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Amelie Blake - Highway Moment! |
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Amelie Blake may not be a household name or at least yet, but some of
the films and television shows that you watch and many of the movie
trailers enticing you to watch a particular film have music created by
Amelie Blake. The new mother and affable British woman, who grew up in
Warrington, England is now also turning her attention to writing songs
for other artists. She is very focused on her music, but also quite low
key about her success, a far cry from that moment when she first learned
one of her songs had been picked up.
She recalls that moment, “My husband, Mike and I created some demos and
we sent them to a lot of production companies, trailer houses and
publishers and eventually after hundreds of emails one got back to us.
They asked if we could do music for this brief and so we did. (Next) we
were introduced to several publishers. We then wrote the album Songs for
the Soul, which was a collection of a few songs we had written over the
years and we also wrote some new ones for the album. It was put out
there for the music supervisors to pick from. It is not written for a
(specific) trailer. We write them and then we do not know what is going
to get chosen.
Since this writer is a neophyte to the world of movie trailers, Amelie
Blake enlightened me, “Usually, trailer music is just for trailers and
it is not usually featured in the movie, because they have a different
composer. There have been features and series where my songs have been
featured in the series and film, but usually if it is in the trailer, it
will not be in the movie.”
From what we understand, it almost sounds like Amelie Blake came out of
the womb creating music.
(She laughs lightly), “Yes pretty much. Even generations of my family
that I haven’t known were musical. When I was very young, I learned how
to harmonize. My sister and I were in a talent competition. We sang
ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” and I remember every time that we got it wrong
my mom would go no wrong and then she rewound the recording again and
again until we got it right. That helped me to develop my musical ear.
Then I was in the school choir and the teacher noticed that I have a
musical ear as well.
From then I saved up to buy an electric guitar and I tuned it by ear. I
learned some chords and then I started to write.
Music became a way to escape and express my inner world and be who I
wanted to be.
I grew up in Warrington. It is a town in between Manchester and
Liverpool and growing up, there wasn’t that much of a music scene (where
I lived). (However) with being halfway between Manchester and Liverpool
you didn’t have to go far to get to the music scene.
I started out doing acoustic nights. There were a couple of little music
venues that aren’t open now, so possibly it has gotten a little bit
worse. I did gigs first, but have you heard of a shadow career? The
concept came from a book I read. It is when you dream of being an
artist, but instead you do covers or somebody wants to be a writer, but
instead they are an editor.
For about ten years I was gigging covers and I was also teaching vocals
for about seven or eight years,” says Amelie Blake.
In those early years, her grandmother was a great source for
inspiration, “She would come to gigs with me. I did social clubs
sometimes and she would get the audience up and dancing. She missed
gigging when I stopped gigging. I don’t gig as much anymore, because I
prefer to focus on writing. That is when she (grandmother) decided to
get into the ukulele, and she does gigs at old folks homes.
I enjoyed gigging, but it got really tiring and I knew I had a passion
for songwriting. It was really what I wanted to do. I also wanted to be
an artist. I wanted to get into production music. I did demos and sent
them to some companies, trailers houses and publishers. That was with my
husband, because we co-wrote them together and then we were introduced
to some publishers,” she says.
One of the things that becomes apparent, pretty quickly is the vast
musical palette that Amelie Blake has and the quality that she maintains
no matter which genre of music she is creating in or if in fact she
chooses to blur the genre boundaries.
“My style has really changed over the years and I have gone through a
lot of phases. I went through a Rock Metal phase when I was a teenager
and then a Rap phase, Folk phase, Pop phase and what I am doing now is
completely different. I wanted to do something that felt like me and
something that I would choose to listen to as well. With a lot of the
stuff, I wrote in the past I don’t think I would sit and listen to my
own music. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but I would listen to
something completely different,” she says.
Amelie Blake’s song “Just the Way I’m Built,” appears in the movie
The Healing Powers of Dude, which can be viewed on Netflix. The
limited series is about an eleven-year-old boy who has social anxiety
disorder and the companion dog that helps him to navigate those
challenges.
“It meant a lot to me. The song “Just the Way I’m Built,” is about
anyone who feels that they don’t fit in, because I originally wrote it
from my sister’s point of view.
I wrote this song
for my sister who at the time was coming out as gay and was experiencing
difficulties being accepted. I think also I was feeling misunderstood at
the time of writing. I've also had difficulties with anxiety over the
years and I have another sister who has social anxiety. So, the fact
that this song was chosen for this series means a great deal to me,
especially if it can help others too,” says Amelie Blake.
The process of
creating the song or any other song for that matter, is also helpful for
Amelie Blake, “I
think creative people might be prone to anxiety and things like that. If
I have too much time to think I get anxious, but then if I put it into
something creative my ideas just flow. I think I have too much of a
creative mind to let it sit still.”
At the time of our conversation Amelie Blake was preparing to release
another song “Time Zones,” and we asked her to tell us about it.
“The lyrics are really suited to lockdown, because it is about missing
somebody. It was at the time when I was working away from my husband. I
wrote about missing him. It is almost like a metaphor and even though we
weren’t in different time zones, it was like we were ships passing in
the night. It inspired the lyrics for the song, because it felt like I
was in a different time zone. I was working different hours and I was
working at night. That one line inspired the rest of the song. There are
multi-layered harmonies, and it is often how I start my writing process.
I come up with the hooks first and then I come up with layers of
harmonies. I go from there. Sometimes I hear a bassline underneath it.
Sometimes I hear chords and then I put it altogether,” she explains.
With Pop / R & B influences, lush vocals and strong musicianship the
current single
“Let the Words Unfold,”
is an incredible song that belongs on radio as a top charted song. It is
also a song that gets your feet moving, your head nodding and invites
you to dance. Chris Twigg’s guitar playing is superb and he also played
on Amelie Blake’s Songs for the Soul album. Amelie Blake also
produced “Let the Words Unfold.”
“People told me they really like “Let the Words Unfold.” My husband is a
big fan of it and he said the stuff I write is not like anything he has
ever heard.
These are my vocals, but I also pitched some vocals down, like an octave
underneath. In the beginning when it sounds a bit spooky, I noticed in
some of
Lianne La Havas’
songs when she is very quiet and it sounds almost eerie, she has a lower
octave underneath. I have heard quite a few people do that to give it
that eeriness,” says Amelie Blake.
The song is one of a collection of songs from her solo album of the same
name.
“I was recording all of the songs as quickly as I could, before our baby
was born, because I thought once she was born, I wouldn’t be able to
work on my music as much and I was right. I did a lot of my recording
when I was pregnant.
I did some of the
recordings at Futureworks in Manchester, and during lockdown I recorded
at our home studio using the Isovox vocal booth,” she says.
Let’s stop there for a moment, how has having a baby changed the way you
approach your career?
“It has changed my timing of being able to (create), because there is
not much time during the day, so my husband and I have to arrange our
time around each other for when we can be creative. I realized that the
best time for me is in the morning, so I have to try and get some ideas
down in the morning,” says Amelie Blake.
We think the very romantic song “Since I Met You,” will be often
requested for weddings and first dances at wedding receptions.
Amelie Blake says, “It is a very romantic song about finding your
soulmate and about being really connected to that person. I wrote it
before I met my husband, and it was kind of like a wish. I rewrote the
song so many times, it was piano, and then Chris Twigg heard it. I was
inspired by a Lianne La Havas song called “Age,” and I said to Chris I
want guitar like that, and he played, and he brought the song to life.
As the conversation wound down, we asked Amelie Blake what she enjoys
most about her music career and she said, “I like songwriting, because I
like having a way to express my emotions into music. When I get music
synced on things (editor’s note: this means licensed for film,
television or commercials), I think that is what draws people in. I
write lyrics that I hope people can relate to on an emotional level. I
try to put my emotion into my voice and into my music. I hope that my
music will connect with people. There is a song that I wrote called “The
World is Here,” which I hope can lift someone from a (difficult)
situation.”
Check out Amelie Blake's
music here.
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I
was driving to a job interview for a teaching job, but I had wanted to
get out of teaching for a few years, because I really wanted to pursue
my music. The phone call came (when I was driving) and I could not
answer it, so my husband answered the phone and put it on the
loudspeaker. My dad said, do you know that you are on this trailer? He
started playing it over the phone and that is when I started to scream
(as I was driving) down the motorway, because I was so excited. I didn’t
care about my job interview after that.”