Why Amy Shark Is Feeling The Heat Of The Spotlight

Journalists often walk a fine moral line during interviews. It doesn't matter if you're in investigative or music media, the conundrum remains the same — how far are you willing to push an interview subject on personal matters in order to get your story?

To most, Amy Shark is known simply as the next big thing. Her 2016 breakout single Adore hit #2 on triple j's Hottest 100, and has surpassed ten million streams on Spotify, peaked at #3 on the ARIA chart, #1 on the Australian iTunes chart, was shortlisted for the APRA Song Of The Year... the list seems infinite.

But remove the accolades and you have Gold Coast local Amy Billings, who, after years of writing songs inspired by her most vulnerable moments, feels a little caught in the headlights with all the attention.

"It was hard because I've never had to talk about my songs over the years — I just had the same four people that would listen to my songs and know what I was talking about and wouldn't ask any questions," she explains. "I got really comfortable with writing so much shit that was really personal, and it was great because it's like therapy for me, it's such a relief.

"Now, I'm trying to keep that rawness, but also I've been through all the promo with Adore and everyone wants to know every single thing about that song, and every single word they highlight: 'Why did you write this? What was it about?'" she says, sounding a touch exacerbated. "It's scary because I have to be prepared to give people answers on this stuff that I'm not overly confident talking about, you know? Like, a lot of this stuff is really heavy. There's songs on this EP that are so heavy and it's like, how am I going to manoeuvre myself around this?"

Would she feel more comfortable sitting face to face having these conversations, rather than baring her soul to a string of strange voices on the end of a phone? "Mm, this one's good though, you sound 100% totally interested and like, you've got a voice that's easy to talk back to," she laughs, loosening up. "I've had some people where it's like, man, I don't even think you know what you wanna get out of me! But this is not like that, but it would be nice to be able to sit and have a coffee and just unleash stuff."

Her six-track debut EP Night Thinker does indeed cover some truly soul-baring moments, moving through anger, passion, love, heartbreak, admiration — considering that she's married, it's a relief to hear that "it's almost never about what I'm going through now".

Billings is surprisingly light-hearted when exploring the themes driving her work — those she's comfortable revealing. She's both affable and brazen, with a strong Queensland accent, dialogue smattered with swears and colloquialisms (on more than one occasion she calls me 'man'). She's also got this wry sense of humour — you almost have to pause before laughing just in case she's being serious.

"Yeah like, what I do is I break up with my husband every now and then when I need to write, and then we get back together," she says, totally deadpan. There's a pause, and then she cracks up. "I'm totally joking. No. Basically, there's such a massive story behind me and my husband... There's a massive story that came with a group of friends that I used to have; there's a massive story about my childhood and my family. Obviously I'm not going to talk about all this, but there's certain things I can cherry pick, moments from all those years and all those situations and scenarios I was in.

"To be fair, Adore was written about me thinking about one night. This certain party that I went to and I was overthinking everything. Zoning in on all these tiny little things that I may have said to this person that I liked, what he may have said to me. I subconsciously fall into writing about things that I don't even know I'm about to write about. But it's always shit that's happened to me, that I've felt or I've been through, it's hardly ever about what I'm going through now. I could write a million songs about a million different things, because I zone in so much on them, you know?"

There's a line in one of her first singles, Spits On Girls, that's always been a source of fascination. "If you like your life, stay off the drugs/If you like the drugs, share them with celebrities." Is she comfortable talking about that one? "Yeah, of course. I mean, I asked for this, right?

"So Spits On Girls, I remember when I put that on triple j, and the comment from Richard Kingsmill was 'I really like this song, but I have no fucking clue what she's talking about.' And the reason he had no idea what I was talking about is because that song is so personal - I'm talking about my family, I'm picking apart everyone in my life. It's hard to follow that song emotionally.

"That line in particular, I was hanging around with bad dudes at the time. It was the same thing every weekend: they'd do a bunch of drugs and they'd sit there thinking that they were God's gift, and it's like, you're in a shitty rental, and it's sorta like me just taking the piss - if you're gonna do all these drugs, do them next to Kanye! I dunno, do it somewhere cool. You guys are just total losers sitting here thinking you're so cool, and I was never a big drug user or anything, I was just exposed to it a lot, and I guess it was just me having a dig at people who thought drugs were cool."

Throughout the chat she's made a number of references to childhood and family, and she's mentioned in previous interviews that she intentionally performs under the moniker Shark to protect her family's identity. 

This is the aforementioned line.

"No, it's okay, yeah it's..." she begins to answer. Although she does end up sharing a little here, it's more important to set an example, hopefully, for future interviewers, and to leave her personal life personal.

"I don't want [these questions] to ever stop me from being who I am or stop the songs I write, because I know people are relating. People are connecting, and all the messages I get online — 'This is helping me through this' — and I don't wanna change the songwriter I am... Obviously I can sort of say 'Oh, it's not about me' even though it is. It's a tough one man, it's a tough one. I'm still learning, it's just hard for me because I write for myself and not to sell music or to be successful. I dunno, I just write."