70% Imposter?

Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media

I’m a jerk. Amy Shark is clearly not the kind of person to brag about celebrity connections, and I made her drop names less than a minute into our chat. It’s surreal, when you think about it. Just under five years ago, the Gold Coast indie pop songstress was preparing to release her breakthrough single Adore – an ode to crushing hard which would go on to charm the pants off Australia and crack #2 on the Hottest 100. Nowadays she’s having dinners with Hollywood royalty and trying not to sound like a dick when she has to mention them in interviews. Fortunately, she seems to be handling it well, even if you can tell she still can’t quite believe that this has become her life. Ahead of her national tour in support of her new album Cry Forever, she chatted to SENSE from Woolloomooloo about being starstruck and dealing with a serious case of imposter syndrome …

The Interview

In the Love Songs Ain’t For Us video, you’re getting out of the car and appear to be moving in slow-motion while lip-synching to your song. When you shot it, were you lip-synching to a sped-up, Alvin & The Chipmunks-style version of your song?

Yep! [Laughs] Smoke and mirrors!

Did it sound as amazingly hilarious as I’m imagining it?

Oh yeah. It always is. That’s one of the greatest tricks of all time, I guess, just to make it look lush and smooth and everything. [On] a lot of my videos, I’ll say I want to do double-time or speed it up just so it can look nice in slow-mo, but it’s super-hard to do, especially with that song. It kind of starts really quickly. But yeah, I was singing chipmunk! [Laughs]

How did you first come to work with Ed Sheeran?

Well, it was actually … I feel so stupid always dropping names, because it’s not who I am as a person, but Russell Crowe sent my first album to Ed, and Ed liked it, and he sent me an email sort of inviting me to come and write with him in the U.K. next time I was in England. So I did that [laughs], and that’s basically how it came about! I’m still in shock that it actually happened!

Didn’t you perform at one of the rugby events? It doesn’t surprise me that Russell Crowe came across you.

Well, it was before any of that really. He kind of just champions a lot of home-grown sort of stuff that’s happening, and when I put Adore out he just jumped on it and started retweeting all my stuff. He’s actually just a real fan. He plays music all the time, and each time we’ve hung out, I’ve played songs on acoustic. He just really loves it, and I think he’s one of those people who loves bringing people up to the next level, and if he can help, he will. I remember being at his farm, and I saw a big Ed Sheeran plaque because Ed recorded the Eminem song at his farm, in his recording studio, and I went, “Wow, that’s so cool! I’d love to meet Ed one day.” It was just a throwaway line. I didn’t tell him to do anything or help me – he just took it upon himself to do so.

I’ve noticed that you’ve built your own studio in your home. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much have you pissed off your neighbours?

Not at all, because I did it really well. It’s so soundproofed, you can’t hear anything in there. It’s a very slick studio – we kind of spared no expense with it. They’re fine. They’re wondering if I’m still alive in there, you know? [Laughs]

If there is another lockdown, you’re going to be set.

Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit of bad timing. I literally did that, and recorded the album, and had a few months enjoying my house there. I still have the house – I’ve just rented it out now that I’m in Sydney. I don’t have that studio at my disposal at the moment, but it’s OK. It’s still there for when I do go back eventually.

I can’t imagine how much you would have to pay to rent a house with an inbuilt studio…

[Laughs] I’m guessing they’ll use it as a media room or something. The chances of someone just wanting a music recording studio in their house on the Gold Coast is very slim I think. [Laughs] Who knows?

Do people recognise you when you’re out and about these days? You’ve had quite a big couple of years since Adore dropped.

I don’t go looking for it, but every now and then people will recognise me. I guess it just comes with [the territory] when you put your face out there everywhere and you’re on radio and television. It just happens. It’s still very bizarre and weird, but if people are nice, it’s fine.

Everybody Rise dealt with being the object of obsession and fascination. At what point in your career did you have to start keeping people at an arm’s length, and look out for your privacy?

I mean, I was kind of in denial for a good couple of years. Anyone who was looking at me in public, I would just think, “What are you looking at?” and getting my back up, and forgetting that I’m becoming someone [who] people notice and recognise. I was in pure denial about fame and anything like that, because I just lived a very normal, pedestrian life for so many years, it just wasn’t triggering. I guess the more you do it, the more success you have, you find those sorts of people in your life, and you kind of need to make sure that your circles are very small and intimate. There are ways around it. It can be difficult. It can be tough to balance everything, especially when you’re just not used to it. I haven’t done this life since I was sixteen. It’s very sudden for me. I’ve had to put procedures in place where it’s not normal, but it’s kind of the new normal.

Russell Crowe, Ed Sheeran … when was the last time you were genuinely starstruck?

Genuinely starstruck was Nicole Kidman … Yep, I just couldn’t even … I had met her briefly at the 2018 ARIA Awards, but it was just a fleeting moment. I had just got an award and walked past her and she stopped and congratulated me. But then, when I was in New York a year later, I had dinner with her and Russell Crowe and Deborra-Lee Furness. I didn’t know [Nicole] was coming to this dinner – Russell kept it a surprise because he knows I’m such a big Nicole Kidman fan. I think he thought he was doing me a favour by making this awesome surprise, but I need to know these things to properly get myself in the right zone to meet these kinds of people, and I just didn’t expect it. I was in so much shock. I got through it fine, but I just couldn’t believe that she was sitting next to me, and we were having dinner together talking about film and music and Keith [Urban] and my tour and the ARIAs. I was just like, “I cannot believe I’m sitting next to you.” [Laughs]

I imagine that in moments like that, and the first time you went to the ARIAs, or the first time you had a party in your honour, the imposter syndrome must have been pretty intense?

Oh yeah, I will always have a really strong, sixty-to-seventy-percent of imposter syndrome in me, because it’s wild what’s happened to me. It’s not normal. It’s not normal for someone to reach thirty and get signed and have this whole different life! [Laughs] It’s just not what happens. So forever I’ll have that, and you know what? I kind of always want to have that, because the minute you don’t have that, you can turn into a bit of a dick, and I don’t want to turn into a dick, so I’m OK with feeling weird.

I feel like that has done you a great service, because you weren’t Justin Bieber, being handed the keys to a roadster when you were [a teenager]. You were mature enough to deal with this when it came along. I don’t think a lot of people have that opportunity.

Yeah, there are definitely two massive sides to waiting a long time for success and for your voice to be heard, compared to having it all handed to you when you’re super-young. The more I think about it, everything happened for a reason. I’ve surrendered my life to that. I think I wouldn’t have made the right decisions that I have for my music, for my brand and everything, if I was younger. I wouldn’t have even been able to write the songs that I wrote, because I had lived through so much. There are endless topics for me to write about now, because I’ve experienced so much.

Whereas a teenage pop star is … “What are you writing about? Oh, girls? Original.”

Yeah. Well, I’ve had these times where I’ve been in these rooms where a bunch of up-and-coming artists aged 17-to-21 asking me a bunch of questions on songwriting and how I write songs, and I’m like, “It’s easy when you’ve lived through it. You guys haven’t even scraped the surface of what I have, and it’s going to be hard when you’ve got to write about things that you haven’t even experienced. You’re going to run out of ideas, because there’s only so much life [experience] that you can have in those years.” I think that it has been a good thing for me, and I’ve really leaned on that, and I’ve really zoned-in on that being my strength.

Thanks for your time today. I’m hoping to get us down to see you at Riverstage. The last band I saw there was SLAYER, so you’ve got some living up to do, but I’m sure you’ll be fine.

[Laughs] Amazing. I’m sure it’ll be a different experience for you!

Cry Forever is out April 30th.