NZMM Day 23 – Fat Freddy’s Drop

Today's band, Fat Freddy’s Drop, is a suggestion. That actually means something, but more about that later.

Fat Freddy’s Drop is a seven-piece band from Wellington and, as Wikepedia puts it, their “musical style has been characterised as any combination of dub, reggae, soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, and techno.” The entry doesn’t say who characterises their music that way, but I think it’s reasonably accurate. It’s certainly an eclectic sound.

All three of their albums have gone to Number One in New Zealand. Their highest-charting single, “Wandering Eye” (2005, above), reached Number 6 on the NZ Singles Chart. It was from their first album, Based On A True Story, which went 8x Platinum.

Their second album was Dr Boondigga and the Big BW (2009). It went Double Platinum. The charted single from the album was “The Camel” (2008, below). It reached Number 14 on the singles chart.



The second single from that album was “Pull The Catch”. It reached number 17 on the singles chart [WATCH/LISTEN].

Since then, they’ve had a charted non-album single, “Clean The House” (2013, below), which reached Number 30. It’s on their third album, Blackbird, which went Gold. The album was released after the single.



At the beginning of this post, I said that Fat Freddy’s Drop was suggested to me, and what that means is that I’m including them even though I don’t actually care for their music (and that means that I might not have thought of including them). The whole point of this series had been to share a variety of New Zealand music, especially music that’s been popular in this country or overseas, so whether I like it or not is irrelevant. While I haven’t actively disliked the music of anyone I’ve posted, this post has music I’ve probably liked the least.

But musical taste is an entirely subjective thing, and there are plenty of people who like what I don’t (as well as those who dislike what I like—Arthur’s Law again). That makes some of these posts a bit of challenge for me, because it would be easy to say something negative about songs or groups that I don’t like. So, I’ve tried to stay out of the way and let readers (listeners?) decide for themselves. That’s as it should be. But it’s also only fair to say that even I don’t like everything that I’ve posted, but that, too, is okay.