Amy Speace has it all. She is an outstanding vocalist, balancing raw emotion, storytelling tones and great control. She is an accomplished songwriter who displays fine musicianship and finds glorious melodies, arranged with care and sensitivity. And, importantly, she is a superb narrator of life’s tales, bringing her stories to life with poetic lyricism and the detail of her characters’ development. ‘Weight of the World’ is a perfect example of all these aspects of Speace’s work, unfolding slowly as the impact of war on a family and a neighbourhood are revealed. It is powerful, emotive songwriting, tackling a weighty issue with authenticity.
Created by Jamey Wood, the video is equally powerful. It’s simple and direct, Speace walking amongst the memorials beneath the flag, and fits well with the sombre narrative.
‘Weight of the World’ features on Speace’s latest album, “The Blue Rock Sessions“, the result of a weeklong songwriting residency at The Blue Rock Retreat and Studio in the summer of 2025. A mixture of reimagined older songs and new songs, the album is a sparse, stripped-back collection that even surprised Speace herself. She says, “I didn’t plan this to be a record. I may have chosen other songs. I may not have had so many ballads. I may have thought about a ‘Radio’ single. I wasn’t feeling that way. I was playing new songs, songs I was still falling in love with. There were songs where I would read the lyrics, cross out the “nds,” and rewrite them until the record button was hit. I wasn’t thinking about selling this. I was high off a week of freedom and fluid creativity, and I wanted to capture my joy. Maybe just for myself. These recordings are like unretouched raw photos, not photoshopped. I wanted to capture something like what I do onstage at my shows. I play solo. I sing my songs with my guitar or a piano, and here, like in live performances, not everything is perfect. But that’s what I love about art.
The vulnerable imperfections where the human inside cannot hide. As a songwriter and a poet, I tend to write fast at least, in the first rush of the muse. I get it down, transcribe the wind, or chase a rhyme. I write fast and edit very slowly. I take my time with my songs and poems, and can spend months refining each word, each line. I didn’t have that time with this record. Many of these songs are fresh. It’s a scary thing to put this out, but I didn’t want to make the same record again, and I didn’t quite know where stylistically to go, what to add, so, instead, I subtracted. Everything. But me.” As ever, the quality of Amy Speace’s songwriting and intimate, beautifully controlled voice ensure that this is another excellent addition to her catalogue.
