INTERVIEW: Amelia Moore on her career and new single 'fuck, marry, kill': "Love can be sweet and healthy and safe, and you can feel protected, but also...it can make you psycho and do crazy things!"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Ashley Osborn
Published: 8 April 2025
Amelia Moore had what most would consider an unorthodox childhood. Born and raised in the US state of Georgia, she was home schooled by her mother until she was 16. Despite having no exposure to contemporary music, this did not prevent her from excelling at the arts She started playing the violin at age four, and later sung in her church choir and performed in community theatre.
After school, she enrolled in a music degree at university, however after a writing trip to Los Angeles Moore dropped out as she quickly saw the path she needed to take: “I was learning more in the studio,” she later said.
After moving to Los Angeles, she began posting her original songs on TikTok, attracting a loyal following which allowed her to independently release her debut EP in 2022, teaching a robot to love. She followed this last year with the he’s just not that you! EP, which included the Timbaland produced ‘back to him’.
Moore’s music is heavily influenced by R&B, but is not tied to the genre. She also pulls in elements of indie and electronic pop to create music that is instantly familiar yet intrinsically unique and unclassifiable enough to make it truly magical.
She has since signed with major label Republic and last month released the new single ‘fuck, marry, kill’. A gentle, swaying song that has an almost dreamy, soul sound with an at times jaw droppingly impressive vocal performance from Moore. Like much of her music, it explores the torments and joys of relationships and love as her partner drives her to distraction but she can’t stop loving them: ‘You ruin my life / But still give me butterflies…I wanna fuck, marry, kill you / All at the same damn time.’
“I knew I had to make my own unique story,” Moore says. “Singing funny, specific, modern lyrics over a song that feels classic and beautiful is something I had never done before.”
The song is the first taste from her upcoming new mixtape, he’s still just not that into you! which will be released on 9 May and features a song written with one of Moore’s heroes, Julia Michaels. Moore will play a number of headline shows across the US and Europe to launch the mixtape, tickets on sale now
“It’s bouncy, fun, lighthearted, vulnerable, and funny,” she says of her new music. “Songwriting has always been a safe space for me to say anything and everything I need to get off of my chest. The more specific and vulnerable I am, the more my fans relate to my songs. I’m excited for this new era.”
With her songs attracting streams in the millions, Moore is quickly becoming one of music’s hottest rising stars. Her music is connective, warm, vulnerable, sometimes confronting but always an immersive experience. Now is the right time to introduce yourself to her discography, and we recently sat down with her to chat all about her career.
Hi, Amelia, thank you for your time. I want to jump straight in and talk about your beginnings in music. You were raised in theatre, tell me about that.
Yeah, I love theatre so much still, I thought I was going to be a Broadway girl when I was a lot younger. I fell in love with performing when I was around 11, I was Annie in my church's production of Annie, and in that moment, I was like, ‘This is it. I'm gonna grow up and move to New York and be a Broadway star’. I was in a couple of different theatre production companies, but I didn't really understand what it meant to be an artist, and over time f started asking myself questions: I could continue to do plays and be on stage and be somebody else and sing someone else's songs, or I could be on stage and be myself and write my own stuff. That's how I steered away from theatre and into figuring out what an artist was. But theatre will always be my first love for performing.
I think that's lovely. As a songwriter, how do you feel playing those roles and singing other people's songs and really completely embodying them has complimented or informed the way you write?
I think a lot of the songwriting that I do, and that I enjoy the most from my favourite artists, are the super conversational storytelling type of songs that you would see in a musical. One of the things I love, I think my favourite thing actually, about musicals still today is that when a character is singing a song, it's either pushing the story forward or you're learning something about the character and that's something that I like to keep in mind in my songwriting. I feel like that is one of the main things that has informed what I do now. But now with the music that I'm making for a future project I am playing a lot with the background vocals kind of being in the third person, talking about me in the third person, which I think is really fun. I'm trying to watch more musicals and go see more plays now to get more inspiration.
Do you think that perhaps all of us, in hindsight, wish we had a chorus of people singing instructions to us?!
All the time! If I had a chorus around me narrating my every day life…I need that!
Certain decisions would not have been made.
Yeah, yeah….you're right.
Speaking of - ‘fuck, marry, kill’, your latest single. We’ve all played the game so I was so stoked to see that this had become a song. Talk to me about this brilliant sleepover game into a song that is just one big emotional roller coaster.
That's exactly what it is. When you are really in love with somebody, it is a big emotional roller coaster, and it can be sweet and healthy and safe, and you can feel protected, but also because you love somebody so much, it can make you psycho and do crazy things for somebody that you love, and feel really big emotions. I love that we were able to capture the funny modern lyric about being so dangerously in love with somebody over such a timeless, classic sounding song. I really enjoy the stark difference between the lyrics and the track, but how they go together and compliment each other so well. I really love how it turned out.
You’ve got this very beautiful old R&B vibe, but with your signature, high drama vocals. There's something equally theatrical in the way that you're writing these lyrics and in your voice. Who were your vocal sheroes growing up?
It's crazy, because I grew up really home schooled and sheltered and wasn't really allowed to listen to that much secular music as a kid. I really don't know where it came from. At a young age, maybe it was the theatre. I was listening to a lot of big and dramatic vocals in the plays that I was a part of, but I really started to find my own taste and inspiration when I was a teenager. Ariana Grande has been a really big vocal inspiration for me for forever, and now I look up to artists like her and Raye, Victoria Monét, Jazmine Sullivan. My favourite singers are R&B singers. So it's always important to show off my vocal any chance that I can get! When we're writing a song, I'm always thinking about how I can show off and give a little wink to all of my favourite singers.
Your music sits in this beautiful sphere of something that's very familiar and then something that's very unfamiliar. Possibly the bit that's unfamiliar is the delivery and the edge and the sharpness when it's paired with this kind of cushion of sound. If you could sum up, what your writing style and the kind of music you want to create, is that what it is? The softness in the edge?
One of my favourite songwriters ever, my musical icon since I was 15, is Julia Michaels, and I've been lucky enough to work with her recently, and we have a song that we've written together that's coming out very soon. She really shaped me into a style of songwriter that is really conversational and honest. One of the questions I find myself asking when I'm stuck on a line is, how would I just say this in a conversation with somebody? How would I just say this in a sentence? And nine times out of ten, that is how the line needs to be delivered. So I think my songwriting is a combination of what I feel is most conversational and what you would say in a sentence, with a challenging melody or riff that I can show off a little bit like I was saying before. ‘fuck, marry, kill’ is a great example of that, and also a song like ‘see through’ that I had on my last project last year. A little conversational with a little drama. I like the drama word we've been saying today!
Is there one favourite lyric that is the most conversational thing you’ve written and just hammers every time you hear it?
There's a bunch of lyrics in this song ‘easy’ that came out last year on my last project. I can't even believe that I am saying this type of stuff on my songs, knowing that my parents listen to them. I think it's so iconic. It’s ‘First time was a doozy, bleeding on the duvet / I was freaking out, thought you'd be freaking out / But we just pulled the sheets off, put a towel down / You know how to woo me / You know how to woo, okay / You know how to, okay’
It's just a thought process, I'm thinking through what happened. Oh, my goodness, it actually happened. Wow. There’s a sense of humour in my lyrics, too, which is something that I really enjoy. My first project, teaching a robot to love, was so heavy and emotional, and I was going through a lot of big emotions and heartbreak at the time, but recently, I've been so excited about the music that has came out this past year, and what I'm about to get ready to roll out, because it's so much more light hearted and not taken as seriously. I think that is so much more of a reflection of what my personality is actually like. I'm excited for my fans to continue to get to know me through lyrics like that.
Do you think that is the trajectory of an artist in the public sphere when you're first given that opportunity. You feel you have a responsibility to take everything very seriously, but then you learn not to take yourself so seriously.
Yes, I perform the best when I put the least amount of pressure on myself and just allow myself to show up as how I'm feeling that day, instead of every day being nervous about a session and putting pressure on myself to write the best song that I've ever made. When I'm just with my friends and I go In to a session with an idea that normally ends up being how I write my favourite songs. I'm sure I can't be the only artist and songwriter that feels that way.
‘fuck, marry, kill’ is out now via Universal Music Australia. You can download and stream here.
Follow Amelia Moore on Instagram and TikTok
