The Nashville based pop artist Madison Slicker or otherwise known as Amava has a sound that’s easily best described as being music you can easily dance to in the dark. Drawing influences from icons that include Charli XCX, Lua Lipa, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lorde, Amava can create a compelling experience in her music. This is evidently true in her latest banging release “Fever Dream”, we felt tucked away deep into Amava’s thoughts instantly while listening. The catchy songwriting in “Fever Dream” has us completely mesmerized, by the time the second chorus hits we couldn’t help but sing along.
The contrast that Amava has between each section has a delicate balance that allows for each to hit you differently, the first verse is really calm, kinda moody, but then explodes into a vibing chorus that can send any dance floor into a craze. Amava’s storytelling of a person sending her into a vivid dream is something that we’re sure that everyone can relate to, this is complemented by the modern hi-fi production, snazzy vocal chops, and moving grooves. Since hearing “Fever Dream", we can’t wait to hear what else Amava is writing up.
Listen to "Fever Dream" here.
Welcome to BuzzMusic Amava! We can’t get enough of your latest release “Fever Dream”! What was your initial inspiration behind this song? Is there a deep message in there that you wanted people to resonate with? Hi, thank you so much! The inspiration for “Fever Dream” came from an actual fever dream I had when I was sick with the flu over the summer of 2019. Kind of tongue in cheek, but I started to think about the juxtaposition of feeling terrible during this period of time where everything is supposed to be great. I was going through these bouts of misery (both physical and mental) in a time where it was beautiful outside and everyone around me was so, so happy and I just wasn’t. When I first started to write it, I was writing these sad lyrics and pulling from that feeling of longing to go back to better times in a relationship but through the scope of the pressure, we can feel when everything around us is going great. It’s like the breakup song that I wrote to July and how you can be miserable even in the best of times. We’re loving the modern aesthetic you took with this one, how did you come up with the production in the song? Did you face any challenges during the creation? This song was an interesting one because I wrote it initially over an acoustic guitar and piano. I was kind of starting it as a ballad actually, but I pretty much ditched that idea immediately. I knew I wanted to create that “miserable yet happy” feeling throughout the entire song and a ballad was just leaning into the misery way too much. I finished it over a pop demo that someone made for me and it was 100% better as an upbeat song. When starting to produce the track, it actually went through about 4 different versions of the song before I felt like we settled on the right one. I’m not a producer but I (usually) have a pretty good grasp of what I like when listening to something and each version that we did wasn’t matching the feeling I had created in my head. It was finally combining a bunch of ideas from all of them and then pretty much built around the super lush vocal when it was 100% perfect. Every producer on it really did an amazing job, they really boosted it into what it is now and took the idea that I had in my head and brought it to fruition. We are in love with your vocal performance in “Fever Dream”, how did you come to that final performance? Did some parts of it come alive during the recording? As I said before, I had started it as a ballad so it was this super sad sounding vocal when I would just play it on piano but as I started to write over more upbeat versions I knew it worked way better. I wanted the vocal production to sound very dreamy and even hypnotic in some areas to kind of recreate that feeling of a fever dream. There’s that super rhythmic hook at the end of the chorus (“I miss our, I miss our fever dream”) and I knew I wanted that to sound as hypnotic and syncopated as possible. I think I also kept saying in the mixing sessions that “the vocal has to sound like a fever dream,” which I’m sure made absolutely no sense to anyone but it came out exactly how I imagined. I also usually control the lighting in the vocal booth to match the song and this was for sure a red sounding song. Your music can easily send anyone into a dance craze, is this something that you think about while your writing or does it come down the line? Did that perspective come from your idols? What makes them an idol for you?
My favorite music to listen to is upbeat pop music, so I definitely write that most of the time without thinking about it. Most of my songs are started by myself on my piano and then I’ll either take it into writing sessions or finish it myself. Pretty much 100% of the songs I write are started with words or a small idea first. I pretty much always play the piano in a sad, sappy way so most songs sound like a ballad initially and I slow down all these melodies to really try and work through them. Once I get things down, I then start to speed it up and if it works then I’ll keep writing from there. Melodies are always something I’m striving to get better at so I really like to put them together in a process. I usually have an overflow of words going at all times and I usually just mumble things over some piano until something comes out that I like. I usually gravitate towards the more upbeat songs on the albums I listen to so I usually fall in line with trying to write what I would listen to. I am a HUGE lover of lyrics so I really love artists and writers where I can tell they really put their heart into the words.
What can we expect to see next from you?
My goals for 2020 have definitely changed because of quarantine and the limitations of that. I’m really pushing myself to write better and better songs. I have a summer release coming up and I really love the song I currently have planned for that. The song is very special to me and I really want to create some cool content around it and really push some new ideas with that release. I would love to get back out to live shows in the fall or winter if that is a possibility. I’m really focusing on becoming a better artist in all ways with the current free time that I have and I want to push myself as hard as possible.
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