Meet Amy Allen, the songwriter behind the music stuck in your head

NEW YORK (AP) — Amy Allen might not yet be a household name, but her work lives in your brain rent-free. And it’s grabbed the attention of the Grammys.

The 32-year-old songwriter has composed enduring hits with Halsey (“Without Me”), Selena Gomez (“Back to You”) and Tate McRae (“Greedy”). Her contributions to Harry Styles’ “Harry’s House” earned her a Grammy for album of the year in 2023. Other credits include songs from Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX, Rosé, Reneé Rapp, Shawn Mendes, Leon Bridges and Justin Timberlake.

2024, however, was the year Allen’s work became inescapable — thanks in large part to her collaboration with another rising star. Allen co-wrote all 12 tracks of Sabrina Carpenter’s bubbly “Short n’ Sweet,” including “Espresso,” an instant song of the summer that propelled Carpenter to a new stratosphere of stardom, and “Please Please Please,” the follow-up single that proved that her winking, quotable pop had staying power. (Everyone’s favorite lyric? “Heartbreak is one thing, my ego’s another / I beg you, don’t embarrass me,” followed by a rhyming profanity rasped with a smirk.)

This fall, Allen’s work sent her to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Songwriters chart for seven weeks — an impressive feat, considering her competition includes artists like Carpenter herself and Kendrick Lamar.

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“Once the songs are out of my hands, I just try to let them go to the world,” Allen told The Associated Press. It helps that the world has, in turn, embraced them.

When nominations for the 67th Grammy Awards were announced, Allen was in the midst of a writing session in London. The news came in a text from her manager: She was nominated four times, including her second nomination in the songwriter of the year, non-classical, category that has only existed for three years. If she wins, she will become the first woman to take home that trophy. “Short n’ Sweet” is up for album of the year and “Please Please Please” for song of the year.

Her fourth nod is in the song written for visual media category, for “Better Place,” a collaboration with NSYNC for “Trolls: Band Together.”

“People really gravitate toward her energy, as well as obviously her talent. That just goes without saying,” said Julia Michaels, another hit songwriter, artist and collaborator on “Short n’ Sweet,” of Allen.

“She just always brings a happy, optimistic attitude, that like, ‘anything is possible today,’” added Julian Bunetta, who also co-wrote and produced songs on Carpenter’s album. “The ease of that makes conversation come natural, which makes people open up and share details about their life.”

Allen’s path to professional songwriting wasn’t necessarily linear. Growing up in Maine, she joined a bluegrass band, a rock band and played music at Irish pubs throughout her teens. It wasn’t until her early 20s, when she transferred to Berklee College of Music after two years in nursing school at Boston College, that she realized being both a songwriter for others and a performing artist was a career option.

“I had to really dig to realize, like, Carole King writes for other people, but she’s also an artist. And then it was later on, way later on, when I came across writers like Julia that were doing it professionally,” Allen said. “I knew that it was like in my blood since I was really little, that it made me feel more connected to myself and the world around me in so many ways, more than anything else I ever experienced.”

“Espresso” came together in a Paris studio. Allen, Bunetta, Carpenter and their co-writer Steph Jones “were kids having fun and laughing and playing,” Bunetta said, explaining that joyful energy produced the track’s cheery sound and nonsensical zingers (“that’s that me espresso”).

Allen believes “Short n’ Sweet” found success through its quirky, playful pop — because listeners want unpredictability, narrative songs with personality and perspective.

“The general public is so much smarter than a lot of songwriters and a lot of people in the entertainment industry, give them credit for,” Allen said. “The artists that are winning are the ones that are willing to put everything out there, to say something so direct and so honest to them and so authentic that it’s almost impossible for the public to turn away.”

In October, she was out of the studio and on the road, opening for collaborator Jack Antonoff’s band Bleachers on a slate of dates across Europe, Los Angeles and New York. She performed songs from “Amy Allen,” her self-titled debut album released in September — a collection of acoustic guitar melodies and percussion-led singer-songwriter pop.

Touring those songs came with a realization. “I love writing for other artists and with other artists, and I will do that for a very long time,” Allen said. “But it’s also so important for me to go back to how I fell in love with music, which was writing songs on my bed, writing little poems in my bedroom.”

“Whether she wants to be the biggest artist in the world or she wants to make whatever kind of music she makes, I have no doubt that she is capable of doing it,” said Michaels, who launched her own pop career in 2017 with her multi-platinum song “Issues.”

“I’m always going to go after both,” Allen said.

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The 67th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 2, 2025, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The show will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+. For more coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/grammy-awards.