Amy Shark is one of those apparent overnight sensations that has actually been slogging her way through the knee-deep puppy and horse shit that accumulates during the music industry’s ridiculous and endless dog-and-pony show. After years of rejection from industry executives, the Queensland, Australia native had a massive hit in 2016 with her single “Adore,” and suddenly there was a bidding war among the idiots who ignored her in the first place.
Last month, just after Shark won an Australian Performing Rights Association award, she released a new single, “ I Said Hi,” as a response to the cloth-eared industry types who shunned her for so long. When her managers would mention they were meeting with someone she recognized as having been aggressively unpleasant in her journey to bring her music to the world, she would respond by saying, “Tell them I said, ‘Hi.’ ”
Though Shark toiled for years in obscurity, she made a lot of fans at the grassroots level, and won admirers who helped her in the studio, including producer Mark Landon (aka M-Phazes), who manned the board for the breakthrough “Adore.” Like she had done with songs so many times before, Shark posted “Adore” on YouTube, but it exploded like nothing she had done in the past; the song won the Queensland Music Award for Pop Song of the Year and, to date, it has been streamed 34 million times on Spotify. The explosive response to “Adore” led to Australian chart success, American tours and her debut EP, Night Thinkers, which has grown her fan base exponentially.
The year has already proven to be a big one for Shark and it’s likely to get bigger before it’s over. She has a song on the successful soundtrack to Love, Simon, and in July, Shark releases her first full-length album, Love Monster, which will feature “I Said Hi,” “Adore” and songs she has co-written with M-Phazes, Lorde and blink-182’s Mark Hoppus.
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