Benee on boomers, the b word, and Newstalk ZB badmouthing

In the last year, Benee has taken the world, or at least TikTok, by storm with her viral singles ‘Glitter’ and ‘Supalonely’. Before the release of her debut album, the young star spoke to Elle Hunt about going international from her home in Auckland.

Around this time last year, Benee won not one, not two, but four New Zealand Music Awards, named the country’s top breakout artist, top pop artist, and top solo artist (as well as the lead singer of the New Zealand single). year) thanks to just one EP.

It was a resounding endorsement of Stella Rose Bennett, then 19, in her year of breakup, but you may have wondered, as I have, if that left her with nowhere to go next.

Simultaneously celebrated as the nation’s most promising rookie and its preeminent pop star (Y soloist), Benee could have found herself cornered in a corner of that middle ground of New Zealand music to await legacy status: she is no longer a newcomer, not yet a Finnish brother.

Benee soon proved me wrong, her star’s rise was constant even when she herself was grounded by the coronavirus. In February, ‘Supalonely’ followed ‘Glitter’ to become her second TikTok dance challenge, in 2020, a key marker of relevance, and her first radio hit.

It peaked at number 18 on the UK charts in March and at number 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 two months later, earning it invitations to perform from Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Fallon.

In any other year, at this stage in her career, Benee might have been tempted to split her time between Los Angeles and New Zealand and enjoy the best of both worlds: proximity to the center of show business and a home to the I could run away escape from it.

Instead, Benee has ridden the biggest wave of her career since Auckland. When we first spoke in June, she was back in her teenage room at her parents’ house, and a bit grumpy about her canceled world tour: “I was going to go to Paris for the first time. Also Japan. “

But she soon got over it, buying her first home, moving in with three of her friends, and adopting a cat and puppy. The week after wrapping up her New Zealand tour last month, Benee was planning to get stuck in the house renovations, starting with ripping the red wine-stained cream carpet.

“It’s very different from how I thought my year would be,” he says. But Benee has also been amazed at how much she has been able to accomplish from home, performing on American television and collaborating with Grimes, Lily Allen, rapper Flo Milli and their regular co-writers remotely.

“People always ask me if I’m moving to Los Angeles … but I don’t really need it right now,” he says. “Maybe you needed it 10 years ago or five years ago, but now … everything you used to do in a different place, you can do in a room at home.”

Some outlets may even be done better from afar, like The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Not only did she have more creative control through the video link, Benee says, “I would have been a lot more nervous performing on the live show.”

But she worries that other aspects of her art have been lost in the distance, with the American music press especially inclined to frame her compared to other young pop women. Benee winces at a headline describing her as “New Zealander Billie Eilish.” Other interviewers have told him that he is “a kind of Dua Lipa.”

“They are both incredibly talented, but it seems sad to compare two artists who are so different,” he says, with obvious frustration. “I got really tired of it. I was like, just listen to my music and don’t compare our faces. “

She has noticed the same “lazy” comparisons even at home, with newer Kiwi artists described as “like Benee” or “inspired by Benee”: “I say, ‘You don’t know, you don’t know they like my music.’

It speaks to the fact that in New Zealand, Benee is already a model, not the breakup. While it was “completely surreal” to clean up at last year’s NZMAs, he says, it didn’t feel more defining than an award he won in high school soccer.

“It feels great to be recognized for your hard work, but it’s not like you are shit or anything, at least to me. I don’t feel like I’m better than any other New Zealand artist. “

He admires Lorde for maintaining an international profile and artistic credibility without even much of an online presence. “She was huge from the beginning, even before playing a show, but she has done a good job staying there.”

But where Lorde was able to escape her celebrity in the big cities (“Nobody recognizes me”, happily said a New York Times interviewer in 2017), Benee has drawn increasing attention from abroad within her hometown.

It may be that instead of offering an escape from the limelight, in New Zealand it is laser focused.

When we speak the week after the election, Benee is still irritated by her first encounter with the controversy, where a clip of her calling Judith Collins a “bitch” on the Wellington stage was posted on TikTok and picked up by the media.

Benee agrees that he shouldn’t have called Collins “the b word” (though “it’s dirty politics”). But more than sorry, she is irritated by the fact that Kate Hawkesby has condemned her management at Newstalk ZB.

“She called me on a 5 am radio show and said, ‘Who is your manager?’ I was like, ‘are you kidding me?’ She is here complaining about what I have said and asking who my manager is, as if my manager controls what I say.

“I think it’s so hypocritical, if she’s here trying to talk about fucking female empowerment… she was furious when she said that. I can do what I want on stage, I can say what I want because I am not a politician and I am not a radio host ”.

Hawkesby also poured cold water on Benee’s support for cannabis legalization, saying his fans were too young to vote for Benee, which amounts to dissuading them from doing so. “What is so twisted! … Apparently his girls went to my concert, ”he adds.

I imagine it can be oppressive to be under that scrutiny, I say. “There are so many damn boomers,” Benee says in exasperation. “There are so many old and backward white people …

“It’s like I’m forgetting the kind of people that are here, because I surround myself with my people, and nobody I know votes for Judith Collins.”

At her shows, Benee says, she feels she can count on the crowd to share her political views. From the stage of his election night concert at Spark Arena, he celebrated the re-election of “Chlöe and Jacinda ”.

But the incident showed him that he can no longer count on reaching an exclusively sympathetic audience. After seeing the documentary short film OK Chluh, feel for Swarbrick, fired because of his age and progressive politics.

“She is doing a very good job, but far away, being a politician, I hate “Benee says, grimacing at the thought.” I’m glad there are people doing it who are good people in this country, because it must be very hard work, my God.

Even with her own limited profile, Benee knows the feeling of being under surveillance. At a recent after party, she confronted a man for filming her on his phone. “I looked at him and said, ‘What are you doing? You can come and talk to me. ‘ He just made a weird face and, I think, he sent the video to someone. “

For the past several years, Benee has had a recurring anxiety about being “taken at night,” interrupting her sleep. It has more to do with his true fixation on crime than any real threat, he says, but the reality of his nascent celebrity hasn’t helped.

“I noticed some people commenting that my posts said, ‘I know where that is,’ then I said, ‘I posted it too close to my house.’ Everyone knows everyone, right? People probably know where I live, people know where Ella [Lorde] lives. It’s kind of weird to think about it. “

Benee is sleeping peacefully now thanks to her “watchdog” and the new home security system (“because I’m fucking paranoid”). But the psychological feeling of being exposed can be more difficult to resolve.

Tall poppy syndrome is real, Benee says. “My guitarist Tiare and I had a conversation about it … There are so many people here that when you’re just starting out, they’ll give you full support, but … they say, ‘Ugh, okay, they’ve done it. too good now ‘. “

So far, Benee’s strategy has been to surround herself with people “who are loyal and who really care, because it can get fuzzy very quickly,” he says.

“It’s very difficult to know what people want from you, or if they want something from you, or if their intentions are genuine or whatever. It is something very strange that you have to take into account. “

She flinches slightly to hear me describe her as on the road to fame. “I think if there was a way that I could make music and still build relationships with everyone, but without becoming famous, it would be ideal.”

Benee’s debut album Hey ux is out today

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