Inside the world of Amore, Spain’s latest rising star

This article is partly taken from the autumn 2025 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.

Most people don’t remember their early years, but for Madrid-based singer AMORE, her musical destiny began in nursery. While other toddlers napped or cried, AMORE hummed Spanish melodies, signalling her deep connection to music from an early age. Raised on radio hits and borrowed library CDs, her childhood was shaped by a wide range of influences, from pop to classical. Though she studied classical piano, it was the energy of live gigs that truly captivated her.

“Music reveals way more about you than you think,” AMORE says. “If it’s made with passion and honesty, people will feel that. You can’t really fake emotion in this craft.” Her debut album, Top Hits, Ballads, etc..., released earlier this year, defies traditional expectations for a first project. Instead of a polished concept album, AMORE embraced experimentation, creating something open-ended and freeform. “I went back to the idea of a compilation, like those timeless ‘greatest hits’ albums, messy, varied, and open-ended,” she explains. 

The very title of the album embodies this liberated approach. The “etc” signals AMORE’s commitment to pushing creative limits and perpetually surprising her audience. In a way, the album’s refusal to be pinned down by a single concept is its central idea. As she thoughtfully explains, “The ‘etc’ and the ellipsis felt meaningful to me; they justify pretty much any decision and add a playful, almost ironic tone that fits the spirit of a debut.” For AMORE, Top Hits, Ballads, etc... is a foundational statement of her artistic creed, a belief in making music rooted in passion, sincerity, and a refreshing sense of humour. Her debut introduces her and sets the tone for a career where she’s just going to keep doing whatever she wants.

Below, AMORE speaks to us about the album, the accompanying mini-film and her biggest lessons so far.

What are your earliest memories of music? 

AMORE: One of my first memories related to music is from nap time at nursery school. We’d lie down on these tiny beds, and while most kids were crying, I would stare at the ceiling,  unable to sleep, softly humming a Spanish song that goes: ‘es una lata el trabajar, todos  los días te tienes que levantar.’ It was probably the only song I’d had time to memorise in my two years of life. 

What pushed you into pursuing a career in music? 

AMORE: Music was always around – during childhood, I was obsessed with the radio and the CDs my dad rented from the library. In my teenage years, I studied classical piano. But I had always approached it as a listener or a performer. When I moved to Madrid for university, I started going to a lot of gigs and would always leave feeling completely shaken.  Eventually, I decided to pay attention to that feeling, and just like that, I wrote my first song. 

What is your songwriting process like?  

AMORE: It really varies, and it keeps expanding as I grow as a producer. I used to write everything on the piano, but now a song can start from anywhere: a synth, a beat, a vocal effect. Production has given me a sense of freedom. It doesn’t just make you more technical, it makes you a better songwriter too. 

What was the main inspiration behind Top Hits, Ballads, etc…? 

AMORE: To take on something as big as a first album, I first had to shake off the pressure of coming up with a grand, cohesive concept. I knew I was still too early in my process to aim for that, and I didn’t want to leave out the singles I’d released over the past year just because they felt ‘old’, they still belonged to the same sonic phase. 

The mini film you made to go alongside the album is super interesting. Could you tell us more about the creative process behind it? 

AMORE: It came from a need to release all the noise in my head after so many months of intense creation. I wanted to give the album a visual shape; to land it in something tangible and get it out of the abstract. That felt healing, like emptying out a full drawer. 

With choreographer Virginia Martín and the visual duo Fomotrauma, we imagined a way to ‘personify’ the songs. We chose 12 dancers who would appear at a fictional listening party, each assigned a repeated movement that showed how their body might naturally react to one track, as if they were being possessed or transformed by it. 

The room was filled with fog, so they couldn’t see each other, helping them move without self-consciousness. The video is shot partly from surveillance-like angles and partly with a handheld camera, blending social experiment vibes with something more artsy. It’s completely silent except for breathing and ambient noise, with tiny leaks of music from the headphones, just enough to spark curiosity about the album’s vibe. Finally, Agustina Piriz did the styling, and the whole thing was a collaboration between friends. When people truly know each other, ideas move faster, it feels like a hive mind. That kind of collective flow is hard to replicate. 

How would you define your own sound? 

AMORE: I’d say it mixes traditional and contemporary elements, with pop at the centre, but always leaving space to explore strange or curious directions. 

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far in your career? 

AMORE: That music reveals way more about you than you think. If it’s made with passion and honesty, people will feel that. You can’t really fake emotion in this craft. Passion cuts through more than any marketing strategy, and that kind of truth ends up finding the right audience, which is way more exciting than any audience you could manufacture. 

What do you hope people take away from your music? 

AMORE: I want people to feel the intensity I bring to the creative process: the joy, the confusion, the humour, the awkwardness, the obsession. I don’t want to present a polished version where everything feels effortless or distant. I want people to hear the real person behind it all. 

What excites you about the future? 

AMORE: I’m excited to see where my brain goes next, what I’ll write about and how my sound will evolve. There’s always this funny inner dialogue when I’m creating, where I surprise myself, for better or worse. Like, ‘Oh wow, I guess I made that!’ It’s kind of like giving myself a gift I didn’t expect. I’m genuinely curious to find out what future me is going to sound like.