Amy Allen On the Record About Pop Songwriting, Sabrina Carpenter

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.

TikTok is obviously very focused on short soundbites of songs. Has that emphasis impacted any of the writing sessions you’ve done? Are people ever going in to writing sessions, trying to game a song to fit the TikTok mold?

I think it definitely subconsciously goes into the brains of a lot of us, because we are getting fed content that is really short and really quick. It’s just being fed and fed and fed to us. But I will say that the songs and the artists that I love the most are the ones that push against how consumption is going right now. And I feel like most of the artists that I work with are really falling in love with the long form of doing a full album and not caring if the song is four minutes and 50 seconds long. I feel like a lot of people are pushing against in a way that’s exciting, and bringing music back to why we all love music — which is honesty and not caring if it is a catchy 20-second bit. It’s telling a story.

Last year, you did an interview with Billboard where you told my colleague that you don’t really listen to pop radio. I find that interesting as someone behind so many pop radio hits. What’s the rationale behind that?

I mean, of course, as a human being on the earth, when I walk outside, I will hear whoever has the big song at that moment — you can’t escape big pop radio hits, but I think I stopped in my second year living in LA. I was doing two sessions a day, and I entered this phase, like so many songwriter friends of mine have too, where you feel like you’re in the passenger seat of this big, bad car ride that’s going up. That’s what pop music is. I felt swept up in it.

You can lose yourself in trying to chase a trend. And it really messed with my brain for like, a year, where I was just like, ‘how do I get out of this?’ Then, during COVID, I went back and started to fall back in love with the songs that I grew up listening to, my favorite artists that made me fall in love with me for the first place. I was like, ‘I need to be continuously inspired by things that are not happening right this second.’ It’s good for me to know what’s happening because a lot of my friends have made the songs that are happening, and it’s good to have a pulse on it. But I like to be inspired by things that are not happening right now. I have found that this allows me to tap into something that makes something sound much different than what’s happening right now. Those are the songs that excite me the most — when it feels like something that shouldn’t be popular right now, and then it becomes popular.

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.

Yeah, that is one of those hits where immediately upon first listen you know it is a very different pop song.

Yes, it’s so musical. I feel like a lot of people wouldn’t even pick up on the fact that there’s like, key changes happening and how like rangy that song is to sing. It’s like an impossible song to sing, and she does it so flawlessly.