That’s That Amy Allen “Espresso”

It was the dog days of summer in Los Angeles, and Amy Allen was enjoying some quiet time on the beach when a friend group nearby burst into a rendition of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.” This is a fairly common occurrence in 2024 — the pop star’s goofy, endlessly quotable disco jam has been inescapable in the hot-weather months — except for the fact that, unbeknownst to the beachgoers, they were sitting right by one of the song’s co-writers. “That doesn’t get old,” Allen says of hearing her music out in the wild.

And it happens a lot these days. Since landing her first big hit with Selena Gomez’s “Back To You” in 2018, Allen has been helping artists find their voice and sound more like themselves by crafting tunes for Harry Styles (“Adore You”), Olivia Rodrigo (“Pretty Isn’t Pretty”), Tate McRae (“Greedy,” “Run for the Hills”), Blackpink’s Rosé (“On the Ground”), and more. If you’re a pop stan who pores over lyrics on Genius or studies Spotify credits, then you’ve probably had the experience of looking up your favorite song from an album only to realize Allen had a hand in it. Lately, Allen’s been on a winning streak with Carpenter, co-writing every track on the singer’s Short n’ Sweet, which Rolling Stone called a “masterclass in clever songwriting” for its sarcastic, biting tone mixed in with dirty humor.

So even if you don’t know Allen’s name — or wouldn’t recognize her sitting on the sand next to you — her songs have absolutely been stuck in your head this summer. And now, with the release of her debut album on Sept. 6, she’s planning on taking up space in your brain this fall, too.

Unlike the glossy, bubblegum projects she’s known for, Allen’s self-titled project is better suited for crying in your bedroom during sweater weather than shouting along to on a summer road trip. But you can still hear the DNA of her Top 40 work in the quietly devastating “kind sadness” or the sweet-yet-biting “reason to forgive.” “It’s the most ‘me’ songwriting I’ve ever done,” she says. And her gift at capturing universal experiences through ultra-specific details remains on full display across its 12 tracks (some of which she wrote as far back as six years ago). “I’ve wanted to make this album so that when I’m an old lady, I can play it for my grandkids, and they can resonate with it the way I'm still resonating with it when I'm an old woman.”

Allen has been making music since she was a teenager growing up in Windham, Maine, when she taught herself to play bass guitar so she could join her older sister’s band. She originally went to Boston College for nursing but after a brief stint with an a capella group (“the worst thing I’ve ever done,” she jokes), she realized how much she missed music and decided to pivot. In a way, she doesn’t see those two career paths as that different — they’re both about helping people. “Once in a while a song will come out and I’m like, ‘I think that just changed my life a little bit today,’” she says.

After graduating from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, she started taking label meetings in New York and decided she wanted to pursue songwriting for others. “I have absolutely fallen head over heels in love with it,” Allen says of the co-writing process. “It’s become a huge part of my music identity and helped me grow as a writer, and that makes me that much more excited to put my own stuff out, because it feels like a really special thing.”

“I’ve wanted to make this album so that when I’m an old lady, I can play it for my grandkids, and they can resonate with it.”

While there are pieces of herself in every song she writes, “there are so many things you don't have a say in as a songwriter,” Allen says. “You can write the song, but that finished product is still open to a lot of different hands touching it.”

So with her own album, Allen revels in left-field choices. “Break,” about deciding to go on pause with a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, is built around the original iPhone voice memo Allen recorded right after he left her place — complete with random siren noises. “Seven ambulances drove past my house” while recording, she says. “That one is such a special little time capsule to me.”

It’s also a showcase for her skill at writing about heartbreak. “Just cause I loved you / I always found a way to bend / Guess I had to get my heart split in two to finally listen to my head,” she sings. On TikTok, Allen calls herself the “queen of emo writing,” and in 2020, fresh off her “first feel-good song” with Styles’ “Adore You,” Allen declared in an interview that she “can't write happy songs.”

When I ask how she feels about that quote now — in the summer of “my give-a-f*cks are on vacation” — Allen laughs. “It’s easy for a lot of songwriters, myself included, to want to take our craft so seriously,” she says. “The past few years have been a paradigm shift in my head.” She credits Carpenter for helping her tap into a more fun, carefree style of writing. “Happiness and ‘I don’t give a f*ck’ are emotions people like to hold onto, and they’re a worthy takeaway from music,” Allen says. “I've just had to work harder at what feels authentic to me to make those types of songs.”

Did she know, when she and Carpenter sat down with co-writers Steph Jones and Julian Bunetta to write “Espresso,” that they were making one of the most meme-able hits of the year? “I'm notoriously bad at calling it,” Allen says. But she loved listening to the track immediately, a good sign they might have landed on something big. “Normally, if I'm a part of something, I'm not going to listen to it in my own time; that feels self-indulgent,” Allen says. “But a few will sneak through the cracks, where I'm secretly listening in my headphones 24/7. [“Espresso”] was one of those.”

For Allen, the secret ingredient to a great pop song is the willingness to throw listeners a few curveballs. “We've been told this narrative about pop music that the most obvious things that cater to the lowest common denominator are the way to do it,” she says. “I actually think it's the complete opposite.”

And if you have any doubts, the proof is in that me espresso. “It's a pairing of making something that’s fun and kind of obvious,” she says, “but being daring enough to push it that extra 10 percent — to ask the listeners to go there with you.”