{"id":135903,"date":"2025-11-15T06:08:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T06:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135903\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T06:08:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T06:08:08","slug":"benee-opens-up-on-new-album-kiwi-roots-and-finding-home-in-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135903\/","title":{"rendered":"Benee opens up on new album, Kiwi roots and finding home in LA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benee\u2019s life in LA<\/a> has been an epic, inspiring blur, where she\u2019s surrounded by others also chasing their dreams. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of them are nepos, but the others are people who just love something so much that they\u2019re willing to risk it all to make it work,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

The star\u2019s dream came true recently when her song What featured in the second series of the Netflix comedy Nobody Wants This, although it doesn\u2019t quite compare to getting Lily Allen to feature on the track Plain from her first album.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe 25-year-old is a popstar who shot to fame only after she left school. Photo \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

Benee gushes, \u201cI grew up listening to her and supported a show that she played in Auckland, so being able to have her on my first album felt like a full-circle moment. She\u2019s so badass and her new album is pretty fricken sick. I can\u2019t believe that f**king guy cheated on her. Come on, bro! You were already punching above your weight. I\u2019m Team Lily all the way. I don\u2019t even know what that guy\u2019s name is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benee\u2019s fashion-designer boyfriend Keith Herron has taken on the creative direction for the new album, which she calls a \u201cweird crossover\u201d. Now coming up on two years together, Benee admits it wasn\u2019t until the one-year mark that the pair got serious about working together on her song Animal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real magical collaboration,\u201d Benee says. \u201cIt\u2019s a very deep level of understanding and if you\u2019re aligned aesthetically, it\u2019s just an easy way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BeneeBenee with fashion-designer boyfriend Keith Herron. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Adjusting to life in LA hasn\u2019t been quite so simple, with the singer unable to ignore the plight of the city\u2019s huge homeless population<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She reflects, \u201cI was shocked and so sad that I became pretty depressed the first year. It\u2019s very f**ked up and I get deeply affected by it. It\u2019s weirdly Third World.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benee took to fostering animals to feel like she was making a difference, acknowledging we\u2019re in \u201ca bit of a bubble\u201d here in Aotearoa.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow we treat the environment is so beautiful,\u201d she muses. \u201cOur appreciation for the ocean, land and sky is so deeply rooted in culture, which is something I carried over with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s held on tight to her Kiwi roots, sharing, \u201cIt\u2019s like a spirit I keep. This love and kindness that comes with how we were brought up is so deeply ingrained. It\u2019s so special and I hope to carry that everywhere in life forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Her Kiwi flatmates, who hail from New Plymouth, Wellington and Waiheke Island, keep her grounded, adds Benee. She was tucked away in a bach on Waiheke when she wrote Ur An Angel\u2019s closing track Heaven<\/a>, which is an ode to her grandad, who passed away in 2020, soon after her first taste of success.<\/p>\n

Orphaned at a young age and adopted by a wartime widow, he later opened a 24\/7 petrol station and regularly gave back to kids in need, before he ended up living in Benee\u2019s family home.<\/p>\n

\"UrUr An Angel\u2019s closing track Heaven is an ode to her grandad. Photo \/ Woman’s Day<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hard life, but he had this youthful spirit, which always inspired me,\u201d she says. \u201cHe taught me I don\u2019t have to get old and angry when I grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since his death, Benee has been pondering the big questions, explaining, \u201cI\u2019m realising how fragile life really is and that it can be taken away from you so easily. There are so many ways you can just die. You have to be so careful and life is so precious.\u201d<\/p>\n

At her core, the singer is scared of the unknown and not having all the answers. But she smiles, \u201cMaybe I should just enjoy it, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Benee\u2019s album Ur An Angel I\u2019m Just Particles is out now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benee\u2019s life in LA has been an epic, inspiring blur, where she\u2019s surrounded by others also chasing their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[695,95,4734,92938,92937,66037,23438,4731,31787,6097,156,22771,2949,1437,51500,1345,31989,78,69063,6371,5511,194,55623,117,111,139,69,90,2680,4439,2887,4990,34687,8466,6180,4625,2863,23367,92939,49519,698,810,1316,5816,2173,12598],"class_list":["post-135903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-album","tag-and","tag-angel","tag-aucklandborn","tag-benee","tag-chat","tag-counting","tag-days","tag-doing","tag-down","tag-entertainment","tag-excited","tag-finding","tag-global","tag-happy","tag-home","tag-im","tag-in","tag-insists","tag-joins","tag-just","tag-kiwi","tag-la","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-opens","tag-particles","tag-release","tag-releasing","tag-roots","tag-second","tag-shes","tag-singer","tag-sleep","tag-studio","tag-supalonely","tag-superstar","tag-until","tag-up","tag-when","tag-womans","tag-york","tag-zero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}