Bursting Through

The second single from singer-songwriter Bic Runga's multi-platinum debut album Drive is a spare but insistent plea for emotional warmth. The video finds Runga elegantly coiffeured and styled in a white gown with a black guitar. The video is drenched in pale blues and bleached whites, and water surrounds her in a myriad of forms — dripping, pooled, condensed. But there’s the promise of sunlight and succour as well. Co-director Melanie Bridge (working here with photographer Mark Lever) would later help found multinational commercials company The Sweet Shop.

95bFM was playing her a lot but she had no commercial radio airplay and she was just sort of starting to pop up. So she came in and the thing I remember was that she brought her guitar .... every time either of us hit the wall, I’d say ‘sing another song, Bic’. She would sing these songs and I genuinely believe you could’ve heard a pin drop in the home of every single person listening to it, because it was extraordinary.

– John Campbell recalls inviting Bic Runga onto Radio New Zealand early in her career, The Spinoff, 17 October 2017

Key Cast & Crew

Mark Lever

Co-Director

Melanie Bridge

Co-Director