Take 5 With Taylor Roche

New Zealand pop superstar, Taylor Roche recently revealed his dynamic new single, day&night, a demanding track about a relationship that hanging on by the skin of it’s teeth. To celebrate the release and to get to know Taylor a little better we threw him the aux cord to share with us his favourite artists and why.

Thomston:

I remember listening to Thomston a few years ago and admittedly I didn’t really connect with his music at the time. Last summer I had a playlist on shuffle and his song ‘Crushed’ came on and I was completely mesmerized. The structure, the writing, the melodies are insane. I hadn’t heard anything like it. Since then I’ve been deep diving into his music, including all his earlier tracks too and it’s genius. This is the beautiful thing about music. Our connections to artists and genres are never fixed in time, our tastes fluctuate and so does the music we connect with. This for me is a great example of that.

Joan:

Joan are an incredibly underrated indie Pop duo out of Arkansas. Super cliche of me to say but their music got me through one of the hardest breakups ever back in 2020. They still have one of the only songs to have ever made me cry hah. Their song ‘brokenhearted’ is such a gorgeous yet heartbreaking love letter. I remember lying in bed staring at the ceiling completely deep in my emotions with this one – I always recommend this song to my friends just because it’s such a great example of a song strung together purely from emotion.

Blanks:

I discovered Blanks on TikTok about a year ago when he uploaded an 80’s Pop cover of Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Driver License’. I think I watched it like 5 times in a row because I was obsessed. Anyone who knows me or listens to my music knows just how deeply inspired I am by the 80s sonics. I looked him up on Spotify and saw he had a whole album out – ‘Nothing Lasts Forever And That’s OK’ and I was blown away. The whole album sounds like it was made in 1987 with 2022 technology. So sick.

Harry Styles:

Harry’s House has literally been my go to comfort album since it came out in May. I remember the morning it came out, I was sitting in my girlfriend’s kitchen drinking coffee, the sun was shining, and I didn’t have anywhere to be. Every song just felt like a warm hug and I don’t think I’ve gone a day without shuffling the album at least once. Music For A Sushi Restaurant is by far my favourite track – the horns in that song are just

LEISURE:

I started DJ’ing a couple of months ago as a bit of a side-hustle and found myself listening to a lot of LEISURE for my cocktail sets. These guys are mad good. Their music is literally a whole summer soundtrack wrapped up across their 3 albums. My favourite songs would have to be ‘Flipside’ and ‘Feeling Free’ – I also love how the band is made up of New Zealand artists and producers that just joined forces to create a really slick sounding band with such a huge international sound.

Taylor’s latest single, day&night is available now, everywhere.