Amy Wadge

Amy Wadge
Wadge at The Celtic Festival of Wales 2010
Background information
Born	December 1975
Origin	Backwell, Somerset, England, United Kingdom
Genres	Rock folk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Years active	1992–present
Associated acts	Ed Sheeran
Website	www.amywadge.com

Amy Wadge (born December 1975) is a British singer-songwriter based in Wales but originally from Bristol. She has co-written tracks with Ed Sheeran, including his hit song "Thinking Out Loud" for which she won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Wadge was born and brought up in Backwell, a small village just outside Bristol, England. Her father's passion for music influenced her enormously, and on the subject of her paternal influences she has said that she "grew up listening to early Elton John, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. That was the stuff I cut my teeth on and now I listen to everything you can possibly imagine from hip hop to country". This wide range of influences, nurtured in her from an early age, can be heard throughout her body of work. She began to write her own songs at the age of 9 on the family piano. When she was 11, her parents bought her her first guitar from a junk shop. It was when Wadge taught herself to play along to Tracy Chapman's debut album that she discovered her affinity for the guitar, which became the driving force of her career.

While still at school, Wadge regularly gigged around Bristol's numerous celebrated music venues, and determined that performing was what she wanted to spend her life doing. At the age of 14, she signed her first record deal with her band Two of a Mind. She released her first single at the age of 16.

Apart from writing songs for herself, Wadge has been active in collaborating with new performers in Britain, most notably Ed Sheeran. Wadge and Sheeran collaborated on a number of songs together, and Sheeran titled his self-released 2010 EP Songs I Wrote with Amy. One track was included with the deluxe edition of Sheeran's album +. Wadge continues her collaborative relationship with Sheeran in 2014. The single "Thinking Out Loud", written on a guitar given to Sheeran, features on the album x. She has also written with Lewis Watson, with tracks "Halo" and "Sink or Swim" appearing on the album The Morning (All of the Songs), and she has collaborated with Shannon Saunders, Anna Pancaldi and numerous other notable artists.