SHARK BITES BACK AT CRITICS
Singer hits out at music executives in new song
Gold Coast star’s latest single takes aim at all the industry execs who didn’t want to know her before she hit the big time
AMY Shark slams the dozens of music industry executives who rejected her for a decade with her new single I Said Hi.
There is going to be a whole lot of squirming from the gatekeepers who knocked back the Adore star when they hear the track which drops today.
After winning Pop Work of the Year at the APRA Music Awards on Tuesday, the Gold Coast musician said I Said Hi
was also about waking up every morning determined to fight for her dream.
The title was inspired by her retort to her managers Jaddan and Rachael Comerford when they would tell her who they had set up meetings with. The same people who had knocked back her emails and calls.
“It felt like every day Jaddan would tell me ‘I have a meeting with such and such’, the same a ----hole who told me to stop emailing them,” she said.
“I would tell him ‘Tell them I said Hi’. I didn’t want the song to be a total bitch but I needed to release what I had sitting inside of me.”
Since Adore blew up in Australia in 2016 and now the world with more than 34 million Spotify streams, Shark not only had labels bashing at her door but global superstars keen to work with her.
She has written with Lorde and Taylor Swift producer Jack Antonoff and Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus.
She shakes her head when she jokes about the “random people I now have in my phone”, including actor Katie Holmes who sought her out ahead of a gig in New York.
Shark said she thought it was a joke when a woman she met claimed to be a close friend of Holmes and that the Dawson’s Creek star was a big fan of the Australian artist’s Night Thinker EP.
Next thing she knows Holmes is walking into a bar near the venue and Shark is thinking “Holy s---!”.
“She was the sweetest person ever, telling me how much she was looking forward to the show while I am texting everyone in my team that Katie Holmes was in fact standing right in front of me and needs backstage passes and you better put her in a good spot,” Shark said, laughing.
“This had not happened to any of us before and everyone was freaking out, with my husband Shane having to usher her through the venue. I could see her during the whole show and I was verging on just playing to Katie all night.”
Shark has toured America four times in the past year and will be back again as she sets up the release of her debut album within the next four months.
She has also been confirmed to perform at Splendour in the Grass in July.
Shark said she remains grateful every day that Night Thinker has finally opened the doors which had been slammed shut for so many years.
She believes her fans connected with the deeply personal and honest lyrics.
“It might have just been time for that kind of truth, truth in vocal, in music and meaning, someone who isn’t holding anything back,” she said.