Amy Macdonald dances to her own tune. The revered singer-songwriter, one of Scotland’s biggest ever exports, has long attracted praise for her irrepressible attitude, which translates both to her music and her renowned live performances. Commercial success, too: record sales of over 12 million globally, four Top 5 albums (two No 1s), over a billion streams with five million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, and global tours to millions of people. Now, she’s poised to remind the world of just why we fell in love with her in the first place, as she returns with a bold new collection of songs: Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For? 

Her sixth album heralds a new chapter in her extraordinary career, which began when she was just 18 years old, famously sending a demo to a new production company while her peers were being discovered on MySpace. Her debut, This is the Life, was one of the top 10 best-selling of 2008, propelling Macdonald to international fame with singles including the title track – which has since enjoyed a resurgence after younger generations discovered it through viral clips on TikTok – and the top 20 single “Mr Rock and Roll”. A string of top 10 albums followed, and with them sold-out world tours and a number of accolades, including two Echo awards (the German Grammies).

“I feel very lucky to be in the place I am now,” Macdonald says. “I’ve got this career, good friends, my family, and people still seem to want to hear my music, which is great.” She credits her experiences of fame at such a young age with keeping her grounded: “There’s a realness in me, something raw – honestly I’m winging it most of the time,” she admits with a laugh. “But I think we do exist in a place where no one expects you to be that polished anyway. 

Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For? shows Macdonald at the height of her songwriting powers, telling stories of heartbreak, triumph and hope. “Every single song has its own little story, which is usually the way I write,” she explains. She recalls one particularly memorable moment at Glasgow’s TRNSMT Festival, as she looked out at a sea of people to realise how many young fans were in her audience: “I was worried it would be terrible, that they’d have no idea who I was – and then I went out there and it turned out to be one of the most amazing gigs of my life,” she says. “This younger generation, who’d just been fucked over by Covid, the government, everything, and they were so happy, loving life. And I thought, ‘You know what? We’re in good hands.’”

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