Amy McDonald has the true courage and conviction of a self-made artist

Feb 8 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

IN A neat piece of symmetry to her turbo-charged career, Amy McDonald had a message from another Scottish songwriter.

“I am so chuffed right now,” she announced on her MySpace blog. “If somebody had told me a year ago today that I’d be sitting at number 1 in the charts, having outsold artists like Take That and Radiohead, I would have laughed so much. What’s even more strange is that I just received a message of congratulations from Fran Healy!”

Eight years ago, on a family outing to Rothesay, Amy made the fateful decision to spend the tenner her gran had given her to treat herself on buying her first album, The Man Who, by Travis.

She was inspired to pick up one of the guitars her dad had lying round the house. The rest is music industry legend.

Amy taught herself to play and took her guitar to Starbucks, in Borders Books, in Glasgow, to play on their Friday night open mic nights. After a good reception, she took her performances farther afield. She recorded a demo on an eight- track in her bedroom, sent it off to record companies and, before too long, landed a record deal.

Her style is folksy, voice bell clear and lilting with Celtic intonation. She sings of what she knows and feels – her crush on Jake Gyllenhaal is one – and if anything her self-taught start upped the momentum of her success.

“It’s been slow for me!” she protests. “I started writing at 15, so that’s a quarter of my life writing and I taught myself the guitar at 12, so I’ve had time to get used to things and go through things and learn to write songs and things.

“It seems a lot more natural from my point of view,” she says. “You can be a bit proud of it, beginning from scratch. There’s no set way of writing a song, you can do it any way you want. I never do it the same way twice, I have to have something to inspire me. Normal, every-day situations, things anybody can relate to. It’s cheeky, simple pop, not really out there. If I see something that makes me think ‘good God’ I start writing a tune.”

One of subjects to inspire Amy is WAG culture.

“The footballer’s wife thing is part of this horrible obsession in Britain we have with celebrity,” she says with a rush of feeling.

“Magazines, they all print pictures of footballers’ girl-friends. What talents do they have? They do nothing for anybody, yet make millions of pounds. I see so many unsigned bands who never have a break through and there’s those girls who are effectively gold- diggers.”

Nobody could accuse her of chasing celebrity because, for a start, home is her own flat in Glasgow.

“I still have the same friends and I’ll be in the local pub with them instead of a celebrity party,” she says. “It’s different with singer songwriters. If I was going out and singing pop songs someone else had written for me like a cog in the machine. I have my own opinions and songs.

“I’ve no longing to be photographed in a 3am photo, it doesn’t interest me.”

She’s grateful that contemporary Kate Nash sprang onto the music scene as “the next big thing” to soak up some of the “hype and attention” surrounding her arrival, but is understandably brusque about being lumped together with Lily, Kate and now Adele.

“I’m grateful to Kate, so I can be left to be interested in music and that’s that really,” she says.

“I don’t see myself in that bracket at all. We’re female and all young and the same age but musically we’re completely different. I don’t write anything like that whatsoever.”

Next she’s touring Britain and after that the United States. This Is The Life indeed.

* AMY McDONALD plays the Liverpool Carling Academy on Sunday, February 10. Call 0844 477 2000 (24hrs) or go to www.ticketweb.co.uk