Paradise found as New Zealand songwriter’s hit becomes pandemic anthem

A young New Zealand songwriter is hitting the big time after penning a dreamy, nostalgic tune called Paradise which is becoming a pandemic anthem.

Anderson Rocio, 26, binged on international news clips to write the song, which was picked by the producers of Netflix hit Lucifer to play over a dramatic scene in season five, which aired last month.

The night before the show, Rocio and a friend pulled together a video clip to accompany the song, featuring footage of her husband, brother and puppy shot on her iPhone during lockdown.

The video clip has now had more than a quarter of a million views, while Paradise has had close to a million downloads on both Spotify and itunes.

The song is also charting in the top five worldwide on music app Shazam.

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“To write Paradise I watched heaps and heaps of news on YouTube – and muted the sound,” Rocio says. “I was just obsessively watching the news, and I wrote to that, and it was trying to distil this feeling of: how can we live through all of this chaos? Where is the silver lining?”

Since the success of Paradise, Rocio has been in talks with a number of “major record labels” but can’t say any more until negotiations conclude.

For the past few years, the songwriter has split her time between Auckland and Los Angeles, and picked up waitressing jobs to make ends meet. She hopes Paradise will allow her to write and perform full-time.

“Life’s not paradise, and we all know that, but it’s pretty great regardless of all the challenges. And that’s what we felt about the lockdown,” says Rocio, who spent her lockdown in Queenstown with her husband, brother, mother and dog.

“What a weird time, but when else do you get six weeks to be with your family like that? There are some silver linings we can focus on. And I think that’s why Paradise is doing so well because we’re all going through the exact same thing in different ways, there’s still that common thread of ‘we’ll make it through to the next thing that’s going to be good’.”

In one scene of the video Rocio wears a face mask, and the lyrics obliquely refer to crisis, and mounting terror.

“I think this year has made me more reflective, and it’s not a time to write things that don’t matter to me. Part of me has shifted to think ‘I don’t know how much time we all have’. I have become more streamlined at writing things that matter.”