When I first meet Niall Horan inside his ridiculously spacious dressing room at Auckland’s Spark Arena, a lone candle sits on a table, patiently waiting to be lit. A Spotify playlist containing nothing but Bruce Springsteen songs is playing softly in the background via Horan’s laptop, and he has various other items strewn across chairs and sofas - most notably, an All Blacks jersey (New Zealand’s national rugby team) hangs from a clothing rack, readying Horan for his first ever solo show in our country.

Lauren Jauregui sans make-up, sans covershoot styling, and sans entourage, is bidding me a fond farewell by dousing me from head to toe with a 'Goddess'-scented aromatherapy mister as she prances to-and-fro, delighted with the parting gifts I've given her (all purchased from a store specialising in "magickal, spiritual, and metaphysical supplies"), as she wishes me safe passage for my long flight back to New Zealand.

Introspection is at the core of everything EDEN (real name: Jonathon Ng) does, whether it be on ‘falling in reverse’ where he decides, “You can save yourself, you know,” or in ’wrong’, where he hopefully declares, ‘I could be more.” Throughout the entirety of his debut album ‘vertigo’, which entered into the world at the beginning of 2018, EDEN’s voice comes through loud and clear, worked between masterful samples, synthesisers, and more.

One third of Wallows is sadly staring at the ground where he's dropped his favourite flavour of mentos, while another third of Wallows is contemplating a polaroid photo and wondering where his arm disappeared to, with the final third of Wallows having been freshly berated by his fellow band members for being late and forgetting to bring any clothes to the photoshoot ("I was just trusting you guys," he insists).

The Neighbourhood have a lot to say - whether they’re arguing with each other over which studio The Beach Boys recorded in in Los Angeles, or reminiscing on a signing that took place in an Adidas store in Russia (the band’s Brandon Fried still has his shoes, FYI), or about releasing one album and three EPs in the span of a year.

The past few years that Froy Gutierrez has spent working on MTV’s ‘Teen Wolf’ (and during the time he spent on Nickelodeon before that), he’s been planning a musical takeover. Revealing to us that he’s planned a world akin to that of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, with different characters who will be explored through different musical releases, it’s fair to say that Froy is one of the hardest working 20-year-olds we’ve ever met.

Six different single releases this year has kept one Finneas O’Connell (who releases music under FINNEAS) very busy - in addition to the fact that he’s spent the year touring with his sister Billie Eilish, and working on her debut album, as well as collaborating with a number of other songwriters on their own musical projects.