Ladyhawke

Phillipa Margaret "Pip" Brown (born 13 July 1979), better known by her stage name Ladyhawke, is a New Zealand singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.

Phillipa Margaret Brown was born on 13 July 1979 in Masterton, a town in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.

She came from a musical family, with her mother being a singer/guitarist and her stepfather a jazz drummer.

During her childhood, various illnesses and allergies kept her in and out of the hospital.

At age ten she contracted erysipeloid, a disease that is common in seagulls and sharks but had not been seen in humans in New Zealand for twenty years.

Her allergies to antibiotics and antihistamines greatly complicated treatment efforts and almost put her into a coma, and she came close to dying.

Brown was also diagnosed with Autism as a child, specifically the since-retired diagnosis Asperger syndrome.

She believes that the large amount of her childhood she spent absorbed in music, be it listening to the radio or to her mother's Beatles and Pretenders albums, was attributable to this syndrome.

While attending Chanel College, she played in several grunge bands.

After high school, Brown moved from Masterton to Wellington.

She took her stage name from Richard Donner's 1985 film Ladyhawke.

She named herself so after a character played by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1985 film of the same name because she sees herself as "a sort of pop superwoman creating radio-friendly songs with a single bound".

Brown says she started Ladyhawke out of a desire to do her own project where she could completely express herself in any way she wanted.

She says: "I wanted to make music that could put a smile on people's faces and give them a feeling of nostalgia even though they may be hearing my songs for the first time. I love how music evokes memories of a certain time, I wanted to see if I could find a method of songwriting that would evoke those feelings from me on writing the song and then on the individual when listening to it for the first time."

Brown was part of the Wellington-based band Two Lane Blacktop (2001–2003), before moving to Australia where, in 2004, she formed the art rock band Teenager with Nick Littlemore of Pnau.

In 2001 in Wellington, Brown formed the band Two Lane Blacktop with some friends, playing lead guitar.

She described the group as being "like Iggy and The Stooges meets The Clash".

She cites her experience playing the notorious New York City club CBGB with Two Lane Blacktop as being a defining moment.

In 2003 Two Lane Blacktop disbanded when their lead singer, Matt Harrop, and drummer, Phil Smiley, both quit the band two days prior to a scheduled tour of Australia with Modey Lemon, after which they were due to play at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Brown then made the impulsive decision to take her flight to Australia anyway, and she relocated to Melbourne.

Some time after Brown's move to Melbourne, Sydney-based musician Nick Littlemore of Pnau (he later formed Empire of the Sun) heard of her relocation and asked her if she was interested in joining an art rock band he had started called Teenager.

Brown liked Littlemore's music and, in 2004, decided to join.

Brown and Littlemore played together for two years, with Brown relocating to Sydney to be closer to the band, as well as other people she enjoyed playing and writing music with.

Teenager issued their debut album, Thirteen, as well as the related singles "Pony" and "Bound and Gagged", in 2006.

Mess + Noise's Craig Mathieson described the album as "a pop record, albeit a particularly exotic species that equally suggests creative guile and hints of self-indulgence ... 'Pony' is the closest the album comes to cheap genre holidaying, approximating rock attitude when the organic and desperate growth of 'Bound And Gagged' is so much more impressive".

Brown and Littlemore co-wrote "Alone Again" and "West" for Teenager.

Soon after the album's appearance Brown left to concentrate on her career as Ladyhawke, she later credited Littlemore:

"I was quite happy playing guitar [in Teenager], contributing my ideas and stepping back [...] [Littlemore] heard me singing a song, and rushed in and said, "What's that?" I was like, "It's just like, you know..." [...] I had a Myspace page, calling myself Ladyhawke with a couple of rough demos up there. Nick was like, "That's cool, you should really follow that up.

You just need to get in a studio and record it". So we jumped in the car, and he drove me out to his parents' house, and we recorded that song ... that was the start for me, where he helped me get the confidence."

Still close with Littlemore, Brown decided to leave Teenager to focus on a personal project she had been developing for some time, a persona she had dubbed Ladyhawke.

In 2007 she moved to London, afterwards relocating to Los Angeles around 2013, and then subsequently relocating back to her native New Zealand after the release of her third album, Wild Things.

Brown's debut solo album, Ladyhawke, was released on 22 September 2008 through Modular Recordings, and topped the RIANZ Albums Chart.

It spawned five singles of which "My Delirium" was the most successful.

Ladyhawke's debut album, Ladyhawke, was released on 22 September 2008 by Modular Recordings.

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, Ladyhawke won Breakthrough Artist in both album and single categories.

The album topped the albums chart in New Zealand one year after its release, in October 2009, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand for sales in excess of 15,000 copies.

In both Australia and the United Kingdom, it reached number sixteen, and was certified gold.

Its biggest hit single was "My Delirium", which charted inside the top ten in both New Zealand and Australia.

Brown's second solo album, Anxiety, was released in May 2012, and her third solo album, Wild Things, was released on 3 June 2016.

Her fourth album, Time Flies, was released on 19 November 2021.