May 2023 · NZ #1
Take it away
L.A.B.
"Take It Away" arrived in December 2022 as the lead single from L.A.B.'s sixth album, and by the time NZ Music Month rolled around in May 2023, it had been living in the Aotearoa Top 20 for months, the kind of slow burn that the streaming era rewards.
The song is quintessential L.A.B.: reggae-rooted groove, soulful guitar work, and Joel Shadbolt's voice doing exactly what it needs to. It was recorded in a single take, which explains something about its looseness, the sense that the band is playing in a room together rather than constructing something in pieces.
It won Best Single at the 2023 Rolling Stone Aotearoa Awards, which by that point felt less like a surprise and more like confirmation. L.A.B. had spent years being one of Aotearoa's most-streamed acts that the rest of the world hadn't quite caught up with yet. 'Take It Away' was part of the case for why that needed to change.
By the end of 2024, the song had landed at #3 on the Aotearoa End of Year Singles Chart, still charting, still pulling listeners, two years after release. That kind of longevity is rare anywhere. In Aotearoa, it's become almost a L.A.B. signature.
How we choose the #1
Each entry represents the song with the most weeks at number one on the New Zealand charts during that calendar month. Where two songs share the same number of weeks, we apply a tiebreaker based on peak chart position, then chart run longevity.
Entries marked as inferred indicate months where primary RIANZ/RMNZ chart data is unavailable. These are reconstructed from contemporary music press, radio playlists, and secondary archival sources, and are clearly labelled.
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