Meet New Zealand's lone Virgin reviewer

The Spinoff

4 days ago

Previous Lorde albums had local media outlets scrambling to publish their reviewers' thoughts. Virgin? So far it's just this one guy.
This story was originally published on the Boiler Room Substack.
This past Saturday, John Bradbury was feeling pretty miserable. He should have been spending the afternoon with his mates playing football. Instead, he'd caught a bad cold, so he called in sick, sat in front of his television and began streaming as much Glastonbury footage as he could find. Among the performances was a surprise appearance by Lorde, who played the entirety of her new album in full.
Then Bradbury received an email. It was from Marty Duda, the editor of a local music publication. Bradbury works full-time in HR but got the itch to write album reviews during Covid lockdowns. He began taking his 'hobby' seriously late last year, and now writes one review a week for Duda's website, The 13th Floor. 'In the evenings I put the headphones on and listen to an album and try to write something about it,' he says.
In his email, Duda asked Bradbury if he'd like to review Virgin, Lorde's new album released to huge hype the day before. Initially, Bradbury wondered if he should bother. He thought: 'Everyone will be doing it. There will be so many reviews. Does the world need another Lorde review?' Bradbury decided he had nothing better to do. So he turned off Glastonbury and joined the rest of the world in unpacking Virgin.
By Sunday morning, Bradbury had finished his review. He sent it to Duda for proofreading and it was published later that day. Across his excellent 700-word analysis, Bradbury raves about Virgin, calling it an album that 'circles, breathes, stutters, and flares'. 'Virgin is the sound of an artist shedding skin, unafraid of the mess beneath,' he writes. 'It is a disarming experience. You don't get neat hooks or tidy conclusions. What you get is transformation.'
By the time Bradbury's review was published, it felt like every music critic had shared their thoughts on Virgin, the most eagerly anticipated record by a major pop star since Lady Gaga's Mayhem arrived in March. Many major media outlets have reviewed it in the days since its release: The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Slate, The Guardian, Vulture, Stereogum, Pitchfork, The Independent, The Times, Rolling Stone, the Sydney Morning Herald, NME and The Atlantic.
In Aotearoa, things were a little different. Instead of writing their own reviews, New Zealand's biggest news publications simply summed up everyone else's thoughts in easy-to-write review wraps. NZ Herald did this on the same day as Virgin's release, then RNZ and Stuff followed suit. TVNZ lifted its review from AP. The Spinoff came closest to reviewing Virgin, sharing brief but entertaining early impressions from four staff writers.
That makes Bradbury's review the one and only full appraisal of Virgin written by an Aotearoa music critic. Put another way, our music journalism scene is so broken that a full-time HR rep who has only been writing for nine months provided the lone local analysis of the biggest album any artist from this country will release this year. 'I am surprised,' Marty Duda told me when I revealed this. 'But not that surprised.'
Duda gave me Bradbury's contact details, and when I called him to break the news, he was stunned. There were lengthy pauses as he assessed my claim. 'I just … I'm amazed by that,' he stuttered. 'That's ridiculous. Surely … well.. that's crazy … jeez … I'm the No. 1 critic for Lorde in New Zealand? … Alright … bloody hell … jeepers … that's … extraordinary. I'm amazed.'
Then he collected himself and said this: 'There are so many talented people out there, so much stuff coming out. You kind of go, 'If I am the only person who wrote a Lorde review, where does everyone else sit in terms of getting a review?''
In 2017, on the day Lorde released 'Green Light,' her first single from Melodrama, I was up early to hear it for the first time. In the studio of one of our biggest radio stations, I uttered some early impressions live on air. I was then led into NZME's foyer to share my thoughts on camera. When the album came out a few months later, reviews were published by every major local publication: Stuff, The Spinoff, NZ Herald, RNZ and many more. Two days after its release, The Spinoff published an 11-part podcast in which Lorde offered an explainer on every single song.
Four years later, in 2021, I was sent an early, private, password-protected stream for her follow-up, Solar Power. I agonised over that review, tweaking everything about it until it felt just right. After submission to The Spinoff, that review went through another round of edits with the site's subeditors. At 5am on release day, my review was published with complementary artwork supplied by Henrietta Harris. Critics for Stuff, RNZ and NZ Herald did the same thing.
In the time between Lorde releasing her third and fourth albums, our media landscape has clearly deteriorated. A quick recap: as advertising sales slumped, newsrooms were shredded, with arts and culture reporters usually the first to be let go. Those gaps haven't been filled, and that's left huge holes in coverage, from major concerts and festivals that don't get a single word written about them to artists who can't get anyone to interview them to albums that just aren't reviewed anymore.
How bad is it? 'We're seeing restructure after restructure, cutbacks, burnout and unsustainable salaries,' Rosabel Tan said in 2023. She'd helped put together New Mirrors, a Creative NZ report that unveiled just how bleak things had become. It was shockingly bad. 'It's alarming how stretched both our media and cultural sectors are … but this is essential work. It's how we tell the story of who we are, and who we want to be,' Tan summed up. Her co-author, Dr James Wenley, put things another way: 'Coverage is on the edge of collapse.'
A year later, at the end of 2024, I asked the few remaining music journalists in the country how their year had been. 'Grim,' 'brutal,' 'a shit show,' 'ugh,' and 'the worst it's ever been' were just some of the harrowing responses I received. 'I've met a lot of student journalists and juniors in the last year who say they want to write about music or specifically be music journalists, which makes me feel really anxious,' one shared. 'Do I tell them there's nowhere to go?'
In the weeks building up to the release of Virgin, I'd wondered if I should take leave from my day job and write my own review. But I'd come to the same conclusion that Bradbury had, that our biggest media outlets would surely recognise the importance of a new Lorde album. I believed they'd throw plenty of resources towards providing proper reviews for their readers, documenting the moment and unpacking what Virgin means for Aotearoa's most important and successful artist – and for her fans.
When I mentioned this to Bradbury, he laughed. Then he said: 'Clearly, we were mistaken.'
He's only been writing for less than a year, but Bradbury's reviews have made an impression. He's seen his words used on posters by the artists he's covered. Friends tell him they're enjoying his work. That makes him happy. Bradbury just wants to help point music fans in the right direction. 'I like writing and thinking about music and trying to explain it,' he says. 'I'm a music fans from way back.'
Being Aotearoa's lone Virgin reviewer isn't something Bradbury wants to brag about. He thinks it's shameful more artists don't receive better coverage. He regularly marvels at the lofty standards our musicians set. 'There's so much variety … some really good stuff,' he says. He's doing his best to cover it in his weekly reviews. Recently, that includes Ringlets' The Lord is my German Shepherd ('emotionally frayed, rebellious') and Lou'ana's Disco Witch ('a cosmic invitation to move, reflect, revel').
Bradbury places Virgin among the best albums he's reviewed since he started his critical career nine months ago. In the five days since his piece was published, his admiration for what Lorde has achieved has only grown stronger. When I suggest it helps makes sense of the misunderstood Solar Power, he agrees. 'If you look at the arc of her four albums, it's really interesting. It's about a woman growing up in the social media age and she's reinventing herself,' he says. 'Virgin is about her personal growth … it's unsettling, in a really good way.'
By the end of our call, Bradbury remained in disbelief over the news I'd broken to him. He refused to believe it, told me he was sure there were other reviewers, and said he would jump on Google during his bus ride home to find them and prove me wrong. Half an hour later, he sent me this RNZ link and said: 'I've found this review'. That's not really a review, I replied, it's more of an analysis of Virgin's intense intimacy and where Lorde sits in the current pop music landscape.
Another crucial factor: that piece didn't come from a writer from RNZ – it was lifted from The Conversation, an academic news agency that publishes stories anyone can re-use. A few moments later, Bradbury sent me his reply. 'I hear you,' he texted me. Then he said: 'I'm still amazed.'