Bold and defiant, Melbourne-based songwriter Amanduh made her fully-formed debut with Old Flame, an edgy, sizzling track that takes the power back after a toxic relationship, out today.  Amanduh also announced a stunning video clip to accompany the track, directed by Martin Wood back in May!

We got to speak with her about her favourite musical influences >>

Let’s start off with music theatre, but in particular Spring Awakening. Lyrically it’s magnificent, however deep within those lyrics aren’t a story. It’s one of the few musicals that instead of singing their way through the story line, they sing songs to explain how they’re feeling. It’s true raw emotions conveyed into lyrics and it’s beautiful. I aim to write bold and honest, yet graceful and classy lyrics and Spring Awakening is so inspiring in that regard. 

Passenger. I love his carefree vibes, early in my songwriting, his structure, but also the way he sings; I have taken a lot of notes from his technique. I love how he can write about the depth of things and at the same time, absolutely nothing, which I can heavily relate to. I feel like with some songs of mine, they are heavily doused in Passenger vibes. Listening to his music definitely helped me figure out how to make my songs feel warm.

A super heavy influence in my sound lately has been HAIM, I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in love with retro vibes, or if it’s just them. But the punchy harmonies and beats, I try to really marinate my songs in those things and I definitely think I have HAIM to blame. 

Maggie Rogers has taught me that being indie pop is ok. I feel like there’s this weird in-between of pop music and indie music and the crossover is hard, but the subtle things in Maggie’s songs, if you pay attention close enough, you can hear similarities throughout mine. 

Florence and the Machine are such a mish mash of genres and it really inspires me and drives me to be true to my sound. A little bit of this, a little a bit of that, it’s okay. We don’t have to fit into a box. Some of my songs have quite an ethereal element to them, while others have an electronic undertone and those specific things in particular are thanks to FATM. I love Florence’s glorious vocals soaring high over any of her tracks and that was something I always aimed to have, regardless of the genre or style of my track.