Musician and comedian Bret McKenzie is likely the only New Zealander whose credits span Lady Gaga, Tony Bennett, Kermit the Frog and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Oh, and let’s not forget The Simpsons, The Minecraft Movie, and The Muppets, for which McKenzie won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Original Song.
So where does the 49-year-old father of three keep one of entertainment’s most prestigious awards?
“My Oscar is on top of the piano in our lounge,” McKenzie tells Double J’s Michael Hing, where it shares shelf space with a few knick-knacks, pins, and socks missing their counterparts.
“It’s really cool. But sometimes it’s a bit intimidating if you’re sitting at the piano trying to write a song and then you look up and you’re like, ‘Oh man, as good as that one? I’m not sure.'”
McKenzie penned the Oscar-winning Man or Muppet for the 2011 big screen reboot of Jim Henson’s Muppets. (Reuters: Mike Blake)
For McKenzie, who now lives in Wellington after dividing his time between Los Angeles, New York and New Zealand, penning an Oscar winner was “such a highlight of my career … this door opened. It was awesome!”
The victory sealed his pivot toward composing for film and TV, kickstarting a second successful chapter in his career.
Listen to Bret McKenzie’s Double J interview
The first? As one half of Flight of the Conchords, billed as “New Zealand’s fourth-best digi-bongo a capella-gangsta rap funk-folk comedy duo” with songs that boasted both musical sophistication and lyrical absurdity.
Alongside Jemaine Clement, McKenzie masterfully parodied Pet Shop Boys (Inner City Pressure), David Bowie (Bowie), rap (Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros), and, in the domesticated bedtime courting of Business Time, seductive funk.
Flight of the Conchords were favourites of the comedy festival circuit. (Supplied: Sub Pop)
The duo wrote and starred in two seasons of a hit HBO series, making Flight of the Conchords a late 2000s pop culture phenomenon.
This May, the pair reunite for their first shows in eight years. McKenzie confesses it’s prompted dusting off the memory banks and brushing up in rehearsals.
“We were just trying to remember how to play that song, Business Time, earlier this week,” he says.
“It’s kind of hilarious because we both look at each other like, ‘What happens next?’
“…What’s the bassline in the chorus?’ We pull up YouTube clips to listen to ourselves.”
Songs without jokes
In 2022, following the Conchords’s initial hiatus and his Hollywood composer hustle, McKenzie turned to a fresh challenge: Songs Without Jokes.
That became the title of his debut solo album, which began as a “fun side project” to complete an earnest of tunes that didn’t fit his screen composer work.
Steeped in the tradition of ’70s singer-songwriters like Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman, Songs Without Jokes was cut with a team of crack musicians.
Figures like guitarist Dean Parks, bassist Leland Sklar and percussionist Joey Waronker — whose combined client list includes everyone from James Taylor and Steely Dan to Oasis and Lana Del Rey.
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“So many things are done now by ourselves,” he reasons. “You’re on your phone and even musicians often now record with one person at a time. It’s like a laptop and one guitar part — that’s the way music’s made.
“I’m kind of nostalgic for the 70s and 80s when musicians were in the room together. And you capture that energy of bouncing off each other. That’s a big thing for me.”
Many of the same personnel returned for McKenzie’s second album, Freak Out City, which allowed a more playful edge to creep in.
The opening lyrics of the album’s first track feels like a stand-up bit: You hear about the guy from Bethnal Green, who lost his life crushed beneath a vending machine?
Meanwhile, the title track is a samba-and-piano-driven cautionary tale about getting lost in conspiracy theories online. (“If this could happen to you, then it could happen to me.”)
These moments aren’t played strictly for laughs and sit side-by-side with wit, warmth and heart-on-sleeve earnestness. Songs that recognise how life itself often treads the fine line between hilarity and sentimentality, a lesson McKenzie learned working with Kermit and company.
“I did this show with all the Muppets and Sesame Street characters on stage. It was so fun and funny,” he says.
“I was singing Rainbow Connection with Kermit on stage with an orchestra. One thing that blew me away was how Jim Henson had this great ability to have ridiculous songs — insane things like Mah Nà Mah Nà, just madness.
“And then Kermit singing It Ain’t Easy Being Green. Kind of funny because it’s a frog singing it. But actually just a beautiful song about being different.
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“That’s when I started to really become attracted to the idea of songs having different roles and what you can do with them.
“Doing music for film and TV, sometimes you’re writing a song that’s to make a sequence funny or bring a character to life.
“Sometimes you’re actually just singing the character’s heart out, so they can hear their feelings. Now, I just enjoy that the songwriting is all kind of similar.
“Whether it’s a funny song, a serious song or a heartfelt song, for me, I just enjoy them all now and sort of try them all out.”Respecting the fandom
These days, McKenzie typically tours around with his own “financially unviable band.”
With the skyrocketing costs of freight and the decline in traditional musical revenue streams, he’s only half-joking.
“Conchords is a really great equation: Two people, giant venues,” he notes. “I’m flying eight musicians from Wellington.”
“Someone saw a show in Vegas recently and they were like ‘Bret, your band is bigger than this legend’s Vegas band!'”
“I’m getting a lot of pressure from management to tour with a smaller band. Having this giant band? It’s kind of ridiculous, but it’s awesome.”
Bret McKenzie says he lives for the thrill of touring. (Supplied: Izzie Austin)
For everything he’s achieved in the past 15 years, McKenzie still empathises with people who recognise him as “that guy from Conchords on the TV show when I was a kid”.
“I get it that it’s a hard jump for them, but for me it’s quite weird because that change has been gradually happening,” he says.
“You’re evolving, changing and growing as a person and you’re doing different things. Creatively, you’ve got to always keep trying new things because that’s part of the fun.
“But yeah, people hold on to this thing that is in their mind, but fair enough.”
Reflecting on Flight of the Conchords’ debut album, 10 years on from its release
McKenzie’s solution has been to fashion career-spanning set lists, connecting old and new songs via accompanying yarns — “and the audience can enjoy the journey, catch them up a little bit.”
His recent Australian tour featured solo material, soundtrack work, including his savage send-up of Morrissey and The Smiths for The Simpsons, and the odd Conchords classic.
Next on the calendar? Reuniting Flight of the Conchords for the first time since a 2018 HBO special, performing to nearly 12,000 people over two nights in Los Angeles this May.
Huge shows are par for McKenzie’s course.
“We’ve done arena tours, we’ve done Hollywood Bowl, and we’ve done the O2 in London,” he says.
“But what’s quite surreal as a performer, and even for the audience, too,” he continues, is how large-scale shows function the same way as the tiny rooms and clubs Conchords would play coming up in the early 2000s.
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“The audience laugh at the same bits and the song works the same way, so it’s literally the same song that me and Jemaine would play to 10 people, we’re now playing to 15,000 people and they’re laughing and connecting.
“If the song works to 10 people, it works to 10,000 people. It’s kind of amazing.”
And the bigger the audience, the better the joke gets for McKenzie and Clement.
“We’re up there with our little guitars, getting the whole crowd clapping their hands like a Queen [song]. And then we’re playing a recorder solo,” he chuckles.
“The whole thing is sort of ironic and the audience is in on the joke. It’s kind of awesome how ridiculous it is.”
Freak Out City is out now. Flight of the Conchords play The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles May 9th and 10th.