At Auckland’s Stebbing Studios, where the theme was recorded, the engineer pulled out “the book” and suggested they contact singer and television personality Tina Cross. “I thought I’d try using it for the Shorty Street song – I could hear the vocal melody against the track and it fit.”Īfter the inspired car-writing session that night in Mount Eden, Bollard had the lyrics and the melody, but he needed a vocalist. The backing track that would become the theme song was just a “test doodle” that he had made for a new sampler. “I hadn’t seen any footage or scripts.” At the time, Bollard had been making tracks for Zane Lowe (Urban Disturbance, later Radio 1 DJ) and had become “immersed” in the world of sampling and sequencing. “I knew the name of the show, that it was set in a hospital, and that the story focused on the relationships between the main characters,” he explains. There wasn’t much to work with in terms of material.
When McCready mentioned there was a new local show being developed that needed a theme song, Bollard thought he would give it a crack. He was still at university when he began working for TV2, beginning with writing the channel ID music for then-programming director John McCready. But at the time, Bollard had no idea he was composing something so significant. The Shortland Street theme song is perhaps our most enduring piece of television music, right up in the god tier with the Country Calendar song and the Interislander jingle. Still in the car, he feverishly began to scribble lyrics, beginning with a simple, hypothetical question that would soon become ingrained in New Zealand pop culture history: While thinking about his university girlfriend at the time, inspiration struck. The backing track was there, the melody was there, but he was yet to pen any lyrics.
He had been working on a new theme song for a show that was in development with TV2, but had hit a wall with the writing. Graham Bollard was sitting in his parked car one night in suburban Mount Eden, sometime in early 1992. To celebrate Shortland Street’s 30th birthday, we are dedicating a whole week to the good (and not-so-good) people of Ferndale. Is it you, is it me, or is it a part of all of us? Alex Casey speaks to the people behind our unofficial national anthem.
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