melia Moore is reminiscing, though after a whirlwind beginning to 2025, she has had little pause for thought. For the Los Angeles-based and talent, the year is flying by – quite literally, as she’s already clocked air miles to Australia and Japan. When we meet, ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’, her first single with her new label Republic Records, is out and she’s been catching up on sleep after a two-day shoot for her upcoming music video. Her trademark tangerine tresses are fresh from a brush with the salon. In her own words: “Things are moving, honey.”
It has been five months since Moore’s landmark set at Camp Flog Gnaw, the annual LA music festival created by rapper Tyler, the Creator, and a hotbed for buzzy emerging artists. Given its prestige and closeness to home, Moore scaled up her performance for it: she enlisted dancers to join her onstage; rising R&B artist ASTN joined her for their collaboration ‘Next Door’. “There are thousands of people at this festival who have no idea who I am,” she says. “So, it was my main goal for that entire set to get everybody passing to fall in love with me.”
Amelia Moore on The Cover of NME. Credit: Aubree Estrella for NME
Falling in love with Moore’s music isn’t hard to do. Her vulnerable songwriting and breathy, agile vocals capture romantic daydreams and formative heartbreak with an earnest twist, while her knack for getting to the crux of a feeling with her observational lyrics is unparalleled. It is precisely what made her breakout track, ‘I Feel Everything’, connect. Taken from the 2022 EP ‘Teaching A Robot How To Love’ – a collection of throbbing, glitchy alt-pop – it landed Moore in the talk show glare of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
But just as everything seemed to be coming together, she was let go by her label. Losing her record deal thrust her into a period of professional uncertainty and self-doubt, and left her feeling “pretty abandoned” by some of the close collaborators she’d been working with for a long time. “I was feeling really insecure and stuck in where I was,” she recalls. Then, along came Timbaland.
“Sometimes you need somebody to hold your hand and say, ‘Baby, he’s just not that into you’”
“I’d seen this artist post on TikTok about how she was on Timbaland’s livestream and now they have a song together,” says Moore. “And I was like, ‘Damn, I bet Timbaland would fuck with my shit too. I should get on this livestream and take control of my career’.” She submitted her songs and waited nervously as Timbaland was “roasting the F out of everybody”. She needn’t have worried. “He started playing ‘Back To Him’ and became obsessed with it. I was on his livestream with him for 45 minutes, and everybody else before me was in and out in two.”
Before she knew it, the iconic producer was formally brushing up the bolshy groove of the track, which would go on to appear on last year’s independently released EP, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You!’. It was a full-circle moment for Moore, whose first experience of secular music as a homeschooled kid from a Christian household was Justin Timberlake’s Timbaland-produced album ‘The 20/20 Experience’.
Credit: Aubree Estrella for NME
Confessional, diaristic R&B, often with a mischievous glint in its eye, is as far removed as they come from the worship music and Christian pop soundtrack to Moore’s upbringing in Lawrenceville, Georgia. But that is what is found on last year’s ‘He’s Just Not That Into You!’ and its soon-to-be-released accompaniment ‘He’s Still Just Not That Into You!’. Dropping on May 9, Moore’s new EP is a continuation of her fun, bouncy, relatable pop and lyrical accounts of dating as a young woman in a digital age of emotional unavailability, with the added complexity of her conservative upbringing.
“I just realised I had so many stories about the chaos of what I feel like my love life has been [after] growing up extremely sheltered and religious, and moving to LA, becoming the person I am now and learning to date people, making mistakes and falling in love,” Moore explains. A lot of the ideas that made it onto the EP came to her while working on her anticipated debut album: “I just had all of these stories left that I feel like I still needed to tell and that I wanted people to hear.”
Credit: Aubree Estrella for NME
The first EP was inspired in part by a plane viewing of self-help book-turned-rom-com He’s Just Not That Into You. The 2009 film struck a chord with Moore as the experiences of Ginnifer Goodwin’s character felt synonymous with everything she and her friends were experiencing in their love lives.
“When we’re young, we’re told that if a boy’s mean to you, that means he has a crush on you, which has totally fucked up our mindset when it comes to dating,” says Moore. “So that whole movie, a lightbulb went off in my brain and I was like, ‘This is the vibe of the entire project’.” She is really lucky, she adds, to have the relationship she’s been in for the past two years. “I think that has taught me a lot about relationships and what they’re supposed to feel like. But honey, it was looking dark out there – it was looking a little grim.”
“One thing my fans know about me is every single line is autobiographical”
‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’, Moore’s first single from ‘He’s Still Just Not That Into You!’, captures the playful vulnerability that weaves through much of her work; gently plucked guitar and hushed backing vocals conjure a vintage romanticism, topped with a frank lament that love is a losing game. “I think it sets up the whole drama of emotions that can overtake you when you deeply care about somebody, and I think that ‘crazy girl’ feeling and anxious attachment style is where ‘Fuck, Marry Kill’ is rooted in.”
She adds: “I love the idea of saying, ‘fuck me like you want a baby’ over some really dreamy sounding stuff – I think that’s literally me.”
What makes love-hate relationships so addictive? Moore inhales deeply. “Honestly, I don’t know why. I think what is the most messed up [thing] is you have all these really chaotic experiences that are flash-in-the-pan kind of moments, and then you find something that actually means something. And because it’s not crazy, you think it’s not right, but that is actually a sign that it is. It’s all messed up.”
Credit: Aubree Estrella for NME
Female camaraderie has gotten her through rough romantic times, and she’s found love and empowerment in the support of a group chat of girlfriends. In Moore’s eyes, every girl needs friends who can be honest with her about her relationships. “These guys could mess up once, it goes in the group chat, and everybody has turned on [them]. It’s tough to give advice when it’s not warranted, but sometimes you need somebody to sit you down and hold your hand and say, ‘Baby, he’s just not that into you’, you know?”
This solidarity materialised musically on Moore’s remix of ‘See Through’ – a track with trilling vocal runs that precipitated a viral TikTok singing challenge – when she reached out to Coco Jones, Absolutely, and Samara Cyn to see if they’d be up for a collab. All three ended up sending her verses. “They’re all so unique,” says Moore, gushing about the individual skillsets of rapper Cyn, the “crazy” vocals of Absolutely, and Jones’ “R&B masterclass”. “It was so sick to have so many girls on this song about being vulnerable and feeling seen and romantic.”
“My foot is slammed on the gas pedal right now”
For Moore, these moments of collaboration and contrast are where the fun lies. Much like the EP itself, ‘See Through’ has its own alter ego in ‘See Through It’, the antithesis of feeling seen in a relationship, unveiling betrayal beneath a façade. Inspired in part by Charli XCX’s ambitious ‘Brat’ remix album, Moore channelled a darker side of ‘See Through’ that “just started to write itself”, all skittish beats and murky bassline.
On the flipside, her new single ‘Spelling Bee’, which features eclectic singer and rapper Teezo Touchdown, captures a playful desire with its peppy rhythms and melodies. Written with producer Jorgen Odegard and Moore’s songwriting hero Julia Michaels, the track is a “bubbly and cute ‘hehe, oops – am I gonna tell you what I want you to do, or not?’” moment with Touchdown adding “edgier, harder rigidness” that grounds the male perspective. “He takes a lighthearted approach to his songwriting and doesn’t take himself too seriously,” adds Moore.
Credit: Aubree Estrella for NME
The concept of fun is a throughline in our conversation, and Moore is an inspired lyricist. “You got to show this dick that you’ve become undickable,” she quips on ‘Back To Him’, a barb she says she had to sense-check with “a couple girls and a couple gays” to determine if it was actually “iconic”. Elsewhere, ‘Push Up Bra’ proved an amusing metaphor sparked by songwriting collaborator Jackson Lee Morgan – a man who’s never worn a push up bra, Moore points out – about “somebody who only is interested in you when you’re also doing them favours”.
Despite the often diaristic nature of her lyrics, Moore is unselfconscious with her writing. “I think a majority of the time, the silly, stupid thing you say ends up inspiring the lyric,” she says. “One thing my fans know about me is every single line is autobiographical,” she continues, noting the brazen nature of her songs. “I know my mom is going to hear all of this stuff. It comes out, and it feels like people are reading my journal.”
From baring her soul and facing her heartbreak to challenging herself to be the popstar of her teenage dreams, Moore knows that putting in the work – while finding the fun in it – pays dividends. And so, with a tour on the horizon, she’s training harder than ever to level up her live show, complete with dance routines. “It’s awkward and embarrassing because I’ve had two left feet for a really long time, but I’m working with amazing coaches who are bringing the best out of me.” And with more to come in 2025, there’s little rest on the horizon: “My foot is so so so so slammed on the gas pedal right now. That’s all.”
Amelia Moore’s ‘He’s Still Just Not That Into You!’ is out May 9 via Republic Records.
Listen to Amelia Moore’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Kayleigh Watson
Photography: Aubree Estrella
Styling: Keyan Miao
Hair Styling: Kayla Casey
Makeup: Dee Carrion
Label: Republic Records
