Amanda Adams – What We Thought We Had

Hailing from Boston, but currently taking a trip around Spain, Amanda Adams is due to release her latest single, What We Thought We Had, on May 13 2022.

What We Thought We Had is about letting go in the pursuit of happiness. It’s about the end of a relationship that wasn’t what the singer expected. What We Thought We Had is a song about diving immediately into a relationship and ignoring all the red flags, slowly realising that your first instincts were right. Totally relatable stuff, right?

Amanda Adams lives by one rule that touched our hearts; “Life is far too short to stay in an almost-happy place”. What a wonderful sentiment and one which she is clearly taking seriously. Amanda is currently touring round Spain on a bike, making video and, by all accounts, having the time of her life.

With vocals reminiscent of Thea Gilmore, and with some clear nods to Norah Jones, What We Thought We Had is a 5 and a half minute indie pop/folk song.

With a strumming pattern and chord sequence that will feel familiar to any lovers of folk music, What We Thought We Had gently speaks to the listener. The track has some piano and some great upright bass work and just a touch of very distant drums. In a few places, there’s some really well done vocal harmonies that really bolster the lead vocals.

There’s a couple of stops during the song, but other than these, What We Thought We Had sits comfortably in our ears. At 5 1/2 minutes long, and with not too many changes throughout the song, What We Thought We Had is absolutely perfect music for TV. We can really imagine it being used in the background in a montage. A breaking up scene, perhaps. Something positive. AMC and BBC are both using a great deal of acoustic singer-songwriter tracks in their shows right now and we’d urge Amanda to investigate this further.

We love the Four Non Blondes – What’s Up style ending where the song breaks away and slows down with just guitar and vocals.

Our thoughts on production;

To our ears, there’s a slightly peaking frequency in the upright bass at 98Hz (G) that we’d suggest gently notching out. A cut in the 800-900Hz range will alleviate just a touch of honkiness in the track, probably picked up during the recording process. We’d also suggest boosting the top 3 octaves, especially around 4-4.5kHz with a notch out around 6kHz to avoid boosting too much sibilance. It may be an idea to add a further light compressor and make up gain as this track is a little quieter than most commercial releases of this genre.

What We Thought We Had by Amanda Adams is a fun and positive look at moving forward from a bad relationship. It will undoubtedly appeal to lovers of female folk and acoustic music and we’re excited to see where Amanda takes her career next.