Kiwi songwriter and producer Joel Little talks to Mitchell Hageman about his current projects and how he’s giving back to the Kiwi music scene. Video / Alyse Wright
As Aotearoa celebrates New Zealand Music Month, revered producer and songwriter Joel Little is making it his mission to give back to the Kiwi music community that helped him take on the world.
He chats to Mitchell Hageman about life, legacy, Lorde, family, famous friends and the causes close to his heart.
It’s rather warm in Joel Little’s not-for-profit Morningside music hub Big Fan, both literally and figuratively.
The walls of the sun-soaked lounge are adorned with photos of classic Kiwi music moments like Bob Marley’s famous 1979 visit, and the furniture and equipment make it feel as though you’re about to have a jam sesh at your friend’s house.
Warmth also emanates from the music maestro himself. Little is a humble, grounded Kiwi music powerhouse responsible for launching careers, creating music for global stars like Taylor Swift and Lorde, and fostering emerging talent here at home.
“When my wife and I moved back from LA, we were in a position where we could do something,” he tells the Herald of the inception of Big Fan, which opened as an all-ages performance space and studio in late 2022.
“I feel like for me in my career, I wouldn’t be where I am if there hadn’t been certain people along the way that had said the right thing or given me a little opportunity. We wanted Big Fan to provide opportunities for people to upskill, to connect with other like-minded people, and to learn.”
Joel Little says he's finding balance in his career and family life. Photo / Alyse Wright
While Big Fan and helping support rising stars has been one of Little’s main passion projects of late, he’s still writing and producing for some of the industry’s biggest stars, albeit trying to do it from his home turf as much as possible.
“I was doing, like, three weeks here, two weeks in LA, like back-and-forth travelling way too much,” he says.
“Now I’ve got a little 4-year-old as well as our two older kids, and so I’m trying to just keep the balance a bit more, leaning a bit more towards New Zealand.”
While he notes that his kids also liked to dabble in music, he jokes that his 17-year-old once told him that “the legacy dies with you Dad”.
Recently, he’s worked with country-pop superstar Maren Morris on some songs on her album DREAMSICLE, and in 2023 struck up a great creative friendship with former One Directioner Niall Horan, collaborating with him on his hit album The Show.
“He’d sent me a song of his called The Show, where he just had, like, a piano and a vocal, and I thought it was a great song,“ Little recalls, noting the process started during the pandemic.
“So I just, at home here, produced the rest of the track, played all the instruments on there, and sent it back to him and he was like, ‘Oh crap, this is awesome’.”
Kiwi producer Joel Little, famous for launching Lorde's career, has worked with former One Direction star Niall Horan.
Working in collaboration and figuring out how to manage different creative processes is a skill Little said he’s learned over more than a decade in the music business, and it wasn’t something he could do “right off the bat”.
“Sometimes an artist will come in with the start of an idea and other times they’ll want to hear some sounds or some music, so I have ... a bunch of tracks that we can work off of,” he reveals.
“Other times they just want to play, like pick up guitars and play that way or jump on a piano. There aren’t really any rules, it’s just whatever people need to do to feel inspired that day.”
Most Kiwis would naturally link Little’s name to New Zealand’s biggest musical export: Lorde.
The pair gained international acclaim after Little produced and co-wrote her EP The Love Club (with Royals winning the 2014 Song of the Year Grammy) and her album Pure Heroine.
“I’m always so grateful for that. It genuinely changed both of our lives and the lives of everybody around us,” he says.
“We were just making music in my studio, Golden Age, which is actually just a few hundred metres away from here, and we just had zero expectations. We were just trying to make something that we liked and that we thought was interesting, but obviously it took on a life of its own.”
Lorde (left) and Joel Little accept the award for song of the year for Royals at the Grammy Awards in 2014.
With the superstar about to release a new album, Little says he can’t wait to see what impact it makes.
“It’s always nice when she’s releasing new music and comes back and saves pop music every three to four years,” he says.
Before his stint as a fulltime producer, Little was also the lead vocalist for pop-punk band Goodnight Nurse, an experience he said helped him appreciate the value of live music.
“A song can bring people from so many different walks of life together,” he says. “Live shows in particular create a way for people to feel connected with the music and then connected with each other at the same time.”
“To go out, and in front of 17,000 people, and play, it was such a powerful thing,” Little says.
“Just reconnecting with the guys in the band and seeing fans that had been Goodnight Nurse fans when they were teenagers, all that kind of stuff is really powerful.”
Joel Little is putting his support behind local charity MusicHelps this New Zealand Music Month. Photo / Alyse Wright.
Fittingly, for New Zealand Music Month, he’s also shifting his efforts towards another powerful cause, the local charity MusicHelps.
“I’ve been a board member for maybe five years,” he says. “They fund hundreds of projects across the country every year that use music in various ways to help people out, whether that be music therapy, providing instruments to community groups, or helping people who are in palliative care or rest homes.”
Just like Little’s work at Big Fan, the charity also helps provide support services for working musicians and those in the industry.
“Another arm of it is to do with helping those with mental health issues or who are struggling in various ways. There’s a wellbeing service that people in the industry can access, and also things like counselling and access hardship grants.”
Those who want to support the cause can do so in various ways, but one of the biggest is through the New Zealand Music T-Shirt Day on May 30.
All net profits of official New Zealand Music Month T-Shirts are donated to the MusicHelps Grants programme. People can also text Music to 2448 to donate $3.
“I have, like, an embarrassingly small collection of music T-Shirts and I always wheel out the same ones,” Little admits, saying it would be poor form to wear a Goodnight Nurse one.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.
