BENEE

“I don’t think there is any wrong or right in songwriting,” BENEE tells Apple Music, and she should know. Since she released her debut single at the age of 17, the New Zealand singer/songwriter—born Stella Rose Bennett in Auckland, in 2000—has made a fine art of breaking rules. She’s cobbled Migos’ flow onto ’80s-flavoured alt-pop, written relatably about garden mollusks on “Snail” and, with “Supalonely”, penned what might be the sunniest self-recriminating breakup anthem in history. Such eclecticism comes naturally for the Apple Music Up Next honouree. When she signed to her label, she warned them: “One day I want to be able to release a rap song, a song that is completely different to all of my other ones, and have people not be like, ‘What is she doing?’” No matter what she’s undertaking, BENEE demonstrates that she’s a genuine triple threat. Her expressive, agile voice has a smoky immediacy that puts her in a class alongside Rihanna and Lorde. Her lyrics are unusually vivid, capturing a world of nuance in a single image, like two shy lovers sticking together “like glitter” (“Glitter”). And her production, typically handled by Leisure’s Josh Fountain, fuses genres and decades without a second thought. Beyond her whimsical persona or playful delivery, what makes BENEE’s music stand out is its honesty. “I find it a great emotional outlet where I can vent everything into a song,” she says, and that resonates. “I feel like what people connect to the most is when you’re super honest, you can just say how you’re feeling and have all these people be like, ‘Me too!’”