Ears Wide Open: AMES

Kevin Bronson on January 2nd, 2019

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If your ear’s been to the ground the past 10 or so years, you know AMES as Amy Kuney, the singer-songwriter whose album “Bird’s Eye View” was one of the standouts of 2008 and who has since penned a host of songs for television, film and various pop luminaries. She has written for the likes of AKON, Tori Kelly, Lights, Adam Lambert and Icona Pop, not to mention having songs on Kelly Clarkson’s album “Meaning of Life,” currently nominated for a Grammy.

Now under her new moniker, she returns to releasing solo material, with an EP planned for early this year. On AMES’ new singles “Hold On” and “Picture in My Mind,” her warm confessionals take on a bolder, more electronic tint. “Hold On” speaks to the songwriter’s upbringing in a staunchly Christian family in Oklahoma (and Honduras, where the family moved for missionary work) while grappling with her sexual identity. “I wrote ‘Hold On’ as a letter to my younger self, an encouragement to hold on through the difficult times I had growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian home,” she says, using as a metaphor descriptions of bull riders who are “‘warming the resin and pulling it right’ before they’re about to experience a rough ride. In the choruses, I describe the love I’ve now found (my fiancé) and the realization that it was all worth it in the end. If only I knew then, what I know now.”

Kuney’s experience is also laid bare in “Amy’s Song,” the new single she co-wrote with Matt Simons and Agran Rahmani and performed by Simons. “Does your God really give a damn? / Does it make me less of man / being who I am?” the song asks. Watch the poignant video for the song here.

||| Stream: “Hold On” and “Picture in My Mind”