When Love Forgets, Music Remembers: The Story behind ‘Amnesia’


In the hush of the lockdown weeks, while out there in the world the whole shebang was paused, Emma Whybrow was plotting the shapes of love and bereavement onto the surfaces of her flat. Life had been solid—work-from-home routines, a cozy home, a feeling of human presence. And then the going away: a boyfriend, to India, chasing family stories over seas wide. A year and a half on, he was again, ironing the past into submission with a conciliatory touch as if no bond had been broken during the silence. Memory, it appeared, had deceived him. Amnesia? Possibly.

Break, love, and incredulity was the source of "Amnesia," a track that pulsates to the strength of remembered pain and the rawness of the move on. But what gives it life is its dualism—its lyrics battered by experience, but its music flying, contained within high-energy dance rhythms. Emma's vocals pierce the production fog, strong and authoritative, piercing through effects layers to land the listener in their very center. The track appears as though it will not release you, imparting memory to rhythm and flame. 


What was originally Bollywood-flavored melody back in 2014—a melody that had the strength to hit Top 30 of Australia's Songwriting Competition—has now been transformed. That original one can still be found online, a snapshot of the song's first skin, but "Amnesia" has now become braver. Guided by producer Robert Pippan, inductee to the South Australian music hall of fame and ARIA award nominee, the song broke out of its boundaries, transformed as a defiant dance-floor anthem. Its transformation as art, transmutation as catharsis.

"Amnesia" explodes today as confession and celebration. It is a testament to the heart's capacity to make something of its pain without burden, even if trust has been broken. The song blazes like a firestorm of light—a record for anyone ever created to dance out of sorrow. In the end, Emma Whybrow doesn't so much sing about forgetting—she discovers memory, flips it over, and makes something too shiny to deny. 

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