Instant Love, a special empowerment-focused series of classic love songs reimagined with female vocals launched by Instant Records, offers up their newest installment as singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins takes on the Ryan Adams classic “Amy” from his legendary solo debut Heartbreaker. Today, we premiere the song as Atkins adds her own personal flare to the tune by adding lush strings and psychedelic riffs. 

“I wanted the opportunity to produce a song I’ve always loved regardless of what gender role it’s assigned to. A love song is a love song is a love song,” Atkins told Relix. “[“Amy”] has always been one of my favorite songs by him. Not just for the writing but for the arrangements too. It’s full of longing and pain and romance and the tone of the recording really puts you in a certain place. Like it’s visual. The song has its own zone that you can see. It’s own color. His recording is amber to me. I see songs in color.”

“I wanted to take a stab at this in the studio to try to put it in the color and landscape of my own life of where I was when I first heard it when I was living in North Carolina and experiencing my first pains of love and loss. I wanted to paint this song in blue and green.” 

Instant Records’ Allison Zatarain explained the reason for selecting the song and including it in this series. “I believe ‘Amy’ was on the list because I knew I wanted a Ryan Adams song as an idea for female artists,” she said. “When we approached Nicole, I actually had ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ in mind for her. But she skimmed my (extensive) list of song titles, and wrote back ‘Amy!!!’ We like for artists to feel passionate about the song choices, so I was happy to oblige.” 

Listen below.