Sabrina Carpenter's Secret Weapon, Amy Allen, on the Art of Pop Songwriting
41:11 Share

This episode brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out?

Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can get a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

We'll be right back.

I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. Today, I'm talking to Amy Allen, who just scored a Grammy nomination for Songwriter of the Year.

She was a co-writer on every single track of Sabrina Carpenter's breakthrough album, Short and Sweet, including, of course, the massive singles Espresso and Please, Please, Please. She also worked with Justin Timberlake and Tate McRae, among others. And in September, she released her debut solo album as an artist, which is strong in its own right. Here's my interview with Amy Ellen. Fucked up crimes that you cause.

You go back a bit with Sabrina Carpenter. This album was not the first time you worked with her. What do you remember about first meeting her and first working with her? The first day that I met Sabrina, we wrote a song together called Vicious.

Which I still love dearly. It was on her album, Emails, the one before this album. I was so inspired by her sense of who she is and how concrete she is. She writes the way that she talks, which I, as a songwriter, absolutely adore. Some of my favorite people that I've learned from my whole life can

can write and they can be funny and they can be heartfelt and they can be like subtle and they can be in your face and they can be all those different things happening at once. And Sabrina writes that way. And I think everybody at this point that knows her would say that her personality and her songs go hand in hand. And that's super inspiring to me. So I just instantly had a writing chemistry with her and was inspired by her. And I feel so grateful that I've gotten to like go on this journey. The album is...

Probably one of my favorite themes I've ever gotten to work on. Did you have the sense that she was headed for the level of stardom she's at right now? For sure. I mean, it's easy to meet somebody and be like, oh, I think they have it in them. And it's really hard to find somebody and be like, oh, it's undoubtedly this is you are the thing. And the second I met Sabrina, I, yeah, I was like, some people just have it. She has it. She's always had it. And

She works so hard and she's just so good. And yeah, she's just such an amazing songwriter in person. It's been so exciting to see her win in this way right now. So you worked on every single song on her new album, which is pretty unusual. How did the sort of process for the album work? Was it all kind of in one place and in one stretch of time? We jumped around. We were in France for some of it. We were in California for some of it. We were in New York for some of it. It was just incredible.

Really exciting to get to be in different locations and get inspired by being in those locations. Everything just came from Sabrina. It's her life and they're her stories and it's her personality. And I just, yeah, it was awesome to just get to be a part of crafting it with her.

Was there kind of a mission statement for the album before, like, you're the person that's there the whole time? Was there a discussion of like, okay, we're going for her? How was it discussed? The mission statement's her. It's like she's just, yeah, it's everything came from her and she's so powerful.

fearless in terms of being honest and writing from the heart and following her instincts. She's a mastermind with knowing how to connect the dots to get to the end point that she wants to go to. But for me, it was really just following her life and what she's been going through. And I think that

for me was inspiring enough to to do everything with her were the 12 or 13 songs counting the bonus tracks selected from like a large pool other songs yeah i mean we wrote a bunch of songs but she's phenomenal at knowing who she is and what she wants she led the charge on the songs that got picked and she did an incredible job every call she's made on which song to lead with and the follow-up one is has been the correct call so i in awe of her confidence and

ability to execute on that has just been really exciting to watch. I know that you don't love getting into details or can't remember of who wrote what, so that's not what I'm asking about, but I've just, the

How much was in the air when Espresso was being created as far as like, oh, this is something, because you never know it's going to be huge, but you know it's something really quirky, really daring lyrically. Like, was there an awareness in the creation of, oh, this is something not necessarily huge because you never know, but something different, something standout. I can't relate to desperation.

It's like hard to not be inspired and have fun when you're with your friends and, you know, a fun like little chateau in France. But no, I mean, she's just full of life and wittiness and funny little isms that, you

It's easy to write a song like that when she's in the room because she's the engine behind it. She just has endless little stories and little funny ways she talks about things. It's hilarious once we start going and how much she can bring to the table. I'm constantly laughing when we're writing a song like that with her. She's just brilliant with how she describes things in the stories she tells. So

So yeah, that was in the air for sure. Sabrina and all of her Sabrina-ness was big time in the air then. It's interesting to get to a place where you can have like a line like that's that me espresso. There has to be an atmosphere of the improv thing of like, yes, and, you know, where no one's going to be like, hey, that's weird. How does an atmosphere get created where everyone, especially Sabrina, is able to just create so freely? And there's a lot of moments like that on the album where it's just like super quirky, super her. I've never...

gotten the opportunity to be a part of every song across an album. And I really needed that as a writer to be able to lock into, to be able to like get that rapport. And Sabrina and I just like, my chemistry that I have writing with her is one of my favorite things in my songwriting career. She also surrounds herself with phenomenal collaborators. In that room is Julie Bonetta and Steph Jones. And I'm endlessly inspired always by the two of them as well. And

I think it's a testament to Sabrina that she surrounds herself with people that she feels comfortable with and that she's inspired by. And that creates the atmosphere of anything goes. If we're all laughing, then like it's probably the line. She's just so good. Like, I just can't stress it enough. Like, she's just such a great songwriter and storyteller that it seamlessly gets to that point in the session where we're all having a good time and anything could be said and it would probably work. All of that I would give to her for sure.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies.

So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

Think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Aloe or Skins. Sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling, and for shoppers, buying, simple.

For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify. With ShopPay, that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts are going abandoned and way more sales happening. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whatever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get

the same checkout Skins uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash westwood1, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash westwood1 to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com slash westwood1. For Please, Please, Please, it's interesting. It was you, Sabrina, and Jack Antonoff. Because one thing

In a room in Jack's territory at Electric Lady, Jack is a force in his own right. There were three forces in that room. What was that sort of dynamic like? That was the first week that I ever met Jack. So I was just so excited to be there with him and

I, like I said, all of the sessions glow together a little bit, but that one does stand out. I remember it was snowing that day. We were at Electric Lady. The fearlessness of modulating in that song and then like the lyric content of don't embarrass me, motherfucker. Like it was just such a joy to help craft that one. And and it's really just as a songwriter, it's such a gift to be able to work with an artist.

That not only is daring enough to go in all those places, like musicality-wise with the modulation and, you know, how different that song really is for pop radio. It's pretty unique for this moment in time with how musical it is. And then also lyrically really go there with something that isn't, I'd never heard a song really talk about

that content in that way and be that witty but also heartfelt but also making jokes the whole time and then for her to be able to like flawlessly execute that and sing it like it's the most heartfelt thing of all time but also she's saying like all of these funny lines and melodically and you know be able to execute the high notes of that and then the low notes on motherfucker like it's it's such a

to be able to work with an artist that can execute all of those things and storytelling that way. So yeah, that day was special for sure. You said something interesting in another interview, which is that the way things work now, it's better to have things that are a little weird, a little different, and that the age of the person

the perfectly polished, smooth pop song is over. What's your thinking on that? Well, I think listeners are just getting smarter every day and requiring more. And I think the artists that are able to

deliver a song that is heartfelt and also simultaneously not being afraid to take big swings with musicality, not staying in the safe zone of what is considered to be a big pop song for the last like 10 years or so. And really like think outside the box and do that with a great lyric that means something to them that's real. I think those are the artists that are winning right now. And that excites me a lot as a songwriter, because when I listen to songs, I want to hear somebody sing.

talk about something honest and real that's going on with them. And I also want it to sound like something I haven't been hearing on the radio for the past few years. And so I think that's really exciting to me that artists are winning who are doing that right now. Because I think what's the point of making music if you're not saying something honest to yourself and if you're not taking chances and doing something that feels new and exciting. I feel like right now in 2024, as the year is closing out, that to me is like this North Star. It's like if the weird scares you a little bit, it's probably right.

If the musicality of it feels like it's pushing a lot of doors open that like you feel a little bit nervous to do so, it's probably the right direction. And just things like that. I think it's been nice for me as a songwriter to remember that music is always changing and it's always evolving and songwriting and production changes.

go through all these different phases and it's okay to experiment and it's okay to be out of your comfort zone in a lot of ways. And I give a lot of that to Sabrina. She's pushed me like lines I never thought would be okay to say. I've now learned like, oh, we can say this and then some. Like, this is what makes the song the song. I think seeing songs like that react and reaffirming in myself that the general public is not only ready for this,

something really out of the box, but they're wanting it and they're like craving it now. And I think that's really exciting. You came from a musical family. Your grandfather was a drummer and I guess your sister was a drummer and you played in a band with her. My middle sister came home from school one day when she was probably like 10. It said that she had started this group called No U-Turn. It's like all girl rock band and they needed a bass player. And I wasn't even completely sure what the bass was at that point. I was like,

around nine but I begged them to let me join. I'm trying to picture when you started playing bass at nine in this band how long did this last? I mean we played at like school assemblies and stuff we made a music video too which is like the greatest blackmail of all time for me but we I probably did it from when I was like nine till 13 maybe. We had a good run as a band. Now U-Turn was long-lived for a second but it really like made me fall in love with writing songs. My dad used to like really school us on classic rock when we were driving to and from school we had like a

hour-long commute when we lived in Maine to our school and back. So I was like learning bass lines of Stones songs and

and Fleetwood Mac and some local bands in Portland where I was from. I just geeked out on learning stuff that way. And then when I started doing original songs, everything like bust open and I just fell in love with music so intensely. So you were actually writing songs in that band. You weren't just the bass player. In that band, I was mostly just playing bass, but on the side when I would get home from our rehearsals and stuff, I would like secretly be starting to write my own songs. But I was too scared to ever audition for the band.

I was like the young person in the band that was like holding on by a thread the whole time. So I didn't really have a ton of leeway to audition my songs then, but I was writing for sure. When the nine-year-old bass player starts introducing their own songs, I guess that can be... Everyone's like, sit back down. Who were your role models? Who were you trying to write like at that point? I remember the first time my dad...

played me some Stevie Nicks songs, like just her own projects. I just was like really gravitating towards lyrics from like such an early age. I just loved them. And of course, melody as well. But I was like really just so honed in, especially Tom Petty as well. Just like queen, classic, witty, but also very vulnerable songwriting. I just always was really drawn to. So I think those are like the poets that I like looked up to and admired. Yeah.

I was starting to really learn how to write and to play the songs that they had written and try to figure out why they were resonating with me the way they were when I was so young. And you eventually went to Berklee College of Music. Was songwriting your main sort of focus from the beginning there or did that gradually come to be your... So I went to Boston College first for nursing school.

And then realized very quickly, I like went to go see a Twilight movie, one of the vampire movies. And there was like the scene where they're, you know, this like vampire baby is being born. And I blacked out in the movie theater because I like couldn't see blood, which I didn't know until I was already at school for nursing, which was the biggest oversight of all time. And then I just like, I really love, I just always loved music and I was missing music in my life. I like joined an acapella group, which was a massive mistake. So I'm not,

good at acapella and I just really missed music. So my parents, I wanted to go to Belmont and my mom was like, I actually just looked up, you know, music schools in the country. And there's one right down the road from where you're at. It's called Berkeley. And I'm was from such a small town called Windham in Maine. I didn't know anybody that had gone to school for music or, you know, I didn't have any one in my life that would have gone that path. So I didn't know. But then I auditioned and yeah, I went for songwriting.

And I loved my songwriting classes, but I think the class I actually got the most out of were my poetry classes. But yeah, I was technically there for songwriting. And I started a band. I know at Berklee, there's all these hardcore, virtuoso, jazzy players. When you're a songwriting person focused on just writing songs,

clear, great songs. It's a whole different thing. Is there a culture clash between the songwriting people and the like crazed virtuosos? That's such an interesting question. Because I transferred from BC, I lived with my friends from Boston College for like my whole time when I went to Berkeley. So in terms of like hanging out,

With a bunch of the students, like I really didn't except for my classes, which were mostly songwriting classes and then like my music theory classes, which I was epically failing out of all the time. Like I was failing every class. I don't know how I made it through college. I just, I didn't know any theory upon entering the school and I still somehow don't really know any now. That's really upsetting probably to my parents, but I didn't like...

I didn't feel a big division, but then when I would go see live shows and I would see some of the jazz players or some of the more classic players play, I was like, oh, there's a big difference. I like don't even know what a G clef is. And they're like riffing in some other like scale I've never heard of. But I just was so honed in on one, not trying to fail out of every class and to just like

trying to figure out why my favorite songwriters were my favorite songwriters. Like that was like my mission statement throughout my whole time there. I was like, if I can just walk away having written one song that is even like a fraction as good as like something that I listened to when I was little, that's still resonating with me now, then I've, this was all worth it for me. Like I'm on the right path. And I don't know if I did that to be completely honest with you, but I did start to gather the building blocks to be able to

craft a song that meant something to me. And that's been the thing that has led me my entire career is holding true to like a storyteller and trying to write something that means something to myself and therefore hopefully somebody else. Was your goal to be a recording artist in your own right from the beginning to be a pop songwriter for other artists? Or how did you see it as you were leaving school and heading out into the world?

I always have been, I've been in bands since I was little. Like I said, since I was nine, I've been in bands and I never stopped. But I think in college, it was just the only way I knew to keep the fire under me, to keep writing songs and have an outlet for people to hear the songs I was writing. Because as a college student, if you're going to classes every day and you're in school, it's hard to figure out how to get those songs to be heard.

cut by like a major artist. Like that is very, I didn't even really know that was a thing then. So it was the only way I really knew to have my songs be heard. And like, it was my, I don't know, calling card for my songwriting, I would say. But I also have just always liked

love performing so it was both like I never thought of myself as a singer really either but like singing has just always been the way to have my songs be heard on stage or however singing a demo or something like that and then it wasn't until probably like my last semester in college where it clicked like oh I could write songs for and with other artists for a job like I could actually

If I got good enough, I could maybe have a shot at doing this. Then I moved to New York with my band with the idea of signing a record label deal. And I remember being in this meeting at some label and listening to them play one of my songs back over the speakers with the band and just being like, I can get so much better at this. I have to allow myself to get better at this. It's not the time to sign a label deal and go 100% with the artist thing. I want to...

I want to be the best songwriter that I can be. And that was like eight years ago now. And I just dove headfirst into songwriting and collaborating, co-writing and working with artists. And I think it's the best thing I ever did. And I'm so grateful that I took that time to get better at writing instead of just diving headfirst into being an artist. And now it's really nice because I'm putting my own music out again. And I have had all of this experience of writing across so many genres and with so many different artists and

I've gotten to meet some of my favorite writers and producers, and it's just been this really, like, winding but pleasant road to get to where I am today. And so I'm really grateful for that. Flex your business with an American Express Business Gold Card. You'll earn four times membership rewards points on your top two eligible spending categories, like transit and electronics, each month on up to $150K in combined purchases per year. Plus...

You can now earn three times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on AmexTravel.com. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash business dash gold. Amex Business Gold, built for business by American Express. I think you're on mute. Workday starting to sound the same. I think you're on mute. Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn.

With LinkedIn Job Collections, you can browse curated collections by relevant industries and benefits, like FlexPTO or hybrid workplaces, so you can find the right job for you. Get started at linkedin.com slash jobs. Finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how.

Listening to your recent solo album, which I really enjoyed, it is very different from a lot of the co-writing you do. It has strong hooks, but maybe less of you don't feel the need to go for the juggler every time the way that your co-writes often do. It's probably more subtle sometimes. Are you drawing on different aspects of yourself when you're in a room with people or versus when you're by yourself?

When I'm writing with an artist or for another artist, I just focus on crafting the chorus and like really making a chorus feel like it stands alone and it can be on pop radio and it is like the crux of the entire song. Because in pop music, things come and go and phases change. But I think if you listen back to the last, I don't know, 60 years, however far you want to look back, like the chorus in pop music has always been the most important part, in my opinion.

So when I'm writing with an artist, that's still what I focus on. And I just like chisel it away until I feel like it's there with the artist. When I'm writing from myself, it's just a nice outlet to go back to how I started writing songs, which was just poetry and then putting that to music, not writing.

Putting so much pressure on myself to create a really hooky or super climactic chorus. I just want to write from the heart and just write this through line of a song. It's really cathartic for me to write that way. It takes a lot of pressure off music in general. Living in the pop

realm of music and living in LA can be quite a big machine you're a part of. So it's really nice for me to approach music that way. It allows me to get better at writing songs for other people too. So I'm really grateful for having that outlet. At some point, you clearly bore down and absorbed the sort of tenets and means and methods and structure of chart pop of the last 24 years. Was that something that at some point you did a sort of meticulous study of? Yeah.

My dad raised us on classic rock, but that's not to say that I wasn't constantly consuming Britney Spears and NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and everything. And even like Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette, like the slightly more moderate, like 90s to early 2000s. I had sisters. So, I mean, of course, in the car, my dad was playing us The Who and stuff like that. But when I was with my sisters dancing in the kitchen or like one

Once they got their licenses and we were driving around, we were just blasting Top 40 radio. We had like every iteration of Now That's What I Call Music. So I had this interesting culmination in my brain of Dolly and Petty and so many greats and John Prine clashing and coming into this weird, like congruent amalgamation of Britney and like I just said, Backstreet Boys and all the things that were also really happening at that time in my generation. So yeah.

I think it allows me to write songs that feel really pop-inspired, but maybe lyrically are reaching a little bit more for the profound, timeless sensibility, which I get really excited when music does that. I try to stay true to that because that's how I've been experiencing music since I was little. It's the clash of both worlds.

Your first forays into writing for big artists were really just sending demos out and trying to get them recorded. When did you first get in the room with a big artist? My first ever artist, I think they were DJ sessions, to be honest with you. I was being put in the room with some DJs at the time, which was fun and it was exciting.

But the first, I can't really remember the first artist that I was like a massive fan of that I got in the room and I was like, holy shit, like this is crazy. But my first song ever that I had on the radio was a Selena Gomez song. And I could get you out of here, if I could all again. I know I'd go back to you.

And I obviously had been a fan of Selena for a really long time when that happened. So that was a really exciting moment for me. The last session I ever had in New York, I started writing this song the night before because I had gone through this like weird little emotional roller coaster with this guy I'd known since I was young and

I started getting the idea of this melody in my head and then I brought it into my last session I ever did in New York. I showed it to the guys that I was writing with that day and we finished it and

I didn't really think that much of it, but then I sent it to my manager now. Her name is Gabs Lim and she's amazing. And she sent it to, it made its rounds. And then when I heard that Selena might jump on it and make it her own and sing it, and I was like losing my mind, but I'm also can be quite a pessimistic person with that type of stuff. I never get excited. I've always like, I'll believe it when I see it type of thing. And then I remember the first day it came out and hearing it on the radio, I was with my family.

back home in Maine and I heard it on the radio and I like lost my mind. I just like couldn't fathom how those gods had been connected and how that happened.

It was such a nice moment to look back on because I had no idea that moment in my life that was going to become. It's been like seven years or something since then. And I've been so grateful for every time I do get a song placed or I get to write a song with an artist. They always happen in the weirdest, most random ways. But that was the first one. And I'll never forget that moment. It was pretty crazy. You ended up in the studio with Justin Timberlake and NSYNC recently. For someone who did grow up on that stuff, you'd already had a lot of experience with big artists. It's weirder.

In my experience, when it's someone that you grew up on. Totally. I have just been such a fan. And my idea of pop music, like, really is formed by Justin and NSYNC and the music of my childhood and getting to be with him in real time and see how he works. Somebody that I've learned so much of my own pop sensibilities from, like, actually being, like, two feet away from me, bouncing ideas back and forth. It's just incredible. And yeah, it was very full circle for me.

I think the most iconic thing of being a songwriter is the fact that you get to learn from so many different people all the time and across so many genres. He was like a teacher of mine and he never even knew it until we got in the room together. I mean, melodically, he's phenomenal. Production-wise, he also leads the charge. It's really cool to see an artist come in and have so much integrity and such a concrete idea of what their music is and what they make and what they're incredible at and also then what they...

want to have help with or feedback on. And yeah, I think...

He's just been so self-sufficient for such a long time that it's really cool to get to see an artist that continues to work as hard as he does. But yeah, he's inspiring because he can do the production, he can do melodies, he can do weirds, he can do all of it. And sometimes that's hard to find, somebody that can be firing on all cylinders equally well. So another big song from this year was Tate McRae's Greedy, and she's someone who's really rising. So shut up yourself, baby

You've worked with a million people. What makes Tate stand out? I feel really inspired by Tate because, again, an incredible storyteller. But she also has this superpower of dancing. And I had never gotten to really be part of writing a song where movement is considered in a big way when the song is being written. And that song, I remember Tate coming in that day just being like, I want to write a song that I can move to.

in this way and we're like firing influences around and songs that were inspiring to us of the era we were talking about and she was playing us stuff that she thought she could really move to and so that song was exciting because I grew up writing songs in my bed and thinking songs that I'm writing are just guitar vocal like movement couldn't have been further from my mind that it's so cool now in my career to get to work with somebody like Tate that

is also writing songs in her bed, but has this ability that I could never even dream of having, which is dancing the way that she does and how important that is to her live show and just who she is as a person. So that song was really cool because I had just never, I had never gotten to be a part of something that was considered for. And I remember we were like both kind of scared of the song at first. We were like, oh, is it like,

Is it too this? Is it too that? Like, what is it? We're not sure. Too. Too, like, just too. When you're writing a pop song, there's always a fine line of, like, does it feel like it's, like, too pop? Or does it feel like it's too left or too right? Or what could it be? Like, you know, there's all these questions that, like, flood your mind. She'll be the first to say, like, we were scared of the song for a second and then...

And Ryan Tedder was like, no, this song, this is it. Let's go. Like, come on. And her and I were just like, no, it is. It's so fun. Like, we need to get, you know, it's just like, it was such a fun song. I think we were scared at how big it felt. I think that's what it was. And then she did the full lean into it. And I'm so glad she did because it obviously had a big life of its own and continues to have one. And she's just such a remarkable artist that it's really cool to have been a part of that song for her that

you know, kicked some doors down into what pop music was sounding like and who she is as an artist. So very grateful to be a part of that one with her. What are some things that a song absolutely needs to be a hit, especially right now in this moment? If the lyric scares you a little bit or you laugh at it or it makes you feel like a little bit nervous, it's probably correct because it's making you feel something for a reason.

musicality I think is in more than it has been for a really long time. So, you know, don't, I just constantly remind myself, like, don't be afraid to switch tempos, to modulate, to like really like step out of the box of what mute pop music has been for the past few years. You know, like I feel like we all kind of got locked into this grid of like, Oh, it's really good to just like use the same four chords for the whole song because the listener is

can compute that and that's good. And it's like, no, the list listeners can compute a lot of things, you know? Um, so I think, yeah, lean into musicality is something that I've been really inspired by the concept of, um,

Also, like my other North Stars always don't don't think about what's currently cool or like what's on the radio right now, because by the time the song you're by the time the song you're working on comes out, you know, it's going to be a year later than what's on the radio right now. So you'll just be behind the ball. And also it's like people already have what's on the radio right now. So why would you give them more of that? You know, I think it's really important to to listen to things that inspire you that are older, that are

nothing at all of what would be on pop radio and then, you know, create pop music from those types of influences. And then also mostly just like work with people that you love and you're inspired by. I think that's a huge thing that a lot of people don't think is like a massive ingredient to great pop music. And a lot of my favorite pop songs are written by

you know, groups of people that do everything together and they have a rapport and they trust each other and they have a shorthand with each other and you can hear it in the music. And I think that's really exciting. So all of that. And then I'll just be honest and write about something real. I think for me, those are kind of like hitting,

hitting the points that I want to live by as a songwriter, at least. There does seem to be a change. The age of the sort of top-down, fully written song for a pop star given to them by a professional songwriter...

The new generation of pop stars, to varying degrees, but want to be and are deeply involved in the songwriting. And it makes the songs much more distinct. The artists that I'm really inspired by and that I love working with the most are the artists that

a song that they put out couldn't possibly go to any other artist. I feel like we've gone through long phases of music. Like you said, like maybe in 2012 or like there was probably seven people on the radio that could have been given the same song and they all would have put it out and it probably would have done pretty well with any of them. And now we're in this really exciting time.

era where, like I said, like I think listeners are just requiring a lot more and it makes each artist really need to hone out their individuality that much more. And the ones that are able to do that and stand by authentically are the ones that

you know, are succeeding right now. And it's really exciting as a songwriter to get to be involved in those types of projects because it just means that the artist knows who they are and they have great taste and they're great songwriters as well. And yeah, it just makes the music better. I do think at least some of that is the Taylor Swift effect. When you have an era-defining songwriter who,

Almost every single song she's ever written is intensely personal. And from her own thoughts and feelings, it's hard to go back to the area you were talking about where songs could be exchanged between artists. I don't know if you agree on the causality there. Totally. I'm sure. There's a bunch of artists that I feel that way about, but I do believe that Taylor has been

pretty fundamental figure in that for sure. She's been writing about her own experiences for as long as I can remember. I think it's definitely not a coincidence that has led to the fandom that she has because it's believable. They're her stories and she's a phenomenal songwriter. So for sure, I think that importance of the artists telling their stories is more important now than ever. Guitar is

so prevalent in pop music. Sabrina, I Want Me Everywhere. Do you think that's going to continue for a while? Oh, I hope so. My biggest hope as a songwriter right now is that bands are like the next big frontier to crack again. I'm just like so inspired by bands all the time. I grew up in bands. I love going to shows where it's a full blown just band just ripping top to bottom the whole set.

that and I think that we've been in a bit of a band drought for the past like 15 years and I'm hoping that is going to come back with a vengeance because that really excites me as a songwriter a lot so I'm hoping so I mean like you said there's definitely a lot more guitar on pop radio right now than there's been in a long time and and I've been I have been noticing a lot more bands in general just popping off recently so that makes me excited

Let's close by talking about a song on your solo album, Girl With A Problem. Great song that really stands out. What do you remember about how that one came together? I miss the girl with the problem, the girl with the problem for one.

I loved writing that one. I wrote a lot of it just at my kitchen table when I was home one day. I think I like took a day off from going to a session because I just wanted to have a day at home and was still in a relationship at that point. But it was like ending and I was starting to write this song about like knowing that I needed to let go of that person because it had run its course. But then this concept of like understanding

I'm just a girl with a problem for like wanting you, even when it's not the correct thing to, to prioritize or to want in my life. And I just, yeah, I was listening a lot to like the cocktail twins and,

Fiona Apple and those are people I always listen to in my free time. I remember playing the riff on the guitar and then starting the verse melody and writing the verse and then I brought a lot of it into my friend Jake who produced a lot of the record and we finished it together and yeah it was like the cornerstone of the album once that song was written and produced I was like oh I know how the rest of the album is going to shape up now and it's one of my favorites to perform live we're on tour with Bleachers right now so

That one's been really fun every night to get to play. Like I said earlier, I really write very differently than for myself than when I write with other artists. I wrote the chorus like four days after I wrote the verse, which obviously when you're writing for pop artists like that is not a luxury that...

you can't walk away from a session only having a verse and then being like, Oh, we might get to a chorus in a few weeks. Like that doesn't happen. So it was just a good cathartic, right for me, right. I could remember that as a possibility. I can write in that way and I don't have to put so much pressure on myself all the time to deliver a song by 7 PM that is recorded and, you know, perfect. Um, but yeah, that one was a journey and it's really fun and I love how it came out. It is so perfect that you're to tour with bleachers. It's like the revenge of the songwriter store.

I know. I love it. It's so fun. Well, Amy, thank you so much for your time. Congrats on a very big year. Thank you, Brian. And that's our show. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us five stars and a nice review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify because that's always appreciated. But as always, thanks so much for listening and we will see you next week.

You're a legend. Do you know you're a legend?

You can't be a legend having this much fun. The Inside of You podcast. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Panoply.