‘I have some dark moments’: Amy Shark on struggles with fame and spotlight
Gold Coast singer-songwriter Amy Shark has revealed how she struggled with becoming an overnight success, even locking herself in a toilet before a performance because she wasn’t coping.
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Amy Shark has cracked it, that elusive work-life balance.
It’s the one that separates Amy Billings – wife, keen gardener, and aunt with a talent for water pistol fighting – and Amy Shark, the eight-time ARIA award-winning chart topper who co-writes with the likes of Ed Sheeran on a track with Keith Urban.
During her regional tour this year, travelling Australia in a Sprinter van, the Gold Coast singer-songwriter even had a woman march to the stage, which was adorned with toys and gifts from young fans, and hold her top down in one hand and a Sharpie in the other. “What do I do?” Shark radioed to her husband and manager Shane Billings after the woman stood unmoved for two songs, “Do I sign the boob?”
So, we laugh, she is also at times a rock star.
It’s taken her a long time to get there, to navigate the blurred lines of her onstage moniker. And in her darkest moments of fame and insecurity, which she was determined not to show but inevitably consumed her, she almost gave it up, locking herself in a New York bathroom and lamenting Amy Shark entirely.
“This life, sometimes it’s ‘careful what you wish for’,” Shark, 36, says.
“I love it and it’s great but then it can be really ugly as well. And people change and everything feels different and weird, and some days it’s just like, ‘argh, I just want to go back; I want to go back to not having the name attached to me’.
“I’d probably want to come back straight away because I can get a table at a restaurant really quick,” she adds with a laugh.
“I sway back and forth all the time between taking advantage of Amy Shark and deeply regretting it.”
It’s not that she isn’t grateful for her success – her scores of awards, 1.7 million Spotify listeners each month, and collaborations ranging from Sheeran and Urban (Love Songs Ain’t For Us) to Blink 182’s Travis Barker (C’MON) and The Chainsmokers (The Reaper). She’s performed sold-out arenas, from Paris to New York, at the NRL Grand Final and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. She marvels more at those feats now than she did at the time, caught in the chaos of it.
It’s not even necessarily fame that she regrets, but rather how it changed her.
“I feel like I’ve got a good balance in my life, with being so competitive because that was a real problem at the start,” Shark continues, her name itself derived from the film Jaws with a nod to her competitiveness, something fans might have noticed in her recent starring role in Celebrity Apprentice.
“I was really probably difficult to deal with because I just didn’t want anyone to take this away from me. I’d worked so hard for it, so I saw everyone as a threat; I didn’t trust anyone.”
“I have some dark moments, really tough times, battling with just ‘I don’t think I want to do this anymore’.
“Now I feel like I’ve proven myself. I’ve got a good team around me. I’m way more chill.”
“All of a sudden you just get there.”
Shark greets us in a quiet room in Brisbane’s Sony Music office in Fortitude Valley days before the ARIA Awards in Sydney in late November. There are no minders or publicists with her.
She puts her phone aside and relaxes into the office chair, excited by the prospect of finishing her work at Sony by midday and disappearing back down the M1, back to Amy Billings.
It was her 60-date See U Somewhere Australia Tour – no, she didn’t sign the woman’s chest – that earned Shark an ARIA nomination for Best Australian Live Act.
She won the same category in 2020, one of an incredible eight ARIA awards Shark has accepted over four years, including album of the year for her debut record, Love Monster (2018), and three for best pop release.
She previously thought she had to be there – to network and be seen – but she doesn’t feel that way anymore.
Instead she was preparing to watch the ceremony at home on the Gold Coast with her grandmother, Winifred Searle. At 96, Winifred is still in her own home with the full time care of her daughter, Shark’s aunt, Julie Searle. And while her aunt spends one month abroad, Shark is filling her boots as carer.
Having finished her four-month tour and jumped into filming her role as judge on the Australian Idol reboot, she welcomed the opportunity to bunker down on the Gold Coast with her grandmother.
“My Nan is the only one who has kept it real, out of anyone,” Shark explains. “Everyone else, it just feels different. They just really want to understand (my music career) and that’s all they want to talk about it – and I know they’re proud and that’s great – but Nan will call me and be like ‘with your plants, I’ve been thinking …’
“I love that she just talks to me about other things, apart from music, that I miss a lot of.”
Her grandmother being nearby is among the deeply refreshing parts of living on the Gold Coast again, as well as being closer to her younger brother Mitch – her accomplice in the occasional moments they name drop for a reservation – and a nephew and two nieces on her husband’s side.
She and Billings based themselves in an apartment in Sydney for two years during the pandemic. But they’ve officially moved into the Gold Coast home she bought in 2018, renting
it out at the time as her music career pulled her abroad.
She tells me how much she missed the beach, describes that exhale she breathes every time she lands at Gold Coast Airport, the roads she drives on autopilot, and her joy waking up to her own toaster and washing machine.
“All the pathetic things we take for granted,” she says.
“You sound ridiculous saying it but when you’re away so much you miss the weirdest little things.
“We bought this awesome house and never got to live in it. So now we are doing renovations and proper making our house, so it feels really nice.”
After years on the road, it’s invigorating to be home, writing music for the love of it – and being so excited by the future again that the couple are almost tripping over themselves.
“Covid was a big part of finding the balance and just remembering what I like to do as Amy,” Shark says.
“Just gardening and hanging out with my nieces and nephew and just being really pedestrian again, which rocks. So that really helped actually, just to slow things down.
“I just don’t take anything seriously anymore. I love writing songs and I try to simplify it. I’ve been told before ‘you’re really hard to crack’, and I’m like, well I’m pretty simple. I like creating music. I’m just not letting the fear of online or anything like that stop me anymore.”
Still, every so often, a memory will leap out from Shark’s camera roll that makes her wince. And, strangely, many of them are moments that might have, at least outwardly, seemed to be her grandest.
Shark was raised by her mother, Robyn, and stepfather David Cushway.
She played guitar in a punk band during her time at Southport State High School and yearned for a breakthrough during many years performing on the Gold Coast pub circuit, while working as a video editor for the Gold Coast Titans. Billings was the NRL club’s financial manager.
She bolstered herself through countless record label knock-backs, the same that later inspired her hit song I Said Hi, until one song, five times platinum-selling single Adore, landed with a rush in 2016.
She won a Queensland Music Award for self-produced track Golden Fleece, and then a Gold Coast City Council grant that linked her with producers, and finally Adore rocketed through the Triple J ranks, ear-worming its way to No. 2 on the Hottest 100 that year, behind Flume.
Her career moved so fast it felt as if it were making up for lost time.
There was a deal with Sony and two ARIA awards by the time she performed the hit song to American audiences, first on the The Late Late Show With James Corden and then The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in March 2018.
But she was struggling, suddenly navigating fame and public pressures, contracts, and constant touring, all with the paranoia and fear that all of it, all that she’d fought so hard for, might disappear as quickly as it came.
“Obviously everyone wants a worldwide hit, but sometimes I don’t really know if I do want that, because with that just comes more stuff, and more pressure and more people just wanting things from you,” Shark says.
“Before Jimmy Fallon, I locked myself in the bathroom. I was so tired and I was fighting with everyone and I just didn’t want to do it. And I was like ‘I don’t want to play’. I was nervous. I didn’t want to say I was nervous, but I was.”
She had performed a show in Washington and had driven jet-lagged to New York to
appear on the career-making talk show. Billings, who was managing her, was sick and her team was fractured.
“I was dumb. But every artist goes through that. Even though you think we’re living the dream, you’ve got all these insecurities,” she says.
“Then there are people that want pieces of the pie. And you’re like, maybe I need this person? But a lot of the time that’s just what people do; they weasel their way into your life.
“It’s just a very tricky industry to navigate through, because you could end up with either no career or broke very quickly.”
Everyone on that US tour has since apologised to each other, reflecting on how quickly fame and success interfered.
“It was just really crazy. And everyone was under the pump. Everything happened so quick so we were just chasing our tail all the time,” she says.
“I didn’t have a label, or management … and the song went crazy. So I was just so behind. Everyone was just doing their best.”
Shark’s career never ebbed despite her struggles behind the scenes. Her second album, Cry Forever, again topped the ARIA charts in 2021, her writing session with Sheeran sparking songwriting gold, and there more awards and honours that followed.
But when she remembers that night in New York in 2018 – having performed wonderfully on The Tonight Show in the end – she puts her wincing aside to instead marvel at how incredible it was.
“Because that doesn’t happen anymore,” she says.
“There was a time where if you had a song doing something, you could potentially play a late-night show. Now it’s pretty tough.
“I just assumed everyone got that. But since Covid there’s a back-up of big artists wanting to promote stuff so you have to take a back seat and you have to be OK with your life. You can’t be like, oh if my song’s not doing well or my show is cancelled, I’m done, I’m going to fall into a deep dark hole.
“I definitely was borderline that for a minute,” she adds, pausing briefly, “But then you just need to redirect everything and be like, who am I and what do I want to come home to.
“I say to Shane all the time, if we are good and our nieces and nephew are good, and family is good, music is just a bonus.”
Shark doesn’t have the large friendship circle she once did. And she’s not part of the clique she knows exists in the Australian music industry. She prefers to keep it that way now.
“The people I do have around me now are the right people,” she says.
“I feel like you don’t really need a massive cheer squad anymore, you just need to really back yourself and work on yourself a lot, because the second you don’t really care about what other people think is a really nice thing.”
In September, Shark was announced as among the panel of judges for the new season of Australian Idol on Channel 7.
Joining her on the show, airing in January, are American pop star Meghan Trainor, crooner Harry Connick Jr and radio host Kyle Sandilands.
It follows her recent appearance on Celebrity Apprentice – which she did to raise money for the music industry through charity Support Act. TV might have seemed unexpected to some, but Shark enjoys surprising people.
“I watched this Adele interview, with her manager actually, and her manager said ‘the answer is no, no is the way to build a brand’. And we did that for five years and I think now it’s a lot of about what you do say yes to,” she says.
“I’ve just reached a stage now, where if you don’t take opportunities they are just going to go past. And we are living in this weird, wacky world where people are digesting music quickly and there’s Tik Tok … and I’m not letting the idea of someone not liking me stop me from doing anything anymore.
“When Idol airs that’s going to be a whole new level of hate and abuse but I’m fine because my home life is fine. I don’t care. I can shut the door.”
Shark enjoys the full-circle moment of giving aspiring artists the chance that Sony gave her back in 2016 and appreciates being able to represent alternative artists.
“I mean I came through Triple J – I feel like it’s a good representation for artists, to see me sitting there and (know) it’s possible to work hard and get there,” she says.
Of course it also meant lying awake at night dreading her time in hair and make-up the following morning – that’s never been her “shtick” – but it was made easier by her bond with her three co-judges. She hints that Connick Jr gives Sandilands a run for his money.
“Meghan is such a popstar,” she laughs recalling their photo shoots together.
“She’s like ‘Amy, chin up’. I’m so thankful she’s coaching me through this. But I have actually liked it because they are all so great. Harry is amazing, Kyle has supported me from day one.”
She constantly reminds contestants that she wouldn’t have survived the show, which everyone had told her to audition for as a “brooding teenager” in Southport.
“I was so goth and I was like, I’m not going on that sellout show,” she laughs.
“But also the real reason was I didn’t have a standout voice, I had a unique voice, so I probably just knew I wouldn’t get through and didn’t want the embarrassment.
“But I think it’s a different landscape now, the industry, and I think it’s actually smart,” she adds. “Why not have a crack because there’s not many platforms that aren’t inundated with artists and music. If you can get yourself on TV and you have a voice you can leverage off this experience … it’s one of the shows that has had outcomes.”
Shark recently joked with Dance Monkey hit maker Tones and I about the music industry, and how it’s changed since she released Adore in 2016. They laughed that there was a boat, and Shark ran for it, just making it on board before it powered away, extending her hand to haul Tones and I on behind her.
“It’s hard to become a name now,” Shark explains.
“I found out the other day there’s 100,000 songs being uploaded every day to Spotify and it’s crazy. I’m very grateful I kind of made a name for myself when I did.
“I kind of feel for artists who are freaking good … producing it themselves half the time and I think that’s the problem. There are so many bedroom producers and everyone’s got a platform. It’s hard for every record label to sift through the s--t.”
The rise of Tik Tok and other social media platforms, fuelled by the pandemic, has left Shark frustrated by the fluxing state of the industry and how clogged it feels, leaving her with a bank of songs she’s proud of and no certainty around the best way to release them.
“Being a musician … any mother f--ker can now. It’s a kick in the guts,” she says. “It feels like an absolute free-for-all.”
Shark released a new song, Only Wanna Be With You, in October – the first in her new era of turbo pop songwriting. That’s her job to focus on now, to not get caught up in the chaos.
Her husband, who is her full-time manager, can deal with the rest. Shark, who endlessly scribes lyric ideas onto her phone, had done just that after performing a corporate gig for a bank, where she awkwardly bumped into a man she once dated. He, bolstered by a few drinks, asked “what happened with us?”
“I was like ‘oh my god’,” she laughs.
“It got me thinking about the time we were dating. I’d already found someone I wanted to be with and for so many reasons I couldn’t be with that person. And so I dragged this guy along. It was a dick move. It stemmed this idea of that time when it felt like I was dating everyone under the sun just to try and find these feelings I already had for someone that I had to try and crush.”
When I ask if the man in the song – the one who turned the back seat “into heaven” – is her now husband, she blushes: “It might have been.”
“I feel like if I take it step by step about my songs it takes the sexiness out of it, the mystery out of it,” she says.
“It’s pretty sexy, but is it sexy if I’m like, that’s about my husband?”
Shark married Billings in 2013. It was him who endlessly encouraged her career, secretly signing her up to music competitions and putting her forward for the council grant that would prove to be her launch pad.
He managed her complex career and, despite her keeping it a mystery at times, inspired so many of her hit songs. It’s often the case that the underdog story has a love story attached to it.
“I feel for people who don’t have a Shane because he’s my best friend and he also keeps things so real for me,” Shark says.
“He’s like a home that travels around with me.”
They are both excited about her new era of music – as they are about their house renovations – and they will decide on the fly whether an album comes next year or not. Australian Idol airing will be an added bit of chaos in the mix. But they are ready.
“Everything is organised chaos but we kind of read the room and see what comes,” she says. “We both love what we do so much, we wish we had more years in our life. We have so many things we want to do it’s a little overwhelming sometimes, as to where to channel your energy and what to back financially. But we’re excited every day and the days we don’t want to kill each other, we love each other.”
But, for the moment, they sit down to dinner at home each night and discuss various things, like the different fireplaces they are mulling over, trying to settle on the right one.
“I love talking about not music for a minute, it’s nice hey?” Billings says, pausing their conversation. “We can talk about tiles next, if you want?”
Shark smiles, closing the door to the outside world. “That sounds great.”
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