Bret McKenzie builds an ‘eclectic playlist’ with ‘Freak Out City’ : NPR

Bret McKenzie built his music career on a foundation of comedy. As a young artist, he played in multiple bands spanning a variety of genres, though he’s best known as one half of the musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords.

McKenzie formed Flight of the Conchords with Jemaine Clement in 1998 in Wellington, New Zealand. A sitcom in which they played fictionalized versions of themselves debuted on HBO in 2007, boosting their popularity during a two-season run that ended in 2009. Show clips and the band’s live stage performances became fodder for viral videos, like the unforgettable “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros,” in which McKenzie raps, “There ain’t no party like my Nana’s tea party.”

McKenzie’s talent for injecting humor into his song lyrics led to a credit as the music supervisor for the 2011 film The Muppets. A song he wrote for the film, “Man or Muppet,” won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Since then, he’s written songs for other family fare like Dora and the Lost City of Gold and A Minecraft Movie.

In recent years, McKenzie has penned and performed original music under his own name. In 2022, he released Songs Without Jokes, and this August he came out with a follow-up, Freak Out City.

The album’s title track is about dealing with people eager to share questionable articles online. On “Freak Out City,” McKenzie sings, “Oh my Dad calls me yesterday / He says oh my son we gotta talk / I’ve been up late night out on the verge / I’ve been doing all my own research.”

In an interview with Morning Edition co-host A Martinez, McKenzie explains that the verse was inspired by conversations with his father, who lived by himself on a farm in the last years of his life.

“Seems like isolation is a real hotbed for spending time online,” McKenzie said. “He would come up with opinions that were very unusual, and you had to sort of bring him back down to Earth.”

McKenzie says his father was reading “absurd” health science articles, which led to tensions around the holidays.

“We had a COVID Christmas where he couldn’t come to Christmas because he only did one of the vaccines, he didn’t want to get another vaccination,” McKenzie said. “My Mum didn’t want him there with the younger grandchildren. So then we had this Christmas, and then he’s not there at Christmas by himself. And it was a disaster, it was a really sad time actually.”

But even though he pokes fun at his late father in the lyrics of “Freak Out City,” McKenzie says his father “didn’t mind a bit of comic criticism” and that he thinks he would have loved the song.

Another new song, “All The Time,” is an expression of McKenzie’s love for his children.

“I’ve got three kids – two teenagers and one ten-year-old now – and it’s a love song about them growing up and the idea that your parents – hopefully, your parents love you,” McKenzie said with a laugh. “And that that love will always be there.”

Musing about “All The Time” and how it fits in with the rest of his career inspires McKenzie to imagine what his children and grandchildren would think of his work in the future – long after he’s gone.

“I’m in a very strange mixture of things,” he said. “I’m a background elf in Lord of the Rings and then Conchords has our TV show which is primarily d*** jokes put to music. And then here I am singing a heartfelt song. I mean, it’ll be an eclectic playlist they get to reminisce.”

Still, McKenzie admits that if he’s going to be remembered for one thing, it’ll be Flight of the Conchords. And he credits the band’s massive popularity to the fact that their HBO show was on TV before streaming became popular.

“It was a different kind of time, I think now on TV, it would be very hard to get as much attention,” he said. He adds that there’s a chance of new Flight of the Conchords music and the band may tour again in the next year or two.

The audio version of this story was produced by Lindsay Totty and edited by Olivia Hampton. The digital version was edited by Treye Green.