Pauly Fuemana of OMC - the Otara Millionaires Club - is our New Zealander of the Year for the song How Bizarre which hit number one in New Zealand early in 1996.
Before too long the catchy tune had made the charts in just about every country that has them: Australia, Britain, the US, Portugal, Israel, Canada, Ireland and South Africa.
It is the biggest-selling New Zealand single; New Zealand History online estimates sales at between three and four million in the last five years of the 20th century.
Fuemana died in 2010 at the age of just 40 and, though he never repeated the huge success of How Bizarre, he was remembered as a man who broke down barriers and put South Auckland on the map for the right reasons.
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Advertise with NZME."Just the fact that he was there, the fact that kids had already seen him out on the streets and then the next minute he was on Top of the Pops," writer/director Oscar Kightley told the Herald's Vaimoana Tapaleao.
"He broke down all the background barriers and circumstances of a person - he was an example of somebody [like them] who made it."
From the Herald archives:
'How Bizarre singer dies', NZ Herald online, 31 January 2010
Further reading:
'How bizarre', New Zealand History Online
