17-year-old Gold Coast singer-songwriter Amy Elise has released a series of singles over the last couple of years showing the artist’s evolving style, with her latest, Such A Shame, revealing a tighter focus and more pronounced rock aesthetic.
The 2021 Queensland Music Award finalist has channelled her enlightened teen angst into a rock blast that explores self-empowerment with a blend of styles. With the track already hitting the No.1 spot on the Amrap regional chart and across the board high-rotation community play, including OCR FRM, including it in their best 100 Aussie songs in 202, Such A Shame is undoubtedly the breakout song for Amy and sure to expand the groundswell of unanimous support.
As Amy has said about her creative ambitions, ‘I would love to create a solid band, work on making my songs even more unique, and be able to reach people at a more broad range than I currently am.’ Such A Shame is an enticing blend of styles—alternative, emo, and indie—merged with a direct lyric and featuring Amy’s undeniable vocal prowess, a voice that’s reminiscent of Suze DeMarchi (Baby Animals) and Hayley Williams (Paramore).
As Amy says about the new track, ‘It’s about realising that can people grow, change, and become very different to who they used to be, and how that change should be organic, not as the product of fitting a mould to be accepted by others.’
The track features a structure that veers from straight-ahead rock to jangly indie to anthemic muscle, a dynamism that juxtaposes well with the broad-brush characteristics of Amy’s voice as it dives up and down the scale.
But perhaps what is more persuasive about Such A Shame is its palpable sense of pure rock swagger. Such A Shame is refreshing and raw, with restrained and not so restrained hooks pushed along by a governing force, namely, Amy’s commanding rock voice.