Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Bowing to Demands
Scots star shares her inspiration as she releases a fifth album
Twenty years ago, as a young teenager, Amy Macdonald was inspired to take up the guitar aft er seeing lo cal heroes Travis at T In The Park. And since releasing her triple platinum This Is The Life 2007 debut, Scottish star Amy has blazed a c h a r t - t o p p i n g c a r e e r, selling 12 million records.
With the release of her fifth album, The Human Demands, Amy, 33, remains an exception to the guitar band rulebook – and admits it’s hard for girls to get on.
“It does my head in when festivals get all the flak for not putting girls with guitars on their festival bills – how can they when they don’t get any exposure?” she says. “Radio doesn’t play girl guitar music, so they don’t get on TV, there’s no press, so why should a festival put them on the bill when nobody would know who the hell they were?”
She started recording The Human Demands just before lockdown and it has the personal touch from a reinv i gorat ed , newly married Amy.
Made with producer Jim Abbiss, it includes songs inspired by Amy’s mum and dad, and her love for Partick Thistle footballer Richard Foster, 35, whom she married in 2018 – although her husband won’t be the subject of many more songs.
“I’m just not romantically inclined like that,” she admits.
“He knew the song was about him
as soon as he heard it. I guess he was lucky that I had a writing session just after coming back from getting married in Vegas. I told him to make the most of it as there’ll be nae more!”
She’s earned her right to be unsentimental. Interrupted by the f irst lockdown, the new album got a boost when she reunited with
Abbis. “I described him as the Jurgen Klopp of production when we were in the studio together in Soho – as a Liverpool fan he loved that!
“It’s the most involved I’ve ever felt on the production side and I’m extra proud of the record as a result.”
A resounding victory indeed, more than welcome after early battles of the sort many female rockers, who are now where she was 20 years ago, still have to fight.
“Women have to jump through way more hoops than male artists – the expectations on what girls look like and what they say are j ust so different.
“If a man turns up l ooking dishevelled with a foul mouth, then he’s rock ’n’ roll – if a girl does that she’s a disaster!”
The Human Demands is out now
Women artists have to jump through way more hoops