Last Updated on 03/09/2024 by Arun jain
A few well-played profanities can make a pop song pop.
But few unlikely figures in recent memory have had the potential to make a career changer than Sabrina Carpenter, the former Disney Channel star. “Please please,” Her Dolly Parton-meets-Abba confection that became a surprise No. 1 hit this summer.
“Heartbreak is one thing, my ego is another,” whispers the carpenter, before begging for a new knee: “I beg you, don’t embarrass me, little sucker” — instead A little sucker (radio edit), she rhymes an unprintable four-syllable word for tongue-in-cheek love, dropping her voice and lathering it in a familiar hillbilly sass.
The carpenter sells it. But she had help—a playful, foul-mouthed voice in her ear insisting that even a pop star these days could dolly through a Tiktok-friendly system update or sneak a grandfather phrase. “That’s Me Espresso” In the cultural lexicon.
“Five years ago, I never thought it was OK,” said Amy Allen, the hit songwriter with “Please Please.” “espresso” and every other track on Carpenter’s breakout album, “Short and sweet.” But the Top 40, thanks in no small part to Allen, is entering an era of extreme necessity, in which regular shocks of the unexpected are cutting through the sludge of easy-to-think content.
“Now I’m afraid of normal things that sound like No. 1s,” said Allen, 32, who had her first chart-topping hit, “Without Me” by Halsey, five years ago. “Listeners are getting smarter and smarter now,” she added. “They want something weird, something off, something really catchy and unexpected about a song or a melody. The days of really polished pop are coming.”
Now a fixture in pop’s A-list backroom after years of hustling in every corner of the industry maze, Allen would know.
In its coffeehouses and barrooms it remains small-town ambitious Windham, Maine; Boston College nursing student and unsuccessful contestant on “The Voice”; Berklee College of Music Transfer Fronting A pop-rock band in search of a record deal; Major label probability As a solo artist; And today, one Indie singer-songwriter Released self-titled debut album on 6 Sep.
Along the way, Allen has become the tone-setting, behind-the-scenes pop writer of the moment, aiming to join a lineage with distinct staying power, name recognition and sonic trademarks. Max MartinDr. Luke, Esther Dean, isthe-dream, Benny Blanco, Julia Michaels And many others who have never peered through the shadows.
In relative anonymity, Allen has written songs for Selena Gomez, Lizo, Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Timberlake, Shawn Mendes and others, won a Grammy Album of the Year for his work on “Harry’s House” by Harry Styles, and received a nomination. At the 2023 ceremony, Songwriter of the Year for a track with King Princess and Charli XCX. (Award gone Tobias Jesso JrAnother indie singer-songwriter turned hitmaker.)
Allen’s musical fingerprints, along with her public profile, remained nearly invisible until they piled a faint, welcome smudge on the surface sheen of mainstream music: starters for Carpenter (“Feather”) and Tate McCrae (“10:35”). Hits. were sugary with a subtle bite (“Your signals are mixed, you act like a bitch/You fit every stereotype, ‘Send a picture'”). who made room for the unknown, Tone-heavy Successes, like McCrae “Greedy,” And Carpenter’s “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” down-the-middle (significantly whiter) pop turned fizzy again.
“She’s an obvious master of pop, but her aim is to create something that’s always a little bit more unique,” said Ethan Gruska, a songwriter and producer who has worked with Allen on her solo music. “The funny thing is that sometimes in the realm of Top 40 pop, if that’s your instinct, people feel the need to dumb it down. But he just walks in and she does her instincts.
Gruska highlighted Allen’s sense of “melody contour” – the way she weaves unexpected notes and jumps intervals with “unusual shapes” – citing the tone of the “Please Please Please” chorus. “It’s an Amy Melody,” he said. “Because Amy is in the room, those kinds of shapes are allowed.”
Allen’s two professional modes are distinct but complementary. Inspired by Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge — and “90s girls” inspired by the Cocteau Twins and Eddie Brickell, Allen tends to write his own moody songs in notebooks as poems, starting with verse. As a hired gun, she’s more economical, usually typing into an iPhone and going chorus-first (because what’s the point otherwise?).
But both types of collaborative songwriting often start with the same non-musical skills: gossiping about each other’s personal lives, or, in industry parlance, being “good in the room.”
At a recent low-key writing session in a friend’s home studio after a morning walk on the Venice boardwalk, Allen — petite but with an alpha presence, a powerful and disarming conspirator — was deciding between her two strands of elaborate romantic turmoil and intrigue. Universes as potential subjects.
She played “Twelve Thirty” by the Mamas and the Papas as vibe inspiration to her barefoot producer and engineer, Jack Weinberg, and pulled out a rough a cappella voice memo she’d sketched in the car.
“It’s either really cool or it’s inappropriate,” she said — the songstress’ in-the-moment mantra.
As the pair found the chords to match the melody, Allen quickly filled in the rest of the song, landing on a run-on hook with indie-folk curlicues and pop punch. It was being recorded in two hours.
“As self-deprecating as she likes to be, it’s never been a struggle,” Weinberg said. “We’ve never stopped — ever. The train’s moving. And there’s really no worries, which is pretty amazing.”
Jack Antonoff, a songwriter and producer who worked with Allen on Carpenter’s album, described her as “just frustrated and self-absorbed” without an ego in her pursuit of the song. “There’s something kind of melancholy about it,” he said. (Allen, who prefers to treat songwriting as a 9-to-5, eschewing the industry-standard all-night sessions, said: “I get a lot of ‘military’, too.”)
Another of Carpenter’s album collaborators, Julia Michaels, recalled Allen lighting up in the studio when she liked something, “moving her pretty little hips around” and invoking the Penny Lane character from “Almost Famous” as “how beautiful and carefree. And from life.” is full.”
At the same time, Michaels said, a songwriter Own studio hot streak “She’s a very strong and capable grown woman,” led her run as a major-label pop star. I trust Amy more to navigate this moment than I do.”
Allen was not given the opportunity to co-write an entire album with Carpenter, and her rise as a songwriter reflects the recent arc of her career.
Initially, Allen succeeded through pitch songs – demos written and recorded with producers who were then shopped around to various acts who could cut their own version. “I wasn’t in the room with the actors at all,” she said. Much of the work was to remain invisible, allowing existing pop star stories to sell the song to fans.
But the success of tracks like Selena Gomez’s “Back to You,” Allen’s first Top 40 hit, and Halsey’s “Without Me” propelled Allen to greater heights as more pop stars decided they should have a hand in his hitmaking. Allen cites the continued demystification of pop songwriting through streaming, Stain culture And social media — all of which pushed back the curtain — and the pandemic, which took acts off the streets (cutting off revenue streams in the process).
Spending time in the studio with Mendes and Styles “changed the game for me in terms of what it means to be a songwriter and how much it means to be a student of the artist you’re working with,” Allen said. “There’s a lot more longevity in doing that with an artist and figuring out how to tell their story when you’re telling your own story. And obviously if it’s something they’ve helped create, they’re more excited to promote it.”
The uniqueness of her work conversation with Carpenter can only come from a genuine bond that has sharpened over time, enabling it to become increasingly diverse between friends.
The results are phrases with an unmistakable stickiness like “Please Please Please” — “I’ll Let You Make Me Juno,” another chorus, which alludes to a movie about a teenage pregnancy about 20 years old — that “writes in session and pitches to the artist.” It would be impossible to do,” Allen said.
“When I think back on it, it’s weird, because Dolly has so much personality and quirkiness and jokes — the same with John Prine,” she added. “A lot of my influences have done it, and I didn’t really implement it until I met Sabrina. I think it takes the right artist to see how they work.”
Still, Allen remains disciplined, diplomatic and even a little paranoid about the “minefield” of claiming credit for songs or even specific melodic or lyrical hooks. She said she doesn’t remember which of the four credited writers on “Espresso” — including Carpenter, Julian Bunetta and Steph Jones — came up with the money line: “Say you can’t sleep/Baby, I know/That I Espresso.”
“No clue,” Alan repeated with defiant words. “There was just line of banter after line of banter in that room, people screaming. I wish I had his voice memo.”
Not every song that gets him out of the room is a hit. Despite her heat, Allen’s work on Justin Timberlake’s comeback album, “Everything I Thought It Was”, was underwhelming, and her singles failed to spark. “Everything has to line up perfectly for something to be a hit,” Allen said. “A lot of it is out of your hands.”
She said she’s probably written an average of seven songs per week for the past seven years. “And we’re talking about the big songs I have—what’s that, six?” Alan said. “The batting average is not strong. But it is enough to make a career.
It also takes the pressure off Allen’s own work as an artist, a personal outlet that now allows her to “rock the big scary pop music machine without competing in any way.” As a result, her solo debut, nearly five years in the making, is devoid of big hooks or quippy songs, with Phoebe Bridgers opting for an alternative singer-songwriter palette over spare “folksy”.
“It’s really good for my brain to work at those two different speeds,” Allen said. “I think taking on so many other people’s emotional things every day, all the time, I almost forget that I have my own things to go through.”
Allen is also aware of the dangers of representing the attitude cycle, noting that, outside of Diane Warren, “there aren’t a lot of women who have longevity as songwriters, which is really upsetting,” she said. “I will do everything in my power to break that stereotype.”
“I certainly would never claim to have superpowers, but if I could say that I have something that’s really helpful, it’s that my stylistic thing is very subtle,” Allen added. “I don’t think there will ever be a time when people listen to a bunch of different genres on the radio and they’re like, ‘Oh, another Amy Allen song.’”
She’s also currently popping up in rap, R&B, and Latin music sessions, and her name recently appeared in the credits for top 40-potential country-rock singer Ko Wetzel’s new album. There are only a few rooms left to break.
“I’m waiting for Beyoncé and Adele to hit me, but like, I’m getting a lot of artists who want to sing,” Allen said. “Maybe Rihanna decides to do an album and, you know, ‘Espresso’ is on her mind.”
Post Sabrina Carpenter and Pope’s next gen have a secret weapon: Amy Allen appeared first New York Times.