In her other job as a judge on Australian Idol, the singer-songwriter Amy Shark spends a lot of time with budding musicians looking for their big break. It generates an uncomfortable sense of deja vu.
“I hear a lot in the hallways about how hard it is, like, ‘I’ve been at this for a whole year!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, a whole year?’” she laughs, putting on the sort of jovial, mock show of sympathy you might offer a grown man who cries after stubbing his toe. “Babe, it’s not meant to be easy!”
Shark knows a thing or two about it not being easy. Before she built a career under her Jaws-inspired moniker, the artist born Amy Louise Billings spent 15 years trying to make it in music. By day, she worked as a video producer for an NRL team, getting “big dumb footy players” to shout out corporate sponsors on camera. By night she wrote songs, sending demos to people who mostly ignored her, and playing “soul-destroying” cover gigs on weekends. At a low moment in 2016 she told her husband that perhaps it was time to give up on music and buy a Subway franchise – but just a couple of days later, her lush, lovestruck pop track Adore got played on Triple J and, suddenly, “everything changed”.
That surprise hit sparked a major label-bidding war, went five times platinum and, at age 30, Shark found the sort of commercial success that doesn’t happen often in Australian pop, with those years of toil becoming part of her underdog, everywoman appeal.
Which means today, a decade after ditching her day job and becoming a full-time musician, and with her new album, Soft Pop, out on Friday, Shark is facing a different kind of problem to her Idol proteges: “No one’s the hot new artist for for ever.”
“I think a lot of people think, ‘You’re living the life, being an artist’ – I’m on my fourth album, you don’t always stay up here,” Shark says, gesturing up high with her hands, a subtle exasperation evident. It’s easier to be the breakout artist everyone’s rooting for than the established act grappling with a different set of expectations and burdens.
“Everyone wants to be famous, and everyone thinks being famous is amazing, and it’s not,” Shark says. “Everyone changes, everyone expects things of you, everyone feels entitled and it’s quite ugly. You see the ugliest parts of so many people. It’s a daily battle of keeping your head above water and being happy.”
I am speaking to Shark over Zoom; she has logged on from her home in the Gold Coast, where she still lives (“I don’t like change”). Her trademark half-up hairdo traded for a casual, no-nonsense bun, over a surprisingly candid hour Shark will glide between wry, conspiratorial jest (how exhausting it is being recognised at the gym when “I already hate the gym!”) and more pained admissions about struggling with her public profile.
The good bits of her second act are obvious: she gets to “do the thing I love doing so much” for work, and has the opportunity to embark on fun side quests, including acting in the film Beast – her co-star Russell Crowe came to a show years ago then started inviting her to dinner parties with Nicole Kidman before getting her the audition. The bad includes those gripes about fame and how “musicians cop the shit end of the stick in every situation”.
She’s speaking specifically about the campaign to stop the Australian government selling out creative copyright to big tech; Anthony Albanese seems on board but musicians are still “getting people stealing our shit”, she says of the large language models that have already scraped Australian music without consent or compensation. “We’re forever the ones doing the charity gig, and having to comment on things that we don’t really want to comment on. People look to us like we’ve got all the answers, but a lot of us just don’t … I’m not a political artist, I’m not trying to change the world.”
There’s also the fact that her full-time job is now writing songs, which “takes a bit of magic out of it”. In fact, after three albums that saw her mine her romantic history (Shark has been married since 2013; her dating days are long gone) and collaborate with Ed Sheeran, Blink 182’s Travis Barker and the powerhouse producer Jack Antonoff, she had been feeling that she didn’t have anything left to say, and – after 2024’s Sunday Sadness – stopped writing altogether.
To shock her out of the malaise, Shark’s husband-slash-manager Shane Billings booked her a block of studio time with the producer of her debut, Dann Hume, in the UK – giving her just a month to write an album’s worth of songs.
“That just made me angry, because you never want to be told to do something you’re not in the mood to do,” Shark says. “But he was right – I needed to sink my teeth into something.”
The deadline forced Shark to stop overthinking things and she realised there were still stories she hadn’t told: old flames, friendship fallouts and morsels from her marriage (“It’s not all smooth sailing!”). Sat at home by herself, away from the co-writers and collaborators available to artists at her level, Shark remembered that songwriting “is, at my core, the thing I love the most in life”. When she got to the UK, she ditched the drums and big-pop production of albums past to leave little more on the tracks than her vocals and an acoustic guitar.
The result is easily the best work of her career, weaving playground handclap rhymes (“Five, six, pickup sticks/ Fell in love with the biggest dick,” she sings on The Biggest Dick) and half-heartbroken memories of first love (Not Old Enough to Drive) into paired-back but utterly moreish earworms.
On the album closer, Singapore Noodles, you can hear Shark make a false start on her guitar before Hume counts her into the song. Small, raw moments like that add to the sense of departure from her previous work – which was very much by design.
“I just needed it to sound different,” Shark says. “I didn’t want it to be another Amy Shark album … I wanted people to second guess who they were listening to.”
The creative floodgates open, a reinvigorated Shark even took charge of the album’s aesthetics, designing the fluffy album cover herself with some fabric, scissors and glue from Spotlight.
“I was having the best time again,” she says before darting away from the camera to proudly show me the original purple prototype. “I felt like an indie artist again – probably driving my actual label crazy, because I was acting like an indie on a major!
“I don’t know where I lost my confidence … I’m not 18, I just turned 40, I’ve got so many stories; I’ve been through it all … what haven’t I got to write about?
“It’s definitely not as easy as everyone thinks,” Shark adds, “but it’s the best job in the world, hands down.”
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Soft Pop is out on 24 July
Amy Shark’s songs to live by
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What was the best year for music, and what five songs prove it?
1995.
You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette: there were some lyrics I didn’t really understand, but I knew it was kind of filthy and I loved it!
Wonderwall by Oasis: this was one of the first songs I learned on guitar, I’m pretty sure it’s every guitarist’s first song.
Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio: if I ever become an MMA fighter and needed a walkout song, this would be it!
Waterfalls by TLC: I think this is the first girl group I saw with girls wearing baggy jeans and bandanas and it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
You Are Not Alone by Michael Jackson: at my first primary school disco I danced with my crush to this song. It was still terrifying even though we were a metre apart and didn’t speak to each other.
What’s the song you wish you wrote?
Royals by Lorde. I grew up in Southport so the whole postcode envy was really relatable. But I also just love how gritty this song sounds.
What is the song you have listened to the most times this year?
The Biggest Dick by me … I would have listened to the demo 9,000 times and then listened to the mix 20,000 times and then listened to the master another 5,000 times and then I’ve been lucky enough to hear it on the radio a lot.
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?
HOT TO GO! by Chappell Roan.
What underrated song deserves classic status?
Gary by Stephen Wilson Jr. I can’t get enough of this song. It’s just so well written. Such a great melody. It’s more than just country, it’s almost punk pop as well. He’s already a massive artist but I feel like he should be one of the biggest in the world. And this song should be massive.
What is a song you loved as a teenager?
Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus. True story: my friends locked me out of a sleepover party because I kept singing this song and annoying everyone. My friend’s mum let me back inside.
What song do you want played at your funeral?
Don’t Cry by Guns N’ Roses. Most people want their funeral to be a celebration. I want people to cry as hard as they’ve ever cried and miss me more than they have ever missed anyone in their whole life. I’m an addict for the dramatic.
What is the best song to have sex to?
Haha, Bangarang by Skrillex. This was an extremely awkward question to answer so the fact that I even answered it is enough, lol.