Bic Runga says sadness is no longer her 'shtick'

Nearly three decades after her debut Drive enchanted the country, Bic Runga thought a lot about how to release music with a "fresh sound" without alienating her past audience.

As the songs on her new album Red Sunset reveal, she's now a "different person" from the young woman who sang about her head battling with her heart in the 1997 hit single 'Sway'.

"It's funny when your shtick changes. I can't do the sad, forlorn, torch song thing so much. That's not really my buzz… I was so tortured by everything when I was young. Everything was so heavy and difficult, but now I'm like, 'Just make something," she tells RNZ's Music 101.

Runga remembers feeling "this kind of weird, cushioned numbness" when 'Sway' was released, partly because it wasn't her pick for a single from Drive.

"I was like, 'Okay, let's just let it do its thing. It did really well, so did 'Get Some Sleep'. But both those times I just thought, 'This isn't going to work'."

In the Philippines, where Runga says most of her listeners are, 'Sway' has become a "go-to karaoke song".

"It's been covered by a Filipino-British artist called Beabadoobee, and she's so much bigger than I ever was. So 'Sway' has found this life of its own. There was also a cover of it by a really good DJ called R3HAB (featuring Amy Shark). 'Sway' has lived a really big life while I've been at home."

For Red Sunset's reception, Runga is keeping her expectations "modest".

"It's really hard to release your music now. There are so many other things to look at... It's just out, and it will do what it does."

Releasing her previous all-originals album Belle back in 2011, Runga acknowledges that for a musician, 15 years is "a long time to not make an original work".

"There were definitely times when I thought, 'I'm never going to make music again, this whole family thing is so full-on'.

"It's hard to have the space in your brain and in your life [to write music] when you're trying to raise children, especially, I guess, if you write songs at home. That isolation that you need to concentrate is just not there."

Although the song 'Home Run' on Red Sunset was originally written for her 2002 album Beautiful Collision, Runga wrote most of the others with her partner Kody Nielson, with whom she has three children.

"We're just in this kind of family world together, and we have so much on our plates that we just have to tag-team it. We have a studio at home, and we just do what we can."

She and Neilson "broke the back" of the new album and wrote songs like 'Paris in the Rain' while on a family trip last year to the French capital, where Runga spent three years in her mid-20s.

Staying in a rented house with a beautiful 200-year-old grand piano, the trip was like "going back into a dream", she says.

"Paris never changes, but the world feels like it's changed, so it's kind of cool seeing it 20 years later. There were these floods the year before we went, and everything felt a bit more... edgy and apocalyptic, so I was just trying to capture the vibe that was there."

Runga, who was just 19 when she released her debut single 'Drive' in 1995, says seeing New Zealand musician Neil Finn crack the American Top 40 with the 1986 Crowded House hit 'Don't Dream It's Over' was her first big inspiration to try and make a job of music.

After touring Europe with the band, accompanied by Finn's wife Sharon and their kids, she says touring with her own family one day became "the dream".

"I'm like, 'That's the dream. I want to get to that.' And we have been able to tour with the kids a bit more. I'm excited about taking family to Australia and playing shows there."

Check out details of Bic Runga's 2026 Australia and New Zealand Tour here.