Sunday Sadness

Amy Shark has long struggled with the quiet of Sundays. “I like to keep busy, and whenever I’m not, memories creep in, and I don’t often like that,” the Australian singer-songwriter tells Apple Music. “I started dreading Sundays because it’s like, nothing’s happening. And that’s when you remember and sit with a lot of things. So I just made it a night where I would work on this album and learn to sit with some uncomfortable memories and articulate them right and not be overwhelmed, but just be able to channel them through these songs.” Given this creative process, it’s perhaps not surprising that *Sunday Sadness* is a deeply personal outing, one rich with references to her upbringing (“Beautiful Eyes,” “Our Time Together”), the downsides of fame (“I’m Sorry”), and lost and unrequited love (“Two Friends,” “Babe”), delivered in a clutch of songs that alternate between indie pop (“It’s Nice to Feel This Way Again”) and venom-laced pop punk (“Gone”). “I’m always cherry-picking moments from my life and putting a big magnifying glass on them,” she says. “But with this album I started seeing them as little movies that you watch. It’s like watching a drama, then a romantic comedy, then something that’s really high-energy. I feel like it’s an exciting album to listen to.” Though the LP was produced predominantly by Dann Hume, Shark also worked with Matt Corby on “Slide Down the Wall” and Grammy-winning producer Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus) on “Loving Me Lover.” Guesting on “My Only Friend” is blink-182 guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge, the final member of the pop-punk trio to work with Shark following bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus’ collaboration on “Psycho” from her 2018 debut *Love Monster* and drummer Travis Barker’s work on “C’MON” from 2021’s *Cry Forever*. Here, Shark breaks down each of the “little movies” that make up *Sunday Sadness*, track by track. **“Slide Down the Wall”** “I watched the Lizzo documentary \[2022’s *Love, Lizzo*\] on the way to LA, and she was going through a breakup and said, ‘Oh my god, I was so upset, I slid down the wall.’ And I was so taken by that. I rewound it and I wrote it in my notes, and I was like, imagine having that \[in a positive\] way. Because I’ve been that happy that I’ve got home and been like, ‘Oh, fuck, that was a good night.’” **“It’s Nice to Feel This Way Again”** “\[Producer\] Joel Little has this magical black book of incredible music that I’m so lucky he opens up to me. He obviously liked this one, because he showed it to me first. It made me feel like getting up and starting the day, it was just so bright and fresh. I love surprising people, and I thought this song would do that. The first lyric, ‘It’s nice to feel this way again, nice to be inside,’ just feels warm and comforting. And I really wanted the album to open up with a couple of songs \[that feel\] like you’re being held by someone.” **“Beautiful Eyes”** “The line ‘open your beautiful eyes’ just flew out of me, and I could have cried. I talk about ex-boyfriends and my mum being really young when she had me, and so many things that are very personal. I think what I was trying to say in that song was, you can have so much shit that happens, but it’s a really beautiful world if you can get past that and surround yourself with people and not be scared to do that, and not be scared to know that you deserve that. It’s OK to want more. It’s OK to search for more and switch it up if you’re not happy. We have one life.” **“Gone”** “I almost wanted to put it on *Cry Forever*, but it wasn’t there yet. You’re feeling all this hate for this person, and ‘why did you do this? Why did you let me down? You’re so gone, tell everyone you’re dead to me.’ Even that phrase I think is really cool and it’s gonna be really fun to spit at people live. But then in the bridge it is a bit vulnerable.” **“Can I Shower at Yours”** “It’s sexy—meeting someone you want to be around and falling for them really fast.” **“Loving Me Lover”** “\[Co-writer and producer\] Kid Harpoon knows I play guitar, so we grabbed the acoustic and just started strumming, fiddling around, and found a chord progression. The song came together really quickly. My head was a mess at the time. I was on this crazy trip to LA working with the biggest producers, going to all these wanky parties, but still having my eye on what was happening back home and missing it. That all came out in that song in a really cool, chill way.” **“Two Friends”** “It’s my favorite topic of all time, turning a friend into someone more than a friend. I might have had some experience a few times over! It’s just such a fun topic to sit back and write about when you’ve got through it—everything’s OK now and you can look back and be like, far out, that was an intense time. But now we’ve got this really cool pop-punk song out of it. That middle eight took me a while to do, just because the song sounded so fire and different for me. I was like, it needs this bridge that can’t be boring. It needs to be different. And it needs to pack a punch.” **“Babe”** “It’s basically hand in hand with ‘Two Friends,’ but a softer approach to it. I love the riff that I wrote. I’m proud of myself, because I’m not a shredder, but I learned from Tom DeLonge, who will say all the time that he’s not the best guitarist, but he makes up for it by being creative. I worked with \[producer and co-writer\] Jon Hume, and we wrestled about whether it should be a ballad, because he had some really nice keys on it. I was like, I really miss the guitar. So we made a little mashup and it’s a really nice balance.” **“I’m Sorry”** “I think it’s a combination of really unloading: unloading on me from younger years, like being a teenager and wanting to be a musician so bad, and spending all my money, spending all my boyfriend’s money. Being so relentless with it and going through some pretty tough times as well, in and out of jobs. Then you finally get signed and it all looks like it’s gonna be a fairy tale. Then there’s so much dark stuff that happens when you make it—it just gets harder. It’s more pressure. When I wrote that song, I was just sitting in my own misery and being like, if I just didn’t write all the songs, if I just didn’t fucking want to do this... What if another life would have suited me? It’s just a song about apologizing to \[partner\] Shane. I’ve put this guy through hell, and now he manages me and his life’s even more hell!” **“My Only Friend” (feat. Tom DeLonge)** “I just sent Tom the song, it was really easy. And he really liked the verse I had. I gave him the option—I said, ‘Hey, feel free if you want to add anything.’ Some artists are funny about it, they really want to have their ideas in there. But I was kind of proud of myself, and it kind of made him look like a real pro as well, that he didn’t really feel like he needed to do that. He listened to it and was like, ‘I really like what you’ve written, so I’d like to just sing that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah! That will really suit your voice too.’ So he made it really easy.” **“Our Time Together”** “I like leaving an album very emotionally charged. It’s just a real walk through my life and things that meant a lot to me. I love that I got to name-check my other favorite band \[New Found Glory\] on an album where I got to finish working with my other favorite band \[blink-182\]. This album just all came together so nicely and it all makes sense to me and I really, really love it.”