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Bret McKenzie is undoubtedly best known as one-half of the iconic comedy music duo, Flight of the Conchords. But in 2022, the New Zealand songwriter shocked fans when he announced his debut solo album, Songs Without Jokes.
As the title suggests, it was always going to be a journey to bring the audience on board with a collection of songs that weren’t funny. Not even one mention of the Rhymenoceros. But against all odds, it worked. McKenzie is now sharing his second record, Freak Out City, with the world.
The venture may seem odd to fans, and as he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ from his home in Wellington, they weren’t alone.
“My team in LA were quite confused by this plan,” he begins, “but everyone knew that I love music and play a lot of music, so it wasn’t a big surprise for me and for people who know me. But for people that know me from just Conchords, it was quite confusing.”
In recent years, the 49-year-old musician has worked on music and scores for a number of films, including 2025’s The Minecraft Movie and The Muppets, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The desire to record a solo album began a years back when he was working on these types of feature films in Los Angeles with session musicians. But he was a musician well before he was a comedian, even featuring in notable Wellington band, The Black Seeds, in the 2000s.
But he admits that approaching his own music now, after the global success of Flight of the Conchords, has been a challenge.
“The first album, Songs Without Jokes, I was almost obsessively trying to not be funny. I was trying to do something different. And if I came up with a funny idea, I wouldn’t use it. Having toured that album and having made that album, now I’m far more relaxed about songs being funny, songs being heartfelt, songs being serious. I don’t really mind. And so it just depends if it’s a song I’m into. This record I started writing when we were touring the last one and the songs I road tested… some of them, they’re not comedy songs, but there’s some humour in the lyrics and it’s a pretty playful album.
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“I think this album is much more me having fun in the studio. It’s still about modern life, but it’s a more optimistic, playful look on it. I think, you know, I think I’ve got the 70s sound going on, the sort of retro-y band sound that I love. My influences are coming through and the people I love and the studio style. But the song material is me reflecting on modern life. The last album I was perhaps a little more pessimistic. And this time, I guess I’m a little more hopeful… a little more optimistic in my outlook.”
It’s not necessarily surprising to McKenzie that he didn’t start working on solo music until his 40s. After all, he has been immersed in music since his teen years. As it goes, comedy only truly came into his life when he met fellow Victoria University of Wellington student, Jemaine Clement, and eventually formed the award-winning Flight of the Conchords, widely considered New Zealand’s best comedy act. Or as they, the country’s fourth most popular folk-parody act.
The awkward, dry and uncomfortable comedy style took McKenzie and Clement all over the world, which included a number of Grammy and Emmy nominations to their name and a hugely-successful HBO series. But that’s not how it started.
“To begin with, we tried being really over the top,” he explains. “We’d talk in between our songs, we’d talk like we were playing Wembley. We’d be like, ‘Are you ready to rock, Wellington?’ And then we’d play “Jenny” and we’re like, ‘Something didn’t quite work.’ The banter became low energy and understated, far more Kiwi, far more real in New Zealand. And I think there’s another layer, which was I was always kind of doing understated comedy. My dad used to do musical theatre and I think I was reacting to against the broadness of that performance style. I always thought that acting was ridiculous and I always wanted it to be far more real. I liked it when it felt really grounded and real. That always my tended to be my style of performance. And we kind of found that that was a real sweet spot.
“Most comedy duos [at the time], it was all about one putting the other one down, you know? It was about status. We played this style where we were being these two very supportive of each other, unusually caring comedy duo. And so even that made people laugh because we’d go, ‘That was really good, Jermaine.’ And then he’d say, ‘I think you did that song really well.’ Just even complimenting each other equally on stage came across was very unusual at that time. It made us really stand out.”
After dominating comedy stages, HBO came calling and want the Conchords to write their own show, despite the fact that neither McKenzie nor Clement had any past experience doing so, or even being sure they wanted to.
This was fame on a whole other level.
“We’d done the Edinburgh festival and done a radio show, but still, a huge jump when suddenly we were on billboards and you catch the subway in New York and our faces are on the ads in the subway,” McKenzie recalls. And suddenly just overnight people started recognising us and following us down the street. And it was a huge, huge change. To film in the first season, we could film on the street and no one paid any attention. People honestly thought we were a student production. And then filming the second season, it was much harder to film in public in New York.
“But weirdly, I mean, the story side of it was new, but what amazes me is the songs that we wrote at the very beginning, probably some of the strongest comedy songs because they were written for comedy clubs, like ‘Foux du Fafa’, ‘Bowie’, ‘Jenny’. We’d play them in our in our flat and our flatmates would laugh at the songs and then ten years later, we’re playing the same songs at the Hollywood Bowl and there’s 10,000 people laughing at the same joke that our flatmate in the kitchen was laughing at at breakfast. It’s kind of amazing.”
Despite only running for two series, the HBO show is still considered one of the best comedy series of all time. To this day, people still ask if a third season will eventuate.
“It’s ironic that by not doing as much, we’ve become more famous,” McKenzie laughs. “And I was amazed when I toured my last record and we went right across America, it actually reminded me how much people love the Conchords and what a special place it has in people’s heart. You do kind of forget because you’re in your own life and you’re in your own world… it did make me realise, people would love to see us play.”
The Conchords haven’t done a whole lot in recent years, largely because both have been too busy. McKenzie has his hands full with his own music and film work, while Clement has stayed very busy off and on screen with notable works like Wellington Paramormal and the Emmy-nominated What We Do in the Shadows.
But fans shouldn’t be concerned. McKenzie says they’ll do more touring in the future. He’s even confident they will age well.
“There’s a lot of dick jokes in our songs. Like, half our set is variations of dick jokes, is what I realised,” he laughs. “Sometimes we’d be doing our set list and we’re like, ‘Well, we can’t do those together because that’s two dick jokes.’ There’s like, dick joke, dick joke, then ‘Sugar Lumps’.” I have a feeling that as we get older, I just think there’s something that could be really funny about a couple of old dudes singing ‘Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor’. Whereas a couple of 40 year olds is, it’s just a bit creepy.”
While we can hold out for a Conchords tour, what McKenzie can confirm is that for the first time ever, he will tour Australia to promote Freak Out City early next year.
Looking ahead, after the upcoming US, UK and Australia dates, McKenzie has a number of films he’s working, including some animated features.
But will he churn out more solo albums?
“I think I want to do three albums and then I’ll see how I’m going. I’m definitely going to do another one. And then I’ll see what I’m into, see what’s coming, what’s next,” he says.
“But I really enjoy it. I love writing the songs. I love recording them and I love performing them. I love working with the band. So at the moment, it’s very much driven by enjoying it.”
Freak Out City is out now.
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