Very sad news coming out of New Zealand that Martin Phillips, the legendary singer and songwriter from seminal New Zealand band The Chills , has died.
In a post to Facebook, the band simply announced:
It is with broken hearts the family and friends of Martin Phillipps wish to advise Martin has died unexpectedly. The family ask for privacy at this time.
Funeral arrangements will be advised in due course.
The Chills were one of New Zealand’s finest exports – born out of the inimitable Flying Nun Records era in the eighties and from a coterie of bands coming out of the small town of Dunedin. And like many antipodean bands that arose at that time, they shone so very brightly but burned out so very quickly before they gained the international commercial success they deserved. Read my brief history of this label and the New Zealand music scene here in the introduction to my review of the 2018 album by Fazerdaze.
The Chills were and always have been the creation of its singer and songwriter, Martin Phillipps – an iconic and enigmatic figure whose ear for a brilliant pop song is legend. At the very brink of their international success after the release of ‘Pink Frost’ and ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ in 1990, Phillipps imploded spectacularly due to drug addictions and attendant health problems and the band went into more than two decades hiatus, only to recently recover and revive.
Phillipps’s journey from success to failure and back again was covered in a new movie ‘The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps’ out through Notable Pictures, in association with NZ Film Commission and Fire Films.
Sadly (and without conjecture as to the cause of his death) it appears that the genius behind this musical phenomenon is no more.
And as a reminder of his musical prowess, here is the aptly titled ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’:
Vale Martin Phillipps. Our thoughts here at Backseat Mafia go out to his family and friends.
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