Amy Studt

Amy Studt marries an astonishing voice to lyrical complexity belying her tender 21 years. Strong and vulnerable Amy's music demonstrates a fresh appreciation of alternative pop music, a sonic terrain charting a brand new landscape amidst the classic peaks of Bjork, Jefferson Airplane, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Alanis Morisette and the sweeping cadences of Carl Orff and Gregorian chant."It's like stepping into my world" states Amy "being privy to my most private thoughts and peering into my brain". It's a brain which pinballs deftly through the human spectrum of sex, pain, loss, love, death, lies, hope, fear, art, wine, voodoo and venom through dreamscape lyrical poetry.By the time she was six years old Amy was writing songs at home in Bournemouth. Inspired by the classical violin played by her musician father, the piano played by her head music teacher mother and, via her brother, dance music, Radiohead and Jimi Hendrix. "I was writing songs before I knew I was writing songs" muses Amy "I've got tapes of me aged six singing and making up songs. Some sort of 'bup bup bee da, yer baby lets rock n roll..' style vocal ramblings. Thankfully I've moved on a little from then.At age 12 Amy was bed-ridden, unable to walk, having contracted the rare bone disease osteomyelitis in her hip. Still, though, she had her music. "I used to practise my songs on the grand piano in the hospital cafeteria," she remembers, "playing my songs on the piano to other sick people. Shameful!" By age 13 she had turned a selection of piano-led songs into a demo CD via her dads friends small studio, giving the CD away to friends and their parents. One CD found its way to 19 Entertainment seeing Amy signed, aged 14, to the pop stable of Simon Fuller.For three years Amy was a reluctant and considerably successful teenage pop star. Despite the fact she had three top 20 singles and her 2003 debut album 'False Smiles' full of teen-angst promise sold around 200,000 copies; in 2004 Amy shyed away to contemplate a new, non-musical life working in a coffee shop in Cornwall. "I very nearly walked away from it all" she says "then of course you wake up and go 'actually I've got this fantastic opportunity to actually do something'". She stayed with 19, signed to their own burgeoning record label, toured with Razorlight in 2006 under the fabulous alias 'Jane Wails' as a way of overcoming "terrible stage-fright" while writing songs exactly as she pleased.Amy Studt is a creative maverick. A complex personality who is driven and dreamy, cynical and romantic, confident and fearful and whose extraordinary second album is, at last, "a true depiction of who I am". The sort of acutely musical person, in fact, who hears sounds which do not exist."When I hear music if I'm somewhere where the music's loud" she explains "it's like my ears break the sound off into too many parts and there's too much frequency. I start hearing people singing lyrics that aren't there and all these counter melodies flying around. I have to check peoples mouths around me to see if anyone is singing. I'll be sitting in a rehearsal room and suddenly hear these awesome harmonies so I just put them straight into my music. I was comforted to find out that my brother also experiences the same thing but with violins".Amy muses on what she'd like to happen this time around. "We only get one shot at this life and I am making the most of what I've got. I think this is what I was born to do. But more than anything, I just want people to hear my music".July 2007

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Misfit (24/08/2003) by Amy Studt