Gold Coast artist Amy Shark is releasing her first album Love Monster and will play Splendour in the Grass July 21

AFTER years of rejection, hit single Adore put Amy Shark on the map, but her debut album Love Monster looks set to propel the Gold Coast singer-songwriter into uncharted waters.

In an industry where style is often valued over substance, and where earnestness is readily overlooked in favour of marketable and superficial pop hits, Gold Coast singer-songwriter Amy Shark has become an unlikely star.

And she’s a star who possesses a quality many of her contemporaries lack – authenticity.

When people first heard her sing “Get me a drink, I get drunk off one sip just so I can adore you; I want the entire street out of town just so I can be alone with you” on her 2016 breakthrough hit Adore, it cut through, not only because of its infectiously catchy hooks, but because there is a truthfulness to its lyricism that’s impossible to fake.

Hit songs and major record deals aside, the 32-year-old seems unaffected by her success. She’s still much more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of sneakers than she is in designer garb. When she arrives at FuFu Diner at Mermaid Beach to discuss her long-awaited debut album Love Monster, she’s wearing a black and red Chicago Bulls jumper, black jeans and a pair of Vans skate shoes, with her hair in her signature half-up top knot.

Shark is relaxed and instantly warm as she takes a seat inside the ’50s-style dinner. I remark the interior – with its shelves of American candies, glass cola bottles and booth seats – is reminiscent of Arnold’s from US sitcom Happy Days.

“I’m not trying to drop a thing … but I met Henry Winkler,” she says, explaining the time a Shark incongruously jumped the former Happy Days star. She was staying in the same hotel as the actor in Canada earlier this year. “I said, ‘Fonzie!’” Shark continues, shaking her head derisively at her lack of Fonz-like coolness.

Amy Shark plays at the Bleach Festival. Picture: Scott Fletcher

She posted a picture of herself alongside a grinning Winkler to Instagram and Brisbane musician Danny Harley – aka The Kite String Tangle – commented: “What is your life?!”, and it’s a question Shark has asked herself on numerous occasions over the past year. Meeting Winkler and numerous other international stars. The two ARIA Awards. In the studio recording with Blink-182 singer and bassist Mark Hoppus. Performing on both The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. And last November, she stood on a Hollywood street looking up at her own face staring back at her from a four-storey electronic billboard.

“It’s been crazy, it doesn’t even feel real,” she tells U on Sunday.

She might be eyeing her current achievements with incredulity but it’s not because she’s fresh to the industry and tasting sudden success straight out of the gate; on the contrary, after a decade of grappling with industry indifference and apathetic, sometimes disdainful audiences, she’s learnt to temper her expectations.

“It’s so hard to digest and it’s probably better for me,” she says, “because it’s not like I’m this 16-year-old who’s had this and I don’t know any other world; I’ve had another world.

“When you’re looking up at this billboard, seeing it is just like ‘this isn’t real, this is just crazy’, but I make sure I concentrate and let it sink in, I try to take that time as much as possible.”

Last November, just after she’d been nominated for six ARIA awards, Shark downplayed her chances, telling The Courier-Mail’s Qweekend magazine she’d “had so much shitty luck” that she didn’t “expect to walk away with anything”.

The former Southport State High School student ended the night taking home awards for Best Pop Release, for Adore, and Breakthrough Artist, and fought back tears while delivering the night’s most heartfelt and talked-about acceptance speech.

“A lot of you know my story by now but if you are at home watching this and you’re a struggling musician who feels like they’re going nowhere, just keep going,” Shark said as she collected the gong for breakthrough artist. That story began a decade before Adore hit the airwaves, something she alluded to at the start of that tearful speech when she thanked her husband, Shane Billings.

“I don’t think anyone will know what we’ve been through over the years, you were there at the very beginning and you’re here at the very end, and I love you so much for that,” she said.

Amy Shark and husband Shane Billings. Source: Instagram

In 2007, Billings had helped his then-girlfriend Amy Cushway set up a MySpace account and, without her knowledge, also entered her in a band competition at Seagulls Rugby League Club at Tweed Heads, much to her initial dismay.

Despite her initial reluctance, that gig ignited a

spark and Shark continued to perform anywhere that would have her, which, more often than not, meant playing covers for unreceptive, sometimes hostile audiences.

“I think I played every surf club and every pub on the Gold Coast,” she recalls. “The places I was playing, everyone was just ‘play Tracy Chapman, play Cyndi Lauper, play Cold Chisel, we don’t really give a f--- about your music’.

“You’d be in front of all the screens, and everyone just wants to watch race nine at f---ing Randwick and I felt bad, I was like, ‘why do you even want to have me here? No one wants to listen to me’. It was soul destroying.”

Billings was a former chief financial officer at Gold Coast Titans rugby league team. More recently he’s taken some time out to provide on-tour support, but continues to work with the club in a consultancy role. She says his presence on tour keeps her grounded.

“Shane acts like a bit of a buffer for me. I’ve got such a big team of managers, they manage other artists as well and they’re always travelling. Shane knows me back to front, and knows ‘she’s going to be tired,’ or ‘that’s a long day of travel’; it might be something that’s overlooked because there are so many people involved.”

The pair also worked together at the Titans where Shark also had a job producing the video content, and says she had almost come to terms with the idea of relegating her musical ambitions to a hobby. “I really liked my job and I was getting a lot of work from their sponsors. I was like ‘maybe I could just be a freelance videographer; that sounds good.’ I wasn’t too stressed.”

Amy Shark’s star is starting to shine bright. Picture: Adam Head

Shark admits that during much of this period, she was still trying to find her sound, and because she was a solo act, felt compelled to play a brand of alternative acoustic pop that “was very folkie”, which she readily admits “didn’t really satisfy me”.

After a brief stint performing as Little Sleeper, she opted for the moniker Amy Shark (“I’m just obsessed with sharks,” she shrugs, “I love Jaws, I love any movies with sharks in them, I read about them … I’m just obsessed”) before the release of her 2015 single Golden Fleece.

The song proved to be a turning point in her

approach to songwriting and went on to win a Queensland Music Award for Best Pop Song, a moment Shark says “was just huge for me”.

“When you’ve had nothing for 10 years and you win a QMA … I was so emotional because I was like ‘thank you, maybe I don’t suck’,” she reflects.

The win encouraged her to pursue then Gold Coast-based producer M-Phazes (Mark Landon) to work on Adore and after obtaining a Gold Coast City Council Regional Arts Development Plan grant and much persistence, he agreed. “It was almost like a goal in itself just to get M-Phazes to produce … that was like the end project, done. None of us, including Phazes, including his manager, Nate (Flagrant) including Shane, none of us knew it was going to do what it did at all’.

Adore went on to reach No. 2 on the 2016 Triple J

Hottest 100 countdown, has been certified triple-platinum, been streamed more than 38 million times on Spotify and earned Shark numerous accolades, including APRA Award for Pop Song of the Year and most recently, the top prize in this year’s Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition.

Amy Cushway and Shane Billings on their wedding day.

Following the success of Adore, Shark released her debut EP Night Thinker, and this week will release her debut album Love Monster, on which she has worked with producers including Dann Hume, Grammy-winners Joel Little and Jack Antonoff and Hoppus and M-Phazes.

“I knew it was a great album, I’m proud of it, and if it can get past me and it can get past the people I can trust, then it’s going to be good.”

When asked if all of the songs on Love Monster were all autobiographical, or whether some might be narrative-driven character studies about other people, Shark seems aghast.

“No, I don’t write like that,” she says, “and I don’t understand people who can write like that because if I haven’t done it I feel like I’m lying. Everything that I write about is experiences, life experiences, relationship experiences.”

Some of those experiences have clearly left some emotional scars Shark is still exorcising. Take The Idiot, on which Shark admonishes herself for staying in a destructive relationship.

“That riff, it’s sort of angry, it took me back to this ex I had, it was a toxic relationship,” she says.

Then there’s Middle of the Night, on which Shark sings: “I’m all over, I’m all tears, I’m backdated, I’ll take years to get back pretty, get back time, call you f---ed-up late at night”, and features a refrain in which she repeatedly warbles “f--- my life”. It’s a song that’s been in Shark’s live set for a while and its searing honesty has already struck a chord with audiences.

Psycho, her collaboration with Hoppus, came about after the Blink-182 bassist and singer reached out on Twitter and Shark had teed up a tentative studio session with him before she’d even discussed it with her managers.

Amy Shark in her music room.

“It was probably the first time my manager and my label understood how I worked, and how much I’m not used to having a label or managers,” she says. “I’d already written Psycho, it was just missing something and obviously Mark was it. He wanted to write his own verse, I think he was excited. He was like ‘Hey Amy, what’s the song about?’ And I was like ‘Oh my God, I’m explaining to Mark Hoppus what my song’s about’.”

The song was released a couple of weeks ago and has been already garnered some high-profile fans, such as Luke Boerdam from Brisbane rock band Violent Soho.

“We’ve always been Blink fans and we’re all just fascinated that this girl from the Gold Coast has interactions with a dude from one of our favourite bands,” Boerdam tells U on Sunday. “I’m just so happy for her and I think it’s great; I couldn’t be more proud of her – she’s a really nice person and deserves all her success.”

If Adore and Night Thinker put Shark on the map, then Love Monster looks set to propel her into uncharted waters when it is released on Friday. She’ll be playing the main stage at this year’s Splendour in the Grass festival at Byron Bay later this month, before embarking on a national tour in August and September. Yet the bona fide star is still tempering her expectations.

“I guess it depends on how people connect with the album, because I guess that’s what makes you keep touring, is the success of the album,” she says.

She’s the former struggling musician slowly adjusting to success. And working out how to “sustain this career and still have fun and play cool shows and write cool music along the way”.

“There are some days when my eyes are bleeding but I’m not going to complain because there are a million people who’d want to be in my position. I’m definitely having fun, every day; I’m doing something related to music. So why wouldn’t I be having fun?”

Love Monster (Wonderlick Entertainment/Sony), out July 13. Amy Shark plays Splendour in the Grass July 21 (sold out); The Tivoli September 6, and Nightquarter, Helensvale, September 8, amyshark.com