Album Review: Amy MacDonald - ‘Is This What You've Been Waiting For?’
Amy Macdonald returns with a soaring, soul-baring record that proves resilience can still roar.
Some artists grow older. Amy Macdonald grows wiser. With Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?, her sixth studio album, the Scottish singer-songwriter returns with a defiant, full-hearted collection that fuses raw emotional candour with stadium-ready ambition.
Ever since This Is The Life turned her into a reluctant poster child for acoustic pop storytelling in the late 2000s, Macdonald’s career has thrived on authenticity, and this record is no exception. What’s different this time, though, is the sense of perspective. Here is an artist with nothing to prove, but plenty to say.
Opening with the pulse-racing title track, “Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?” wastes no time in setting the tone: a propulsive, cymbal-strewn anthem bursting with euphoria and release. It’s a song that exists somewhere between communal catharsis and personal defiance, as Macdonald navigates the pressures of the music industry with a raised eyebrow and a rallying cry. The production, shared between Nicolas Rebscher and Grammy-winner Jim Abbiss, injects fresh energy into her signature sound without losing the soul that’s made her a household name across Europe.
From there, the album flows with confidence and clarity. “Trapped” tackles the stifling tension of toxic friendships with a biting vocal and propulsive percussion, while “Can You Hear Me?” reaches out with a universal plea for connection, a song that feels like it was written on a long walk under grey skies and found its final form under stage lights.
Where Macdonald has often leant into the pastoral or the poetic, here she doesn’t shy away from pop immediacy. “I’m Done (Games That You Play)” and “Physical” flirt with 80s synth textures, pairing shimmering production with barbed lyricism. These are tracks that would feel just as at home on a festival stage as they would on a late-night road trip, anthems for moving on, moving forward, and moving fast.
Still, it’s in her ballads that Macdonald reminds us why her voice remains such a force. “The Hope” and “One More Shot” are understated but affecting, balancing vulnerability with grace. The former is particularly stirring, a subtle meditation on perseverance that avoids sentimentality in favour of grit.
What’s most impressive is how seamlessly the album threads the personal with the political. “Forward” is both a mantra and a mission statement, hinting at wider societal frustrations while never losing its human core. Meanwhile, “We Survive” acts as a kind of thesis for the record, an ode to endurance, framed not as romantic resilience but as the lived reality of getting through.
Closing track “It’s All So Long Ago” is a fitting curtain call: wistful without being nostalgic, reflective without resignation. With a stripped-back arrangement and a lyric that gazes into the rearview mirror, Macdonald sounds simultaneously grounded and free.
Throughout Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?, Macdonald never tries to reinvent the wheel, and she doesn’t need to. What she offers instead is a sharpened take on her well-worn style: folk-pop songwriting elevated by real stakes, lived experience, and a voice that still carries weight.
There’s a weathered strength to this record, the kind that only comes from walking through fire and writing songs about it. If you’ve ever underestimated Amy Macdonald, now might be a good time to listen up.
Words by Danielle Holian
