2018 was a hell of a year for Amy Wadge, as the Wales-based singer-songwriter and hitmaker for the stars explains to Megan Potterton.

Congratulations on your recent BAFTA for original music for Keeping Faith. When you were just starting, did you ever imagine your music would be used for TV?

I started out thinking that I would be a performer but as the years have gone on, I’ve absolutely loved the change in roles to writer as it’s where I am happiest. Keeping Faith was a gift of a project – Eve Myles asked me to be involved and I met the producer Pip Broughton who just said “write what you want”. That’s what I did and I loved every second of it.

  In 2016 you won a Grammy for Song Of The Year – Thinking Out Loud, co-written with Ed Sheeran. You and Ed have known each other since the beginning of his career almost – do you have any favourite memories from working on music together?  

There are so many wonderful memories, but luckily I still see him all the time so we get to make more. The most recent one is probably the one that means the most. I have a second home in Nashville and Ed has been living there recently while touring the US. He played the Nissan Stadium and I told him after the show that I was playing the Bluebird in Nashville on the Tuesday. He said he would come. I played Thinking Out Loud and he got up and did it with me. He refused to play the guitar and he insisted on singing backing vocals.

It was such a special thing for me – the last time we sang it together was when we wrote it. That song has changed my life, so to sing it in Nashville with him all those years later meant everything to me.

You also wrote music for Eye Of The Storm, a musical that won Best Show For Children And Young People at the Wales Theatre Awards this year. Is writing music for an already developed storyline harder than writing music for your own albums?  

Not at all. In some ways it was easier, as I had so much material to draw on as the script was so good. They wanted it to be country, so I jumped at it; country music is all about story-telling, so it lends itself so well to musical theatre. I am so proud of the show and [artistic director] Geinor Styles and Theatr na nÓg are phenomenal at what they do. It’s about to go to Hong Kong, so I am very excited to see what life it has beyond Wales.

 2018 is nearly over and you have achieved so much this year. What is your most memorable moment?   

It’s been a brilliant year and it would be hard to pick one particular thing. I’ve been part of the Sheridan Smith album [A Northern Soul], which has been a joy to do, and Sheridan sang Are You Just Sleeping, a song I was part of writing, at the Royal Albert Hall for the Remembrance Festival. It was such a beautiful performance, and I am so proud of her as it was a song written about the loss of her dad. It took so much for her to sing it and keep it together.

When starting to write a song, what’s the first thing you do with an empty page?   

With me, it always starts with a conversation. I’m not interested in writing what I want to say, I want it to be about the artist I am working with. I’ve always got titles knocking around that will hopefully inspire something, but in the end I’m there to make people feel comfortable enough to share and help them create something special.

Amy Wadge & Luke Jackson, Pontardawe Arts Centre, Fri 18 Jan. Tickets: £16.50.

Info: 01792 863722 / www.npttheatres.co.uk