Interview: Amy Macdonald, musician and WAG

Published on Sunday 7 February 2010 10:34

With three million album sales, she's not your average WAG, but Amy Macdonald is still wide-eyed with disbelief at her star status, finds Aidan Smith

• In a different league: Macdonald's lyrics have sometimes caused controversy.

HELL hath no fury like a WAG scorned. But in our story, the footballer was innocent, the WAG was, if anything, more famous than the player – and the wrath was directed at a fan who made the grievous mistake of lobbing some casual abuse at Amy Macdonald's squeeze Stevie Lovell.

"It happened in Airdrie," says the Scots songbird, as if to distance the tale still further from the recent headlines about the England captain and the lingerie model. "I was watching Stevie play for Partick Thistle with my mum and he was about to take a throw-in when this guy in front of me shouts out: 'Hey Lovell, yer a fanny!' I was raging. Stevie hadn't duffed a shot or anything. So when this joker turned round and spotted me, I threw him a really filthy look. He shut up after that. In fact, he spent the rest of the game praising Stevie. And the best of it was my boyfriend scored two goals and almost got a hat-trick."

At times, it's hard to reconcile this yarn about dinnae-mess Amy with the girl before me twisting one leg round another ever tighter. This is the Amy who still says "gosh" a lot, still can't quite believe everything that's happened in her pop life thus far and emits a self-conscious giggle when the chat comes round to vampires as lust objects.

But you'd be wrong to think of her as a wee lassie or yet another sacrificial victim of the blood-sucking record industry. She wasn't that when I interviewed her in the summer of 2007, when bossy stylists were being put in their place. And now she comes with the added clout of three million album sales.

That's pretty impressive in anyone's language and Macdonald's belting folk-tinged pop scored in most languages, with singles from This Is The Life performing even better across Europe, bringing her number ones in Spain, Germany and elsewhere, and she ended up chasing her own wave for more than a year.

"I think I must have played everywhere on the Continent, and from 'toilet tours' right up to gigs in front of 12,000 people in Switzerland. When I was away I remember someone writing on my website: 'Whatever happened to her?' But no-one was going to get any new songs out of me while I was on the road. Then finally, last September, it all stopped."

Was she daunted by album number two? "I thought I was. A period of time had been blocked off in my diary for songwriting and, as it approached, I started to panic. I didn't think I had anything written when Pete (Wilkinson] my manager called, but he suggested I do some demos for peace of mind. After we'd finished recording them in his box-bedroom, he said: 'Well, that's an album's worth.' I was like: 'Really?'"

Again, typical Macdonald. But for every "did-that-just-happen?" story, she'll tell you another about how she lambasted a German critic who wanted to know, since she'd become a top-selling international act, when she was going to start singing in English.

Last time I met her, she was wearing a plaid shirt and Converse shoes and looked like one of her fans (though Macdonald's music appeals to all ages). Today, in the Institute of the Contemporary Arts in London, she's sporting a rock-chic leather jacket, part of what the tartan tabloids called a new look of "black hairdo and slimline figure".

She laughs that this should be deemed news; as if other 21-year-old girls don't change their image. But then not all of them can shift three million albums.

"I'm trying to get used to this life," she says, "but I'll never stop thinking some things are just too bizarre." Well, she will keep such stellar company. The Echoes are Germany's equivalent of the Grammys and at last year's ceremony she was pretty chuffed to get herself photographed next to Lionel Richie, but that was before Wilkinson's wife Sarah, who shares managerial duties, handed her a note.

"It said 'Amy, come and say hello to your fan club' and it was signed Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry'" She still can't get over this. "U2! Requesting an audience with me! So I go backstage and Bono – Bono! I was such a fan as a kid that I could describe every line on his face with my eyes shut – asked me if I'd like a drink. I wanted wine but, steady girl, had to perform later. They were so cool, though, and Larry (Mullen] seemed to know everything about me. There I was having my videos analysed by a rock legend."

She's got a Roger Daltrey story, too. Hang on, did she even know who he was? "My mum told me. She and her pals all loved him – he was the golden boy. I was playing at a charity concert he'd organised and he told me his grand-daughters were fans so he asked for a photo with me to impress them. That was amazing. Guys like him are proper old school, real greats."

Since 2007, some things in Macdonald's life are new, such as Lovell, who is now her fianc and playing for Falkirk, and the house she's bought near her parents in Bishopbriggs, which they share with their two dogs. But the songs on new album A Curious Thing are in the same groove as before – simple but affecting songs written from the heart – and there's no need to tamper with a winning formula.

My Only One is about Michael Jackson and also the deaths of her grandparents, while Ordinary Life was written after watching Gerard Butler being mobbed at a film premiere and hoping her own fame doesn't get so crazy. But it's Spark which has attracted the most attention, being not exclusively about Jamie Bulger but inspired by a documentary Macdonald watched on the murdered boy.

"I was so moved by the programme and thought his mother was the bravest woman I'd ever encountered," she says. The lyrics – "I'm the spaceman flying high… Don't worry I'm OK now" – have provoked the odd sensationalist headline and this has alarmed Macdonald, who's anxious not to cause upset. Once again, though, it's what happens when you sell three million records.

Troubled Soul is about Lovell. "He was playing for Aberdeen at the time and his football stopped us being together at Christmas," she says. Now it's her music which is going to keep them apart, with heavy promotion across her territories before touring resumes in earnest.

"When I came off the road last time he'd done up the whole house," she explains. "He'd turned a room into a walk-in wardrobe for all my junk and painted from top to bottom. What a sweetheart. And I didn't have to change a thing. For a man he's got fabulous taste in dcor." I stop her saying any more, reminding her of those footballing boo-boys. "You're right. Ohmigod. What sort of abuse will he get now?"

A Curious Thing (Mercury) is released 8 March. Amy Macdonald plays Inverness Ironworks, 28 March, and Edinburgh Picture House, 29 March www.amymacdonald.co.uk

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 07 February 2010