IN CONCERT
What: Amy Shark with Milck
When: Sunday Feb. 25 8 p.m.
Where: Capital Ballroom, 858 Yates St.
Tickets: $17.50 at Lyle’s Place, 770 Yates St., and Ticketweb.ca
Amy Shark embarked on a scattershot tour of small North American venues a year ago, when she was largely unknown outside her native Australia. Her fortunes have changed dramatically since then.
Shark’s first official tour as a headliner, which started Tuesday, kicked off with a sold-out show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, just one of several cities on the tour that are now advertising sold-out stops.
Tickets are still available for the indie pop singer’s local debut at the Capital Ballroom on Sunday, but her show in Toronto had to be moved to a bigger venue to meet demand. Shark is half-Canadian, with scores of family in the Toronto area.
“A lot of radio stations started picking the song up, but I didn’t expect to be back here this soon to be playing for a lot more people,” Shark said. “It shows you how quick people have taken to it. It’s a bit of a dream, actually.”
The song in question — the slow-burning ballad Adore — has made 30-year-old Shark a star in Australia. Shark, who lives in Broadbeach, a small suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, closed out 2017 in style, notching wins at the Australian Recording Industry Association Awards in November for breakthrough artist and best pop release.
Adore and another Shark hit, Weekends, earned her a new level of fame, with Adore placing second on the year-end charts for Australia’s national radio station Triple J. “I had a very normal life for a long time, working a nine-to-five job,” Shark said. “[Adore] took off a little bit, and now I’ve got this opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted. It’s really fairytale-like.”
She has been active artistically for nearly a decade, in various capacities, not all of which was positive. Shark recalled spending too much time bending her sound for producers and executives who saw her promise as a songwriter, but wanted her to be someone different.
Eventually, with the support of her husband, who was then her manager, the couple cut loose and went at it alone. Recent collaborations with Bleachers and members of Blink-182 are a good indication she made the right decision.
Looking back, she knows why she never fit the mould — she was too stubborn, too stuck to her own way of doing things. “It was at a time when nobody was getting anywhere being brutally honest in their lyrics,” she said. “There was a lot of bubblegum-type s--- everywhere, and I wasn’t fitting into that category. I had a few people — labels, industry people — say that I should maybe be a little bit more pop, or a little bit more folk. But I don’t trust anyone. I like to write exactly what I want.”
Her early efforts were mostly acoustic, and while her current music favours the electronic-pop sounds heard on the Night Thinker E.P., which arrived in April, guitars will never be a thing of the past for Shark.
“For 10 years, I was just playing little cafés and pubs, tiny venues,” she said. “I couldn’t afford to have any people in my band. Where I’m from, it’s really hard to find anyone to work for free or do it for little money. So my songs had to be good on acoustic guitar.”
Years ago, when industry influencers wanted her to put down the guitar for good, Shark refused to entertain the idea. Her perseverance must have been empowering, because Shark is now signed to label giant Sony, but with considerable artistic control.
“When you’re a teenager, you listen to those people and think: ‘Maybe that’s what I have to do to get there, and then I can write what I want to write.’ But that’s so not right. Everything works so much better when you’re honest with yourself and with your music. If you’re any good, it’ll be good.”
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