T
owards the end of last
year, Amy Shark was in New
York meeting with a major re-
cord label. This was not the kind
of thing the songwriter her parents know
as Amy Billings did on a regular basis –
indeed, for nearly a decade the 30-year-
old had spent her time vying for attention
on the pub circuit around the Gold Coast,
trying, and largely failing, to get people to
take an interest in her original music. But
in the wake of her hit-in-waiting “Adore”
receiving spot rotation on Triple J at the
back-end of 2016, she and her husband
Shane (who was at that point her manag-
er) were inundated with e-mails from la-
bels and managers requesting meetings
and, in the case of one, an invitation to fl y
to New York. After meeting the staff – “one
by one a group of 15 came in and just start-
ed saying they love my music and they’ve
listened to my older stuff and this is their
favourite and blah blah,” says Shark. “My
head was spinning” – she was taken to a
restaurant where you could order a $1,000
omelet. Welcome to the big leagues. “I def-
initely didn’t order that,” Shark guff aws,
reclining on a couch in the Sydney Roll-
ing Stone offi ces. “I was too scared in case
they charged me back. I’m always looking
for the catch. Why am I here? Someone’s
gonna rip me off somewhere.”
Shark’s maturity may account for this
level headedness, but it’s also proving ad-
vantageous when it comes to penning her
music – songs that, in the case of “Adore”
or latest single “Weekends”, off er white-
knuckled honesty borne out of experience.
“I get a lot of younger girl musicians [say-
ing], ‘How do you come up with it? Do you
create characters?’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I’ve
just got so much more data to digest and
things I’ve been through – relationships,
friendships, family bullshit.’”
Ask Shark where the desire to write
music comes from, and she points to “a
pretty good start in life” thanks to her
parents’ record collection; albums that
veered from Silverchair’s Frogstomp to the
Police, Cat Stevens, and all points in be-
tween. Early personal favourites included
Blink-182 and New Found Glory (she na-
mechecks Sum 41 and Pennywise as gig-
ging highlights), and former Blink guitar-
ist Tom DeLonge remains an inspiration.
(“He knows how to write a great song, anda great melody and hooks galore.”) Shark
started learning guitar at 15, but only after
turning down an off er from her grandpar-
ents to pay for her and her younger brother
Mitch to learn an instrument. “I was way
more interested in hanging out with my
friends after school than going to a tutor
to learn an instrument,” she off ers. “Mitch
started, and one day he came home and he
could play [guitar], and I was like, ‘Well, I
think I wanna do it now!’”
Shark split her time between learning
the instrument (her teacher taught her
Chili Peppers and No Doubt songs as op-
posed to making her learn scales) and pur-suing her of love acting and theatre. She
was, she says, never a kid who thought “I’m
gonna be a movie star”, so developed an in-
terest in life on the other side of the camera
as a back-up. As a teen she’d take her video
camera to parties (“I would always be the
one with the really feral footage”), and she
became “obsessed” with shooting vision
and learning how to edit. She studied at
uni, but dropped out halfway through. “I
was getting heaps of work as a videogra-
pher, doing weddings and 40th birthdays,”
she shrugs. “I had all my gear and was like,
‘I don’t need uni.’ Now I wish I completed
it just to say I fi nished that.”28 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com Photograph by Mathew CoyteR&R
Amy Shark’s Slow Burn
The Gold Coast singer-songwriter’s overnight success
has been a decade in the makingBY ROD YATES