I should have been a singer. That’s how you conquer the world these days. At least it’s how you become rich and famous if you are a New Zealander, like I am.
Young musicians from my tiny Pacific homeland (population: 4.4 million) have taken over this year.
Lorde’s song “Royals” has ruled the charts all fall, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 in September and hanging out there for 10 weeks. She’s nominated for four Grammy awards and, last month, on her 17th birthday, she signed a $2.5 million American music-publishing deal. Meanwhile, alt-rock singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore’s yet to hit the Billboard charts, but Rolling Stone named her the “breakout star” of this year’s Warped Tour.
The last time we had this much attention was back in 2011, when a seal pup let itself into a Bay of Plenty home and curled up on the owner’s couch. (That was covered by almost every US media outlet, from ABC News to Gawker.)
It’s not just pop music in which Kiwis are stealing the limelight. In October, Matt Lambert was awarded a Michelin star for the New Zealand-inspired cuisine he serves up at his Nolita restaurant, the Musket Room.
That same month, novelist Eleanor Catton, 28, became the youngest-ever recipient of the prestigious Man Booker prize, which bestows £50,000 on the best contemporary fiction produced in the United Kingdom, Ireland or countries of the Commonwealth. (Her check was presented by the Duchess of Cornwall, a k a Camilla Parker Bowles).
The honor puts Catton — whose 832-page mystery, “The Luminaries,” is set in the New Zealand’s west coast gold fields — in the company of Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie.
And Ashleigh Good, a 21-year-old model from Auckland’s North Shore, was last month featured in W Magazine, as well as in Vogue UK and on the cover of Italian Vogue — and she’s the face of Karl Lagerfeld’s 2014 Cruise collection for Chanel.
Not bad for a country that’s slightly smaller than Colorado and whose biggest, most cosmopolitan city, Auckland, has 1.4 million residents — about the same as Phoenix.
While this new crop of famous exports isn’t our first (we can also claim “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and comedy duo Flight of the Conchords), New Zealand has always stood in the shadow of our closest neighbor, Australia. She’s stolen from us Russell Crowe (who is actually NZ- born), credit for the pavlova (my country’s most famous dessert) and, last week, Lorde — albeit briefly — when the singer was described on the Grammys Web site as an Australian. Hey, now!
After 10 years in New York as a journalist, I returned to New Zealand last year with a long résumé and experience I could never have amassed in my home country’s tiny publishing industry. I know from my time in NYC that it doesn’t hurt to come to the United States armed with a strange accent and a provenance that not many others have.
“There’s a lot of endearment towards New Zealanders [in America],” Wigmore, 27, says. “As soon as I open my mouth, people melt. There’s a genuine excitement.”
Scott Mclachlan, who discovered Lorde — real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor — when the singer was 12 (he’s now her manager), agrees that coming from a small country that not many Americans have visited makes musicians more exotic: “There is a sense of mystery to the whole thing because we’re far away.”
At the Musket Room, Auckland’s Lambert serves Kiwi cuisine like red venison with juniper and chervil, and a chic pavlova. New Yorkers, he says, are fascinated by his menu.
“Americans are intrigued by it because it’s different,” says the 32-year-old. “There are a lot of people cooking Italian and Nordic food these days, and we’re providing something new that people want to try.”
For New Zealanders, America — and, more specifically, New York — is the place to make it big.
“Most of us are here for a reason and to achieve something specific,” says Lambert. “We know it takes hard work and ambition. And, in the restaurant, at least, I know I’m going to hear a lot of Hobbit jokes, thanks to Peter Jackson.”