FEATURE:
Modern-Day Queens
PHOTO CREDIT: Joelle Grace Taylor
puts a spotlight on one of the most reputable and greatest living songwriter. Certainly when it comes to Pop music. Amy Allen might not be known to everyone, but I can guarantee you have listened to some of her work! You can follow her on Instagram. I am going to bring in some interviews with her. Among modern-day Pop hits she has had a hand in are Sabrina Carpenter's Espresso and Tate McRae’s greedy. You can find a comprehensive list of her songwriting credits here (I am including a playlist at the bottom of this feature that includes her incredible list of songwriting credits). I am going to start with this feature and introduction from last year from GRAMMY. This is one of the most influential and prolific modern-day songwriters. We often talk about these major mainstream artists, though songwriters who collaborate with them are not often discussed:
“Some artists are lucky enough to have a moment: a song of the summer, a radio hit, or a point at which their song dominates the pop conversation. Before even launching her own singing career, Amy Allen has done just that — multiple times.
In 2022, the Maine native contributed to hit songs from Harry Styles, Lizzo, Charli XCX, and King Princess; at the 2023 GRAMMYs, she was one of the inaugural nominees for Songwriter Of The Year, Non-Classical, and celebrated an Album Of The Year win alongside Styles thanks to her work on Harry's House. And as of press time, two songs she co-wrote with Sabrina Carpenter are in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart: "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," the latter of which hit No. 1.
When you have a resume and catalog as impressive as Allen's, it's hard not to get stuck in a run of highlights — but Allen's writing style is so full of remarkable emotional depth and inevitable hooks that her life and career deserves further exploration. After binging on classic rock and performing in rock and bluegrass bands in her youth, Allen began writing songs for others in the mid 2010s and has only continued to expand her impact on audiences and collaborators alike.
"Amy is a once-in-a-lifetime writer and friend — it all comes to her very naturally and effortlessly," Carpenter recently told Variety. "She's super versatile: She can wear any hat and yet it still feels authentic. I've learned a lot from her and admire what an incredible collaborator she is."
Along the way, Allen has continued honing her skills as an artist in her own right, releasing a handful of EPs and singles since 2015, initially under the name Amy and the Engine. But on Sept. 6, she's ready to fully introduce herself with her debut album — fittingly titled Amy Allen.
Just after Allen celebrated her latest No. 1 and released her newest single, "even forever," GRAMMY.com rounded up the key details you need to know about the singer/songwriter's diverse musical background, from her advocacy for female creators to seeing Harry Styles sing a song she co-wrote to a massive audience.
Her Origin Story Features A Lot Of Car Talk
Allen's early musical growth relied on four-wheeled vehicles to drive the plot forward — in many different forms. Growing up in rural Maine meant long car rides to for school and family outings, which in turn meant a lot of time with the radio.
"My dad is the biggest classic rock fan, so since I was little, I spent hours every day listening to music in the car with him and my sisters," she told Variety earlier this year.
When it came time for one of her sisters to start a band, the elder Allen named it No U-Turn, setting the theme. When the band needed a new bassist, Amy took up the low end at just 8 years old, learning classic songs from the likes of Tom Petty and Rolling Stones. The band started collecting opening spots at a bar in Portland, Maine, and lasted until Allen was in high school and her sisters had left for college. In addition, she started playing in a bluegrass band called Jerks of Grass alongside her high school guitar teacher.
Eventually, Allen thought about moving on and changing course. "I went to nursing school at Boston College for two years, and within a month of getting there I was like, 'I made a big mistake,'" she continued. After moving over to the prestigious Berklee School of Music, Allen started a new project, yet again turning to vehicular terminology: Amy and the Engine, who would go on to open for the likes of Vance Joy and Kacey Musgraves. The project's timeless indie pop charm shone brightly on singles like "Last Forever" and the 2017 EP Get Me Outta Here!, fusing references ranging from the Cranberries to the Cure.
She's A Major Champion For Women In Music
Back in 2021, Allen pondered whether it was time to carve up one of America's most prominent monuments. "Can you imagine tits on Mount Rushmore/ And Ruth Bader Ginsburg from dynamite sticks?" she sang on "A Woman's World," a highlight from her 2021 solo EP AWW!. The song backs off from that explicit ask, but the low-slung waltz of ghostly piano and gentle acoustic guitar still subversively slices at traditional gender roles and power dynamics.
And while the track may focus its first verse on the Notorious RBG, Allen designed it as a more approachable anthem. "I felt very proud of that song. And it's something that I love to play live, because I think that it's nice as a woman to give that moment to other women in the audience where I see them," she told The Line of Best Fit upon the EP's release.
Her solo work sits in a long line of female pop and rock stars looking to lift others up — with Allen's list of influences including everyone from the Carpenters and Pat Benatar to No Doubt, Hole, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. But she's also aware of the shortcomings in the industry when it comes to behind-the-scenes matters, with female songwriters representing a disproportionately small percentage of the industry and often at lower revenue than their male counterparts.
"It's important to have more women writing and performing so that younger girls can be hearing that and really connecting with that and resonating with that, and then being inspired to do that themselves," she continued. "I'm really excited to hear what the next generation of singer songwriters creates, and I want to do my part in making sure that they're able to”.
In February, Amy Allen became the first woman to be named Songwriter of the Year. In fact, she won in the category, Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical. You can see her listed as the winner on GRAMMY’s website. Among the songs listed is Leon Bridges’s Chrome Cowgirl. The Maine-born songwriter (Amy Allen) was nominated for the inaugural Songwriter of the Year award at the 65th GRAMMYs for her work on releases by King Princess, Alexander 23, Lizzo, Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter and Harry Styles. At the same ceremony, she won Album of the Year for her contribution to Harry Styles’s Harry's House (2022). There is a new book out about her that talks about her rise from living in this small town in Maine and becoming this huge songwriter talent. I do wonder if Allen will write a book herself. She is this incredible talent, so it would be interesting to hear her story. I am going to move to an interview from Billboard. For their On the Record podcast, Amy Allen “talks pitch records, songwriting trends and locking in with Carpenter for Man's Best Friend”. I will embed the full interview, through below are some highlights:
“Over the last few years, I’ve been hearing songwriters and publishers complain that pitch records [songs written when the artist isn’t in the room] are becoming increasingly less popular. You’ve said that your first hit, “Back To You” by Selena Gomez, started off as a pitch, so I’m wondering — how could this trend away from pitch songs impact up-and-coming songwriters?
It feels like it will be harder for songwriters to get into the door, because my first two songs that changed my trajectory of my career were pitch records — that Selena Gomez song and a Halsey song called “Without Me” and that changed everything for me. I wouldn’t have gotten to go into the room with those artists at that time in my career, because I didn’t have any track record of writing songs. So, it feels like two arms are being tied behind your back as a new songwriter, where, you know, the pitch game is not as strong as it used to be, and artists are wanting to be in the room and writing with songwriters.
But this trend also leads to really exciting songs now where the artists are using every part of their life in these songs, and that’s really exciting.
I think the other thing that could be seen as a positive is that now big songs are coming from everywhere. Like, when I was coming up in songwriting seven or eight years ago, TikTok wasn’t a thing. People weren’t exploding off of TikTok. Now, there are a lot more ways for songwriters to get into the door of people at early phases in their career. Sometimes artists might find a songwriter on TikTok now. There’s pros and cons.
So TikTok can be a discovery platform for songwriters as well as artists?
Yeah, and I think it just goes to show that amazing songs come from anywhere. It’s not like we’re just being told by the radio programmers who the big artists are today.
What are some career highlights for you?
Writing “Matilda” with Harry [Styles]. I really will always love that song. It means so much to me and getting to make that with him was one of the highlights of my entire career. I also love “Please Please Please” because I love how many boundaries that pushes as a big pop song. When we were writing it, I don’t think anybody in a million years would have been like ‘this is going to be a hit.’ It felt like we were just following some emotion that we all loved, and we were all on the same train, writing it together and not knowing exactly where it was going. And when it was done, we came out with something that felt so new and exciting. To see the public react in the way that they did and make it a pop hit is so cool”.
I am going to move to a recent interview from PAPER. It is interesting what PAPER write in the introduction to the interview, where they say Amy Allen’s love of classic songs and artist melds into modern sensibilities and sounds. It makes for a fascinating blend that is not that common in modern-day Pop: “Timelessness could be the word, an essence that derives from Allen’s ongoing commitment to the fundamentals of songwriting. Or maybe another word is “rooted,” an adjective she frequently invokes in our conversation. Calling in from her sunny home in Venice, she describes her writerly sensibilities as being grounded in the Tom Petty, Dolly Parton and John Prine she’d listen to in long car rides in rural Maine, where she grew up. While her brain has surely been filled with the fizz of contemporary pop since then, it’s those classics that lend her songs a fundamental clarity that is relatively rare in the 2025 pop machine, where art is so often made via committee and informed by algorithms”:
“We talked a lot about being from Maine and how that shaped his artistry, how the transition to LA was a particular culture shock for him, because it’s so opposite in so many ways. Was that your experience as well?
It was for sure. I didn't have a ton of friends out [in Los Angeles] when I first moved here, and the few friends I did make worked in music. It just felt like everything you talked about was music, everything social gathering you went to revolved around music. I first moved to West Hollywood, which is like, so, so industry-centric. Two and a half years in, I moved to Venice, where I live now, and everything changed for me because none of my friends in Venice work in music, and I'm right by the beach, which is how I grew up in Maine. I can walk to everything. I kind of forget that I live in such a major city. I go in every day for sessions to different places, but I feel like I've found my area here, so it's much more doable for me.
I'm from LA for context and a lot of my friends work in music. Part of why I wanted to get away was because everything can feel so industry there. Your writing feels very timeless and removed from that. I'm curious about how you created that space or stay on your own frequency.
I grew up in rural Maine in Wyndham, which is on Tobago Lake. When I was in high school, my parents moved to the ocean, close to the same town where Tucker is from.I had to do such long drives when I was younger. My dad would always play a lot of timeless music that I really associated with being outdoors, like Tom Petty, Dolly Parton, John Prine, and Fleetwood Mac. It was Americana country and folk. It just felt very grounded and earthy to me, and I think especially when I moved to LA, it felt like the opposite of that and the opposite of me in a lot of ways. What's always drawn me to music is this feeling that I'm grounded and rooted in an emotion, or close to home and the people that I love.
Going back to those records has helped me immensely through significant life changes, such as attending college for music or moving to the West and signing a publishing deal. It's helped me keep my world feeling a lot smaller than this big, scary, massive music world that I could easily get lost in. I just continue to come back to the core of what I loved about music and the artists that I loved. That informed a lot of my writing instincts as well.
Pop songwriting is an art and a science. I'm curious how much you think about the math of a pop hit?
Not at all. I don't know much theory at all. In terms of math, I can tell there are certain tricks that songwriters pick up along the way. When you listen to a Max Martin song, there are a lot of strategic moves that are happening so that the chorus feels massive. Every part to it feels like a building block that's moving up the ladder to the big climax. I’m not really a music-mathy gal, but I do know that when I'm writing a pre-chorus or verse, I don't want the notes that I'm hitting in the pre-chorus or the verses to be walking all over the note that the chorus is going to hit. Then the chorus just doesn't feel as euphoric. Or if there's a certain line in the chorus that I really want to stand out … maybe don't want to be reiterating that same thought throughout the verse. You don't want to give too much away.
PHOTO CREDIT: Caity Krone
There are definitely bits that I am very conscious of, but I'm not technically mathy, and it's actually really fun because there's a lot of accounts now that are pretty mathy that will be like, "Oh my God, ‘Without Me’ or ‘Please Please Please,' or 'Espresso,'" did all these things that weren’t necessarily super thought about in the process. A lot of my favorite songwriters just go off of emotion. My favorite artists are the exact same way. They're really governed by how it feels in their body. I've always been that way, so that's where I stand on that. But I'm always in awe of people that are very mathy about music and can make a song that’s technically perfect.
So with something like “Espresso,” which people would say is the perfect, earworm pop, that arrived intuitively in the same way that something longer like “Please Please Please” came about?
It's only the same process in the sense of I trust Sabrina [Carpenter] with my whole heart, soul and guts. She is such a phenomenal songwriter and artist, and I know she trusts me as well as a collaborator. When something feels good, we allow that to take the reins and we can run with it. There are very few people in the world who I'm like, “Let's go,” and we just start moving, and it snowballs into something that we're all really excited about in the room. That takes a lot of trust and rapport to have with somebody to get to that point where you can allow something to come so naturally and it doesn't have to be this robotic thing. It feels very natural.
“Espresso” and “Please Please Please” came together in very different ways, but both were so exciting. They're such different songs, and to get to work with an artist that can put out “Espresso” and live in that world and then do the same with another song like “Please Please Please,” which is very different … I don't know any artist that could live under both of those umbrellas and sell them both so seamlessly and phenomenally. I feel blessed to be able to work with somebody that can do that.
One of the most remarkable things about Sabrina is the sense of humor that comes out on these two records that you worked on. Is that your sense of humor as well, or are you tapping into Sabrina's?
One of the most exciting things for me as a songwriter is getting to learn more about myself with every single artist that I work with — whether it's Sabrina or somebody else. Sabrina is so funny, witty, quick, smart, and so musical, just being within her orbit brings out parts of me that I didn't even know existed or wasn't necessarily brave enough to follow. She is this amazing artist that can encompass light and funny moments, and also immensely vulnerable, serious and heartbreaking moments, and have them all wrapped up in one. Of course, it's a collaboration. She is fully the engine and I just feel grateful to be around it for sure”.
I am going to end with an interview from Music Week. They talked to Amy Allen about the fun and laughter in the studio, her remarkable collaborations and hot streak, and advocating for women “leading the charge” in songwriting. Allen was also asked about the realities of songwriting and how it pays. Artists we know are paid very little and have to tour and rely on merchandise sales and record sales. However, songwriters have different challenges and obstacles:
“This year’s evidence of Allen’s hot streak includes Sabrina Carpenter’s seventh album Man’s Best Friend (on which she wrote on every track, as she did on Short N’ Sweet), which sold 85,305 copies on debut in the UK, at the time the biggest opening week for an album by an international artist in 2025. Man’s Best Friend has 163,316 sales to date, according to the Official Charts Company, while Short N’ Sweet has 816,453. Also in 2025, Allen wrote on Ed Sheeran’s No.1 Play and Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving, one of the most eagerly anticipated albums by a new UK act in recent memory. Meanwhile, Apt by Rosé and Bruno Mars – another recent Allen co-write – has a monstrous 1,519,027 sales.
Yet even the winner of the 2025 Grammy for Songwriter Of The Year, Non-Classical – who has written with a glut of stars also including Harry Styles, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Tate McRae, Selena Gomez and many more – still has pinch-me moments.
“I met Paul McCartney for the first time the other day,” Allen, who hails from Windham, Maine, begins. “He was at the Oasis concert and I was in the same box as him. I introduced myself and it felt like a full out-of-body experience, I didn’t know what to say, I really went into shell shock.”
You might think the former Beatle would have had some words of hitmaking wisdom, only, they didn’t quite get that far.
“I don’t even think I told him I worked in music,” she reveals, breaking into laughter. “There aren’t that many artists where I really am at a loss for words.”
Ed Sheeran’s album hit No.1 here shortly after Man’s Best Friend. What was it like to work with him for the first time?
“It was so amazing because I’ve been a fan of his for so long. I remember going to an Ed Sheeran show when I was a teenager. I don’t even know if I’ve told him this, I might have, but it was in Boston. I’d never even seen somebody use a loop pedal before. Some of his songs are some of the best written pop songs ever, so getting to be a collaborator was incredible. He’s in a place in his life that is really different to a lot of artists that I work with. He has a beautiful family, he’s a father and a husband. I’m not in that stage of my life. I’m not married and I don’t have children, so that was really nice. He can write big up-tempo bangers like Shape Of You, but he also is a really honest, vulnerable man and songwriter. He was ready to have a song [For Always] on the record that felt really heartfelt and was an ode to his loved ones. I had done some harmonies on it in the UK, then when Ed asked me if I wanted to add some more, I was over the moon because to get to do any background vocal with Ed Sheeran is amazing, let alone on a song that I really love.”
You’ve also co-written for Olivia Dean and Inhaler. Are more acts coming to you from the UK and Ireland?
“For sure. I also had a song come out this year with Dua Lipa [Handlebars with Jennie Kim], who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. In terms of Olivia, she is great, 10 out of 10, I absolutely love her. She’s a phenomenally talented artist and songwriter; so genuine, intimate and real and I loved getting to write with her. I’ve also worked with Charli XCX, Niall Horan, one of my dearest friends, and Sam Smith, who I’ve been close with for ages and worked with many times. Even a lot of American artists that I work with have been wanting to write in the UK, so I’ve really got to spend a lot of time here.”
Are you concerned about how AI might impact the craft of songwriting?
“There’s this video of a female news broadcaster, I think it was when the internet was first becoming a thing, and she was like, ‘I don’t think it’s going to catch on…’ I’ve been like that about AI for years now. And I’m like, ‘I can’t be that woman, I have to embrace this new wave that is coming.’ Somebody just told me a stat the other day that 28% of all songs uploaded to Deezer are AI-generated now, which is really wild. However, I have so much faith in the artists, songwriters and producers of this generation and the next. I will always stand by the idea that humans can offer something that computers can’t. And even if things turn into a big AI world for a bit of time, people are going to crave watching somebody play a live guitar solo, or listening to an artist that is saying a lyric that is so personal and undeniably unique to them as a human, that a computer could not have come up with it. But that’s just me.”
Earlier this year, UK major labels committed to a per diem allowance and expenses for songwriters at their sessions. What is your position on songwriters making a sustainable living?
“Per diems sound great, as long as it’s in addition to what the writer will be getting anyway, in terms of publishing and things like that. When I graduated from college, I worked at Lululemon for a year-and-a-half to save up money to move to New York. I also saved throughout college from playing with my band, I was playing so many shows. I had enough to live in a really tiny apartment in New York for a year and within that time I wrote my first song and ended up signing my first publishing deal, which then gave me a lot more runway in terms of finances and being able to move to LA and become a full-time songwriter, as opposed to working numerous jobs, which I know so many people have to do. That’s why everything with how songwriters are compensated with streaming platforms and so on is heartbreaking because there are so many phenomenally talented songwriters out there that can’t really ever fully get both feet in the door because they are financially struggling. They could be doing six sessions a week, but they’re doing one a month because they have to be working multiple jobs.”
Finally, do you have any dream collaborators?
“For sure. I mean, I’m the biggest fan of Rosalía and I’m a huge fan of SZA. Stevie Nicks would just break my brain if that ever happened. Carole King… I mean, so many!”.
Wrapping up there, for anyone who has not checked out the songwriting and incredible work of Amy Allen, check out her eponymous debut album from last year. Also, listen to artists she has written for and incredible songs that she has helped create. It would be amazing if Amy Allen got to work with artists like Stevie Nicks and Rosalía! One of the greatest songwriters we have ever seen, even though you may not have seen Amy Allen put in the spotlight and heralded as a modern-day songwriting genius, then that definitely needs to change! There is no doubting her…
INCREDIBLE talent and pedigree.