Amy Shark, courtesy.

Sundays became about separating herself from sadness for Australian singer-songwriter Amy Shark. As she worked on her latest record, Sunday Sadness, that final day of the weekend was one for reflection and writing.

“I ended up using Sundays as a day to not think about the past and not think about things that stress me out or make me sad,” Shark said in a recent call from a quick trip to Japan a week before surprisingly releasing the album a week early and her chaotic promotion schedule kicked into high gear.

The focus wasn’t solely on the lyrics, but also on her guitar playing. That become the foundation for the new tracks.

“I’ve had some guitar riffs up my sleeve for … a couple years now,” she said. “I really zoned in on finessing this album and creating songs that are worthy of these guitar riffs that I was super proud of. It’s a guitar-driven album, which I’m excited about.”

She said she tried to avoid fitting her songwriting into a certain box or over-emphasizing singles. No song could be too short, too long, too acoustic or too different, she decided. She was going after a complete body of work fans someone could listen from from head to tail.

On one hand, Shark’s hyper-personal songwriting is still there. On the other, she often uses an entirely different sonic landscape. Take pop-punk-adjacent “Two Friends.” The energetic bop breaks down into a memorable bridge with Shark using a relationship game of telephone.

“Sarah told Becky/ And Becky told Tegan/ And Tegan told Sophie/ And Sophie’s friends with Krystal/ And Krystal told Sally/ And Sally loves Daniel/ And Daniel told Katie/ Now Katie fucking hates me,” she sings.

The track came together in a different way for Shark. She got much of the foundational music from producer Sam de Jong and was thrilled with what she heard. Instead of making revisions, she moved straight to the lyrics. The lyrics came together very quickly; other than the bridge, which gave her trouble. She said she worked on it for months and numerous versions written but all were bland rock hooks that didn’t stick out.

Shark said the gossip theme was the epiphany she needed to get the song across the finish line, and one of the reasons she picked it as a single. So, does Katie actually hate her? Shark said some of the song name-drops real people.

“Three of the names are real; the rest are all fake and rhyme with names I would have liked to put in there,” she said.

The other milestone on Sunday Sadness is the completion of a years-long side quest to work with all three members of blink-182 on her music. Blink singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge is the final piece of the puzzle, appearing on earnest introverted ballad “My Only Friend.”

“When I started working with the guys, Mark [Hoppus] on Love Monster was not even talking to Tom,” Shark said. “So it was really tricky for me to navigate this whole thing.”

The journey to work with DeLonge began at a 2010 Angels & Airwaves show. Traveling to San Diego with her then-boyfriend before she was a successful artist, Shark met DeLonge and gave him a CD with her music. A decade passed before she heard from him again.

“He reached out saying ‘congratulations,’ but he was going through a bunch of personal stuff, and all his UFO stuff,” she said.

He quest took even more serendipitous turns from there.

“Mark, who I hadn’t even reached out to at all, wrote to me on Twitter,” she recalled. “I think his son was listening to my music, or we had some friends in common, and he suggested we do a song.”

That became “Psycho,” on 2018’s Love Monster.

“Then Travis reached out and said to reach out if I ever wanted drums,” she said, holding back a chuckle. “So he was on the second one.”

That became “C’mon” from 2021’s Cry Forever.

To grow up as a fan of the band and move on to working with each member on all three of her records as organically and improbably as it happened, Shark still hasn’t quite found the words to make sense of it all.

“This beautiful finish of getting Tom on the third; I can’t even tell you how incredible it’s been to finish like this,” she said.

Shark has become a top touring artist in Australia and said she’s looking for the opportunity to get back to the U.S. She’s also become a judge on “Australian Idol,” a role she said she would never have envisioned for herself five years ago.

“It’s such a fun work environment; I kinda feel like I have a job again,” she said.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.