'We're Incredibly Proud': Borderline Detail Their Self-Titled Debut Album, Track-By-Track

As Borderline release their self-titled debut album and prepare for a tour across Australia and New Zealand, they catch up with The Music for an in-depth track-by-track exploration of their new record.

New Zealand band Borderline have been gearing up for this day for a long time. Today, they’ve unveiled their debut, self-titled album.

The arrival of Borderline follows a monumental twelve months for the band, which includes winning the prestigious People’s Choice Award at the Aotearoa Music Awards, featuring on Rolling Stone’s Future of Music list of 2026, making appearances on BBC Radio 1, and a 14-date North American tour.

All that success has pushed Borderline forward, which you can hear on their record.

The album drops alongside the single release of Skyline, a new, slick pop song with a retro-coded music video. All this is happening as Borderline prepare to launch into their album tour, delivering new tunes to fans across Australia and New Zealand, starting in their hometown of Auckland next week.

Before the tour kicks off, and to celebrate the release of Borderline, the band caught up with The Music for an in-depth track-by-track exploration of the album, which you can check out below.

1. CAN’T STOP MYSELF

Can’t Stop Myself is so much fun to play, when we recorded it we all jumped on our instruments in the studio and did a bunch of takes of us playing together, which I think really comes out in the song. We hope people can hear the connection we have when we all play live in a room together, and we can’t wait to share that on tour this year!

Lyrically, Can’t Stop Myself started off quite light-hearted. I found the idea of how doing what we think is best for us, and what we end up doing, is often different. This translated into a story of someone having to try so hard to stop themself running away from someone they already know they should run away from, which ended up taking a slightly darker, more introspective turn, but still feels like a song of growth and bettering.

2. SKYLINE

Skyline is a super slick, funky pop song full of tight drums, funky bass and the most addictive glossy shiny guitar tone imaginable. It was so much fun recording this one in the studio; it was good vibes all day, and it came together really quickly. We’re so excited to start playing it live and hopefully hear people singing along in the chorus.

Skyline definitely surprised us, with the album, we wanted to push the boundaries of the genres we could find ourselves while still playing as a four-piece band. And after a short obsession with the Justin Timberlake album ‘Justified,’ we found ourselves chasing the awesome sound that album has and reimagining it into a modern-day pop-rock song, and then there was ‘Skyline’.

3. TERRIFY

Terrify is one of the most polished tracks we’ve put together, and it felt surreal playing it in an arena. This song gets us in our element as musicians and performers, and we hope that this energy shines through and connects with people on the record just as much as it did at those shows.

We had the best time in the studio working on Terrify, it has such a funky vibe which we really leaned into. We spent a lot of time making sure every instrument grooved just right and had the right feel that makes you wanna dance.

Terrify, for us, paints the picture of someone who may come across as frightening or scary, but doesn’t care what people think and is not afraid to be themselves. There's admiration and respect for someone who can do that. We hope this song’s simple but refined sound resonates with people as much as it does for us.

4. TAINTED

Tainted was such a blast to make; we loved messing around with quirky sounds and having a real good time experimenting in the studio. It’s been just as fun taking it to the stage over the New Zealand summer and playing it live. Tainted is such a step forward sonically for us, and we can’t wait to share even more out-of-the-ordinary tunes.

We got a bit experimental with Tainted. The original idea was just so inviting to all these fun, quirky sounds that we later added to it in the studio. The freedom we allowed ourselves on this gave ‘Tainted’ its own unique vibe that we’re so happy with.

5. DIE HARD

Die Hard is super organic-sounding; we spent lots of time getting the production to sound super cosy and wholesome. We wanted this song to make people feel like hopping in their car and driving through the rain on a winter night to visit someone special. Playing this song live is super exciting to us; we can’t wait to share it with people, and we really hope it resonates.

Die Hard is definitely one of our favourites. It’s really a song of appreciation for the people who help us become better. A lot of our songs’ lyrics are themed around love and relationships. But I think at the same time, you can hear them in any way you need to. If you have someone/anyone to look up to, someone you think is ‘cool’, they can often indirectly help you find a better version of yourself. We tried our best to capture this concept in the song, and we’re proud of how it came out.

6. SAVE THIS

We wrote this song one day in Sydney after no sleep the night before. It was a blur of a day, but we are so stoked with how the song turned out. It was heaps of fun exploring a new world of sounds, like having the vocoder be the main part in the chorus. We started the song with the two guitars in the verse, which was super inspiring, and then the rest of the song just grew from there.

This song is definitely another boundary push for us; all of us grew up loving 80’s music and mixed in with a little Daft Punk-inspired vocoder, this song came around. It was a little ambitious to make the chorus entirely a vocoder part, but we always want our songs to evoke a feeling. And it really felt right to us. Back with what seems to now be a signature Borderline second verse switch up with gritty vocals, 80’s keys and synths, we were all in love with what we’d make.

7. THAT GIRL

That Girl leans so hard into our love of 80s over-the-top instrumentation. It’s littered with live vintage synths, sounds, and Michael Jackson / Prince-inspired vocals. We are all so proud of how this song came together in the studio. The result of four musicians not shying away from self-indulgence.

That Girl is a huge song… It’s definitely our most ambitious song so far, especially live. Figuring out how to take this song from the studio to our live show has been such a journey, and it’s come out sounding really great. That Girl is a great representation of our musicianship and what happens when we let loose a bit on our instruments and just have fun.

8. WATCHING IT BURN

Watching It Burn is one of our favourite songs. It hits you with this colossal wall of sound, huge, distorted guitars and massive drums that takes us back to our rock roots. It’s so much fun to play live as a band, especially with the saxophone solo at the end, which Max absolutely crushes.

This is the Borderline track we want people to turn up loud and sing while driving with the roof down. The lyrics really lean in the same direction as When It’s Raining. It’s about watching something that you’ve worked so hard to build just burn to nothing. Whether it’s someone or something, it's an area so many people can relate to in their own way.

9. DEEP END

Deep End was a really exciting process for us. It started out with a very small fragment of an idea, and we were so in love with it. When we started recording it for the album, the song was nowhere near finished, so it was really fun trying things and figuring out where the rest of the song wanted to go. In the end, it ended up going into this weird, distorted section, with the breakbeat drum vibe, which was Jackson messing around, but we kept it in. This song is a real journey, and we’re really proud of how it turned out.

Some of our songs come together in a matter of minutes; this was definitely not one of them. Lyrically, it was a challenging song to do justice, but after a few months of racking our brains on where the song could go there was a moment where it all clicked, the whole song came together, every lyric poured out onto the page, and it instantly became a collective band favourite. We’re incredibly proud of this one.

10. RINGTONE

Interlude

11. FREE THROW

We wrote Free Throw in our home studio one day; all we had was a chorus and an instrumental verse. It was one of the last songs we finished on the album, and it took ages to figure out the bridge and ending section, but when we got it, we were so stoked.

Free Throw was so much fun to write and produce. We were really messing around with quantising the guitar lines to find weird glitches and artifacts. We even ended up throwing things at Matt and telling him, “More John Mayer!” Luckily, we didn’t get our way; Matt did what he does best and pulled the most silky smooth, beautiful guitar solo out of thin air to close out one of the quiet gems on the album.

13. WHEN IT ALL FALLS APART

We wrote When It All Falls Apart in the middle of actually recording the whole album. One day, after recording vocals, Ben started playing the piano, and the song came together really quickly. We were in love with the vibe and knew we had to record it. It’s a really beautiful song, and the bridge section was so much fun to record. We recorded the stomps and claps with all of us standing in the stairwell of the studio we were at; it was the most fun.

When It All Falls Apart honestly came out of nowhere. We were finishing up some final vocals on one of the tracks on the album, almost heading home. Until I sat down to noodle some chords that I couldn’t stop thinking about all day. Everyone grabbed an instrument and started playing along one by one. I started singing a melody, and the song was brought into existence. I think moments like that keep us doing what we’re doing. And recording it is just trying to capture the feeling we felt when we realised what we’d just made in the room. Makes you believe in magic sometimes.