‘Dildo Baggins’, John Key’s three-way handshake and now, Shane Jones’ cover of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ - New Zealand politics has had yet another bizarre moment.
NZ First’s Northland candidate posted his rendition of the 1981 Journey track - complete with cinematic visuals of him standing on a river bank - to his TikTok account over the weekend. It’s been viewed over 60k times and gained almost 2,000 likes.
Journey’s original lyrics are substituted for Shane’s campaign pitch to Northlanders. He claims he has “planted a billion trees”, he’ll “make Northland great again”, and wants to “put the ‘k’ back in ‘iwi’.”
Many of the comments on the video are just straight-up confused as to why it even exists.
“Tell me this is satire,” wrote one person. “Please”.
“Shane, get back to work,” said another. “This not a karaoke contest.”
"Thanks for ruining my day Shane Jones," a third added.
“‘Flight of the Conchords’ was a documentary,” one more wrote.
Shane has posted a follow-up TikTok explaining how the rendition came to be.
He was under the impression he would be making a “genuine video showing earnestness and commitment to great policy outcomes” with a couple of TikTok experts. The pros instead decided to get Shane singing and “exhaust the capacity of autotune”.
In the end, we have a moment in New Zealand politics that shoots up the bizarre rankings. It probably doesn’t beat out the aforementioned ‘Dildo Baggins’ moment (when Steven Joyce had a dildo thrown at him). Nor is it more cringe-worthy than John Key’s threeway handshake at the 2011 Rugby World Cup ceremony.
Just like Shane’s high notes though, it certainly is up there.
