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.’”

The song “Can You Hear Me?” was directly inspired by this moment. It opens with a tremendous salvo of drums and a disco-inspired guitar riff, bristling with energy like a gunslinger bursting through saloon doors. “Can you hear me?” Macdonald sings in her famous contralto, “Singing louder now/ We are fearless, we are leaders.” It was produced in Berlin with Nicolas Rebscher (Aurora, Charlotte OC): “The most civilised and lovely making of a record that I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she says. “Nico’s a bit like me – he works quickly, he’s very efficient. No hanging around, get it done!” Legendary British producer Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Placebo) also lends his expert touch to the record, helping it become an instant classic.

The thrilling title track opens the record with a pulsating beat and dramatic crashes of the cymbals, as Macdonald unleashes a euphoric rallying cry. It’s a song that truly captures the electrifying power of a live show, and the connection she feels as she plays her music to an enraptured crowd. It also provides a release from the constant demands of the industry: “Sometimes it can feel like being on a treadmill, having people get annoyed at you because you’re not releasing new music all the time,” she says.

She throws off the shackles of the past on the uplifting “I’m Done”, a gleeful farewell to so-called “friends” who no longer serve her. “I’ve found that as I’ve grown older, I’ve become a lot better at just saying ‘no’,” she says. “When I first started in the music industry, I was only 17 and I did find myself in situations where I wasn’t really comfortable, but I felt like I had to go along with it. It’s very easy to feel guilt-tripped or manipulated. But I came to realise that you don’t need to have an excuse every time, ‘no’ works just fine.”

Many listeners will relate to the catharsis in finally cutting ties with the people who “no longer serve you, who can be quite toxic and draining… All I felt afterwards was relief and a huge weight off my shoulders,” Macdonald says. “It’s not until you’re away from it that you ask, ‘Why the hell did I put up with that?’ At the same time, you realise who your real friends are.”

Macdonald first picked up her father’s guitar when she was 12 years old, and it is her unique, freewheeling style that makes her so instantly recognisable. Combined with her gusty, amber-hued voice, she attracted early praise not just in the UK – from The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph – but also coverage in The New York Times plus star appearances on TV shows such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Late Late Show.

On songs such as “Trapped”, we understand what drew early critical praise, as Macdonald lends her empathetic voice to the story of a friend going through a divorce. “She’d been confiding in me that she was bloody miserable, and feeling trapped in her marriage – I realised I was surrounded by people who had gone down certain paths because they thought that’s what you were supposed to do,” she says. “These social expectations put so much pressure on people, especially women, as you feel as though you’ve got a clock ticking above your head.”

We hear this cacophony of chimes before a growling guitar hook kicks in; the propulsive rhythm builds into a racing gallop. “Can you break me out?/ Help me break these chains around my feet?” Macdonald calls. She touches deftly on the fear of judgement from others, acknowledging the huge leap it takes to walk away from what we’ve known for so long.

Survival, and the idea of moving forward, prove powerful throughlines on the album. In typical fashion, though, Macdonald finds inspiration in the most unsuspecting of places: “The Hope” transpired when she travelled to Germany for the 2024 Euros, where her beloved Scotland were competing. “It’s basically about being Scottish,” she reveals. “Ultimately, we lose in everything we do, but we have a bloody good time.” It harks back to her 2017 track, “Leap of Faith”, written around the time of the Scottish Referendum: “Everyone at the Euros was in such good spirits, and it was that camaraderie and sense of pride that made me want to capture the moment with a song.”

She questions the darker side of her countrymen and women’s party-loving culture on “We Survive”, amid a storm of percussion, piano and acoustic guitars. “I think there’s a UK-wide issue of people turning to alcohol to help them cut loose, without necessarily asking themselves why they do it,” she says. “They’re working 40 hours a week for no money, they can’t pay their bills, and so of course they want to go mad at the weekends.” A member of her team pointed out that the track is, in a way, part two of her hit song “This is the Life”, perhaps from the narrator’s perspective a decade later, jaded and washed out.

“Physical” and “One More Shot”, meanwhile, offer duelling perspectives of live music. On the former, Macdonald faces up to her changing relationship with live performances. “When I was younger, I felt invincible onstage, whereas now I think I’m always worrying about making a mistake,” she says. “I’ve had to re-learn that the audience doesn’t actually care about that, and if anything it makes the night all the more special.”

On “One More Shot”, she pays tribute to the thousands of loyal fans who have spent hours queuing outside her shows over the years, faces she now recognises and considers part of the family. “It’s overwhelming to me, the dedication of these fans and how they want to stick around and say hi afterwards – that’s something I’ve never really been able to get my head around,” she says. “These people travel thousands of miles, spend their money to see me play, and I thought, ‘You know what? They deserve a song.’” Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For? is Macdonald at her most captivating, revealing an artist wise from experience but still with that same undefeatable spirit.