For almost 20 years, the singer-songwriter has been Marlon Williams: capital M, capital W. <\/p>\n
He started playing music in high school, founded The Unfaithful Ways when he was 17, and apart from Covid, when everyone slammed on the brakes, he\u2019s been going and going and going. <\/p>\n
Williams, 35, will stop going and stop performing \u2013 both on stage and off \u2013 at the end of May, after he plays a handful of New Zealand shows. He announced the break on social media before tickets went on sale. It was less a cynical marketing ploy, more a sanity-saving decision, although he admits the flurry of headlines about it was \u201cembarrassing\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason I told people [in advance] was, it\u2019s a bit pathetic, but … I sort of needed to announce it so that people aren\u2019t going, \u2018When are you doing this? Like, what\u2019s going on? What\u2019s going on?\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cBut you see a headline like that and people\u2019s minds start wandering.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing Marlon Williams \u2013 as a public entity \u2013 is acting on some level. Or performing at least.\u201d Photo \/ Ian Laidlaw<\/p>\n
It\u2019s late and Williams (Ng\u0101i Tahu, Ng\u0101i Tai) has just arrived in an Amsterdam hotel room after driving more than six hours from Paris where he played the night before. Van life, he says, propped up on a beige hotel pillow against a beige hotel headboard, is certainly starting to lose its romantic appeal. A short holiday in Budapest in a few days is a welcome distraction.<\/p>\n
A couple of months have passed since he posted that video on Instagram. He\u2019s had time to sit with the now very real prospect of (happily) getting bored and learning to see the world in a slow, gentle light he hasn\u2019t been able to bask in since he was a teenager. <\/p>\n
Williams recalls his most fruitful writing spells came back then, when he was \u201cworking at the dairy, rolling ice creams and making lolly mixtures\u201d. He knows this break will help him get back to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re bored, your mind starts to wander again \u2013 and that\u2019s how you create interesting new things.\u201d<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t need time alone to know he is an \u201cintrovert with extroverted tendencies\u201d and something of a people pleaser, too. Those realisations have come in recent years, though shelved until he has time to process how to make that work in an industry that can demand so much.<\/p>\n
But what does happen when you combine those particular tendencies with a career in which he has transformed from teenage musician gigging around Lyttelton to winner of numerous Aotearoa Music Awards, two Silver Scroll Awards and this year\u2019s Taite Music Award? When you then become someone acting alongside Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born and on the big screen again in the upcoming New Zealand film When Darkness Loves Us, with Game of Thrones\u2019 Emilia Clarke?<\/p>\n
For Williams, it has meant a long time living in an \u201cexposed state\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as I am able to, in some ways, thrive in a social environment, [there\u2019s] a lot of intensity that\u2019s going on under the hood to sustain it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love touring and I love hanging out with my friends and making things, making music, but I guess it becomes pretty tiring after a while. And if you\u2019re lacking in energy \u2026 then everything starts to look grey, including things that you really love.\u201d<\/p>\n
To inject some colour back into his world, Williams is pinning his hopes on doing the dishes every night, building a routine (\u201cit\u2019s really hard to do that when you\u2019re constantly moving\u201d) and taking things a little slower. It all sounds so very un-rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, but so very needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cPredictability, I think, is what I\u2019m looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlon Williams has been touring for almost 20 years. Photo \/ Fiona Goodall Photography<\/p>\n
Williams released four albums in 10 years. The most recent, Te Whare T\u012bwekaweka, has earned him seven nominations at this year\u2019s Aotearoa Music Awards. It\u2019s more than anyone else up for gongs this year, and he is \u201ctickled\u201d by the whole thing. He\u2019s also nominated for this year\u2019s Apra Best Country Music Song and the album won him and his co-writer KOMMI the 2026 Taite Music Prize last week. <\/p>\n
Te Whare T\u012bwekaweka was recorded in te reo M\u0101ori, a documentary (Ng\u0101 Ao E Rua \u2013 Two Worlds) was filmed alongside it by Ursula Grace Williams, and both projects were released at a time the musician describes as \u201cspeaking to the cultural moment\u201d of the use and importance of the language in Aotearoa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real hot topic \u2026 people who support it and want to see it, want to see it flourish are rallying,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The songs will be a gift to local audiences when he tours in May. They have been \u201cexciting\u201d to share with international audiences, too. <\/p>\n
\u201c[They change] show to show, audience to audience, depending on how I feel. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s even more true when you\u2019re performing songs on a stage to different cultures. I played in Paris last night, and the French just really wanted to hear M\u0101ori music.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut of course, you\u2019re dealing with a different sort of cultural comprehension than you do with middle New Zealand, which is different again from a more specifically M\u0101ori audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is sort of what keeps you from losing your mind when you\u2019re touring; you\u2019re repeating things, but you\u2019re watching what the repetition says about the rest of the world, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Personally, he says learning and writing in te reo connected him to other M\u0101ori musicians, thinkers and wh\u0101nau.<\/p>\n
Musically, he hopes it started a \u201crenegotiation\u201d of the expectations for what he does next, the same goal he has for each of his albums.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think about like I\u2019ve planted a peg further out in the field in one direction, which means that all these new sorts of games are able to be played, because there\u2019s more room on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how I think about musical growth in general; that each base beyond home base is an opportunity when you go back the next time, to do something even more nuanced or even more adventurous.\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t want the album to be \u201csome sort of religious experience of self-discovery\u201d, instead suggesting that, in the end, language is simply one tool for communication.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s not to say that it\u2019s just words. This is tied to who we are as people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marlon Williams in Glenorchy, filming his documentary Ng\u0101 Ao E Rua \u2013 Two Worlds. Photo \/ Tim Flower<\/p>\n
To a musician like Williams, whose lyrics can read like a diary or poetry or short stories, depending on the day, words are always more than how they look on the page. They are always on his mind, too. A current favourite, for example, is the word jeopardy. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s from the French jeu parti, meaning equal chance, right?\u201d he says, more animated than someone should be at this time of night and more confident in this writer\u2019s high school French lessons than anyone should ever be.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we think of being in jeopardy and like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re really in trouble\u2019 … We\u2019re such natural gamblers, [but] to be in jeopardy is just to have an equal chance of winning or losing in a situation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love when you learn a word \u2013 the etymology of wherever it comes from \u2013 and then you see what its modern-day applications are. And they\u2019re always more extreme than the way it\u2019s written. It\u2019s more intense, it\u2019s more flashy, because language tends to amplify things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
What else has been tickling his mental dictionary recently?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I learned that \u2018a moment\u2019 in the Middle Ages was specifically 90 seconds. It was a specific unit of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, it\u2019s like time\u2019s sped up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winning, losing and the passing of time. That all sounds a little on-the-nose for a man heading towards a temporary career hibernation, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cI guess maybe it is a little telling.\u201d<\/p>\n