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.

“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.

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.

Amy Allen poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Amy Allen poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Amy Allen poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Amy Allen poses for a portrait in Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Football at its very best.

That was Arne Slot's memory of Liverpool’s richly entertaining meeting with Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last season.

OK, Liverpool ultimately went out, beaten at Anfield in a round-of-16 penalty shootout by the team that would go on to win the competition for the first time, but Slot loved the way his side played and still maintains it was “the best game I’ve managed in my career.”

They meet again almost 12 months on, with Liverpool — and Slot — in a very different place.

Indeed, the Dutch coach appears to be fighting for his job heading into the upcoming quarterfinal doubleheader with the European champions that starts with the first leg in Paris on Wednesday.

A 4-0 loss at Manchester City in the FA Cup on Saturday was Liverpool's latest poor result of a season that initially began with so much hope after the club's record summer splurge of $570 million on new players on the back of cruising to the Premier League title.

With the Reds having long given up hope of retaining their league title, the Champions League is their only remaining chance of a trophy.

On current form, that looks unlikely.

While Liverpool has lost four of its last seven games in all competitions in a run of results that has piled the pressure on Slot, PSG is on a four-match winning run that contains back-to-back victories over Chelsea in the Champions League's round of 16 (5-2 and 3-0).

Only one team has retained the Champions League since the turn of the century — Real Madrid won it for three straight years from 2016 — but PSG looks in good shape to do so.

Slot and Liverpool might just be happy to get out of the Parc des Princes with a fighting chance of advancing going into the second leg at Anfield.

There are three other quarterfinal matchups: Real Madrid vs. Bayern Munich, Barcelona vs. Atletico Madrid, and Sporting Lisbon vs. Arsenal.

It's one of the more unlikely Champions League facts: Madrid and Munich — winners of the title a combined 21 times — still haven't met in the final.

They won't this season, either.

The two European heavyweights are, however, meeting in the knockout stage for the sixth time in the past 14 seasons — and it has been a one-sided rivalry.

Madrid, the record 15-time champion, has won four of five two-legged matchups with Bayern since the 2011-12 season: once in the quarterfinals and three times in the semifinals, most recently in 2024. Bayern won in the semifinals in 2012 after a penalty shootout.

Bayern might never have a better chance to end that miserable run, given the German champions are unbeaten in 13 games in all competitions. Star striker Harry Kane is expected to be available, despite missing Saturday's win over Freiburg in the Bundesliga with a minor ankle issue sustained in national team training last week.

Madrid is coming off a comfortable round-of-16 win over Man City but, more recently, a 2-1 loss at Mallorca on Saturday that hurt its Spanish league title hopes.

The players of Spanish rivals Barcelona and Atletico might be sick of the sight of each other by next week's second leg.

That's because their upcoming Champions League doubleheader will complete a barrage of five meetings between the teams in the space of two months, culminating in three matches in 10 days.

On Saturday, Barcelona came from behind to beat Atletico 2-1 on the road to strengthen its hold on the Spanish league lead. In February, they met in the Copa Del Rey with each winning big at home and Atletico advancing on aggregate.

They have met twice in the Champions League knockout stages and both times at the quarterfinal stage, with Atletico going through in 2014 and 2016 on its run to the final each season. Atletico played the second leg at home on those occasions, too.

The first leg of their current head-to-head is on Wednesday.

Fresh from guiding Sweden into the World Cup, Arsenal striker Viktor Gyökeres makes a first return to the club that turned him into a globally renowned striker.

At Sporting, Gyökeres scored 97 goals in 102 games, including 54 last season when he outscored the likes of Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah. Quite the rise, then, for someone who previously had barely played a top-tier league game.

Since joining Arsenal for $85 million, goals haven’t been so easy to come by — he has 16 in 42 matches in all competitions — but remains first choice under coach Mikel Arteta, who values his line-leading qualities.

And, after his recent heroics for Sweden when he grabbed a hat trick against Ukraine and then the crucial late goal against Poland in the winner-takes-all playoff, Gyökeres should be full of confidence on his return to Lisbon for Tuesday's match.

Sporting will look to make home advantage count like it did in the round of 16, completing a turnaround against Bodø/Glimt by winning the second leg 5-0 for one of the great Champions League fightbacks.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Sweden's Viktor Gyokeres applauds to supporters at the end of the World Cup playoff semifinal soccer match between Ukraine and Sweden in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, March 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

France forward Kylian Mbappé (10) sits on a ball during the warm-up before the international friendly soccer match between Colombia and France in Landover, Md., Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)