KEY POINTS:
Continuing the tally of the top 100 moments in Kiwi music from C4's Rocked the Nation
25: New Zealand's own piano man Carl Doy strikes it big with Piano By Candlelight which was a bright idea for a series of easy listening albums by business man Murray Thom. It was big in the US, making it on to Oprah and making Doy one of our most successful musical exports.
24: It was 1984 and Split Enz call it a day with the Split Enz With A Bang Tour. History did repeat, with many reunions over the years, yet nothing came close to the excellent run of shows this year.
23: In 1957 Johnny Cooper - known as the Maori Cowboy - writes the first Kiwi rock'n'roll song called Pie Cart Rock'n'Roll in honour of his local Pie Cart in Wanganui.
22: In 1966 the Hit Parade starts up and becomes the first local album and singles countdown with the La De Das' How Is the Air Up There? the first Kiwi song to chart.
21: Radio With Pictures starts in the mid-70s with host Dr Rock playing music you didn't hear on radio, as well as giving obscure local music a profile. RWP, which was also hosted by Karyn Hay and Dick Driver, followed by the Sunday Horrors has to rate as some of the most inspired TV programming ever.
20: It's 1964 and Ray Columbus becomes the Mod Father when he and his Invaders release She's A Mod, the first New Zealand song to go No. 1 in Australia.
19: Upper Hutt Posse release E Tu in 1988 and not only do they make the nation sit up and take notice, the staunch song also scares the hell out of the as-yet young Auckland hip hop scene.
18: Our best song (as voted by Apra members) is Nature by the Fourmyula who taught themselves to write songs from a Teach Yourself Songwriting book.
17: Inspired by Bob Marley's concert at Western Springs in 1979, Herbs combine their Maori heritage and reggae music to write songs about Maori land rights and French Nuclear Testing. But they're probably best known for the Footrot Flats song, Slice Of Heaven, with Dave Dobbyn.
16: The poem the national anthem, God Defend New Zealand, is taken from, is from the 1870s but it wasn't until 1977 that the song became our official dual anthem alongside God Save the Queen.
15: During the mid-80s the Thompson Twins, featuring our own Alannah Currie, were one of the biggest pop acts in the world thanks to hits Hold Me Now and Doctor Doctor and album Into the Gap.
14: When Johnny Devlin heard Heartbreak Hotel in the late 50s it changed his life. He became New Zealand's Elvis Presley, or, as the inductee into the NZ Music Hall of Fame and inaugural Legacy Award winner puts it, "I suppose you could call me one of the world's first Elvis impersonators".
13: A girl with the voice of an angel is discovered busking in Christchurch in the late 90s. Hayley Westenra has gone on to sell more than three million albums worldwide.
12: Samuel Flynn Scott and Luke Buda from the Phoenix Foundaiton perform Blue Smoke by Ruru Karaitiana in celebration of New Zealand's first original song, released in 1949.
11: Flight of the Conchords. Everyone knows about them. But as fellow comedian Oscar Kightley points out: "They're so funny those dudes, that people overlook how good they are as musicians."
