Amy Shark charms with intimate first show in Amsterdam
The success story of Amy Shark is one all upcoming artists in the digital age dream of. The Australian singer-songwriter wasn’t even really looking to become a fulltime pop artist, but when her single ‘Adore’ went completely viral, the song climbed the charts of her country, enabling to go on a tour with sold out dates within Australia. She dropped the EP Night Thinker and is now touring internationally. On Monday night she played an intimate show in Melkweg upstairs!

Amy takes the stage in simple jeans and an Adidas vest, performing ‘Drive You Mad’, one of the highlights of the debut EP. She is accompanied by a two men strong band and with the three of them, they faultlessly recreate the electronic pop sound she broke through with. The swinging tunes ‘Weekend’ and ‘Blood Brothers’ get the crowd going with a few cautious dance moves, while they are listening in total silence to the slower songs.

Amy Shark, born Amy Billings, explains to her audience that every single song is very perosnal to her, so she introduces almost all of them with a little story of what they are about. We hear her imitate the mother of a crush with a thick Australian accent before ‘Weekends’ and the acoustically performed ‘Middle Of The Night’ is introduced as being about some heavy stuff she went through. The crowd listens in awe as she shares her deepest feelings while playing guitar.

Halfway through the just under an hour long set she surprises the crowd with an entertaining cover of Eminem’s ‘Superman’. It works surprisingly well performed on guitar by a self proclaimed Aussie potty mouth. Of course there was no other way to end this little gig than with her biggest hit to date, ‘Adore’. She belts away during the last chorus, showing off her vocal power. Shark says she hopes the audience enjoyed her show, as she would love to come back to Amsterdam soon. I think everyone in the room tonight would hope for the same!