Kimbra’s notoriety was spreading and while still only 12 years old she was given the opportunity to sing the national anthem at the final of the NPC rugby competition in front of a crowd of 27,000. Her father bought her a guitar and she began coming up with chords to go with all the lyrics she’d written. Kimbra already had her own group, Solitude, and Diprose’s visit gave her another chance to try recording one of her own songs (even adding a confident harmony to her own main vocal). In her second year of Berkley Normal Middle School (a Hamilton intermediate) the school hosted a tutor sent by the NZ Music Commission – Chris Diprose, a local hardcore musician who ran his own studio, Dudley Studios. The resulting song, ‘Smile’, was then turned into a music video. Best of all, she was given the chance to pick one of her own songs (she now had a notebook full of them) to record with Rikki Morris and Stephen Small at Devonport studio, The Bus. This involved having a lesson with a professional vocal coach, talking songwriting with Anika Moa, and visiting a ZM radio studio. By the following year, she was picked to sing in front of a large audience at the Waikato Times Gold Cup, a horse racing event.Īt 11 years old, Kimbra was given her own short slot on children’s TV show, What Now?, where she explored the process of becoming a pop star. Kimbra had her first public gig at nine years old, performing at the JBC (now Nivara Lounge) in her hometown of Hamilton. Instead, it was Kimbra Lee Johnson herself who began singing songs into a Dictaphone at eight years old and discovered her lifelong passion for songwriting. They were music fans but didn’t try to push her in that direction. Her father worked as a doctor, her mother a nurse. Nothing in Kimbra’s family background pointed towards the musical success story she would become.
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