Shayne P. Carter is a New Zealand musician best known for leading Straitjacket Fits from 1986 to 1994, and as the only permanent member of Dimmer (1995–2012).
Carter is a member of the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, and has been awarded the New Zealand Herald Legacy Award (with Straitjacket Fits at the 2008 New Zealand Music Awards), and the recipient of several Aotearoa Music Awards including best band, album and top male vocalist with Straitjacket Fits and Dimmer.
New Zealand music critic Nick Bollinger told North & South magazine in 2019: "To me, Shayne Carter really stands head and shoulders above pretty much the whole of the Dunedin scene. I mean, there were some other brilliant musicians, don’t get me wrong. But that was the era when shoe-gazing was at its peak – they wore black jerseys, stared at their shoes, and strummed their meaningful, heartfelt songs. But Shayne was different. Shayne was a rock star, and he knew it. He was actually aware of his charisma and what it meant to be a performer."
Carter published his autobiography Dead People I Have Known in 2019. In May 2020 it won both the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction and the MitoQ Best First Book Awards: E H McCormick Prize for General Non-Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
He was awarded an Arts Foundation Laureateship in 2020. In 2025 the film Life in One Chord was released, chronicling his life based on his book and directed by Margaret Gordon and narrated by Carol Hirschfeld.
Early life and education
Shayne Carter comes from a musical family. He was born in 1964 to a Caucasian mother and a Māori father who was adopted by a Pākehā family.
Carter attended school at Kaikorai Valley High School.
Career
While at Kaikorai in 1978, he formed the rock group Bored Games with Wayne Elsey (bass) and Fraser Batts (guitar), Jonathan Moore and Jeff Harford on drums. The group debuted at Kaikorai's talent quest in 1979, then went on to play a gig supporting Toy Love. When Elsey tired of being in the band (he and Carter having had arguments onstage at times) and left to form The Stones, he was replaced by Terry Moore. Terry Moore would later join The Chills, which grew out of another Dunedin high school band, the Same.
The DoubleHappys
In 1983, Carter reunited with former Bored Games bandmate Wayne Elsey. Elsey's band The Stones split up in August 1983, so he and Carter formed DoubleHappys, along with a temperamental toy drum machine they called "Herbie Fuckface".