoulder pads on ladies, and I came out of the house and I thought, ‘I better write a song’.”
Bic Runga rocks out Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Tom Grut
After thanking the band, who worked overtime throughout the performance, and walking off stage following a not-so-convincing “last song”, the audience knew Runga would be back.
With a brief interlude, and ongoing cheers of encouragement, Runga was back to round out the night with Sway.
Soothing, brilliant and a New Zealand anthem, the final song hit all the right spots and garnered a well-deserved, near-universal standing ovation fromthe audience.
Bravo, Bic Runga.
Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who usually covers social issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.
