Amy Macdonald: Teenage Dreams

She’s completed world tours in front of 3.3 million people, has over 200 million Spotify streams, boasts four top five albums (including her #1 debut) and six million album sales, and her landmark hit This Is The Life topped the charts in 10 countries. Amy Macdonald is back with her fifth album, which she says captures the teenage optimism of her debut release, and it’s her favourite record to date.

“I loved being in that mucky field in Scotland,” Amy reminisces, thinking back to seeing Travis play Turn at T in the Park festival in 2000. “I don't know why, but I just thought: ‘This is great. I need to be part of this’. I wanted to be on that stage one day.”

This moment turned out to be pivotal for Amy, and a few short years later she found herself on that very stage, not believing it was happening. She still doesn’t.

“I spent the whole time in my head going, ‘no way, this isn't real’. And I still get like that. Sometimes I come out on stage and I'm surprised that there's people there waiting to see me! It never feels normal to me, and that's a good thing. I think the minute that it starts to feel normal, it'll have lost its magic.”

Her fast-track to the spotlight is all a blur to Amy, who despite only being in her early 30s, feels like she’s been doing this forever. When she was still a teenager she got signed, and in 2007 released her debut album, This Is the Life – the singles Mr. Rock & Roll and This Is the Life were instant hits with audiences, the latter single topping the charts in 10 countries.

“Sometimes I look back and can't quite believe it,” she admits humbly. “It happened so fast, and it was a complete whirlwind for me. It was my first album! This was a collection of songs that I'd written in my bedroom on my own when I was a teenager. So I just thought, ‘this is what happens: you put your song out, they go number one everywhere and you sell millions of records’. And now I know that is not what happens,” she laughs.

“Maybe I was a little bit spoiled on that first record,” she suggests, “but I look back and I just smile. That album changed my life, and continues to change my life. I have travelled the world and played gigs all over, and still continue to do so. The music industry is quite fickle – it's all about the next big thing, but my fans seem to have stuck with me.”

Being just 18 years old when she was plucked from obscurity and signed, the usual pressures of creating a ‘marketable’ image of a pop star arose:

“Yeah, but from day one, I was just myself,” she asserts. “I struggled at the beginning with all the stylists and photoshoots because it was just so alien to me. I would literally throw on a pair of jeans and a scabby T-shirt and that was me, and I was happy!

"There were a few people that wanted to change that and give me more of an image, but I fought hard enough that eventually they let it go. It’s not who I am. I can't think of anything worse than me doing risqué shoots in front of a bunch of people,” she shudders. “It's just not my personality. Thankfully, nobody ever pushed me down that road; I was always able to be myself.”

She’s still resolutely doing things her own way, and recently released her fifth album The Human Demands – her first release under a new deal with Infectious/BMG. From her now grown-up perspective, the album captures that magic of her first record and finds Amy reconnecting with her indie roots, while grappling with getting older, dealing with depression, and falling in love.

“A lot of the themes on this album are about getting older, which seems ridiculous given I’m only in my early 30s,” she chuckles. “I’m at the stage in life where parents are getting on, friends have faced depression to the point of not wanting to be here anymore, and everyone has had ups and downs whatever their background. It’s okay to feel a bit crap, and it’s okay to talk about it as well.”

Amy has previously remarked that a few of her albums started to feel a bit like she was painting by numbers. For whatever reason, she just wasn’t feeling it the way she used to:

“It wasn’t me feeling like I've lost the spark, I think it was more the situation…” she trails off. “I didn't feel there was that excitement that you get when it's fresh and new. When you're on the same label for a long time, it can just all roll into one. I think that's more what happened. I don't think I really realised until I changed labels and it all felt nice and new and fresh again.”

She clarifies, however, that songwriting has never felt like painting by numbers for her – she always puts everything into her craft.

“I wouldn't put out music that I wasn't proud of. I think that this record is one of my favourites so far, if not my favourite so far,” she realises. “I feel really proud of it; it’s come at a great time for me personally, but also in terms of the situation we're all in because it's ultimately an album about life. It's about trying to navigate this weird world that we come into as humans.

“We always put so much pressure on ourselves,” she stresses. “We're always expected to go 100 miles an hour and we feel like we have to say yes to everything. It can be quite demanding and sometimes you can feel a little bit inadequate when you don't feel great all the time. I just wanted to explore all of those feelings because it's something that has happened to all of us where we feel a little bit fed up by everything.

"The album relates to all of that: the demands of trying to get by and tick off the days and months. It's felt even more intense these past six months because these are times that we never expected to see.”