Photo: Carly Foulkes
After rising as an in-demand songwriter and working with superstars such as Harry Styles, Halsey, and Selena Gomez, rising musical ingenue Amy Allen is beginning the newest chapter of her musical career: the lead. She recently dropped her single “Queen of Silver Lining”, the catalyst for her soon to release album. Now, Flaunt savors her newest effort, “Difficult”. A female powerhouse, Allen strives to make music that is relevant and timeless. We caught up with the artist recently to talk musical origins and the perpetual quest for meaning.
**Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? Did it have any significance?**
I started writing when I was very young, I think I started when I was 8 or 9, I remember the first song being about a fight I had with my older sister. I think the song that had the first weight to it was probably in high school and it was about this big fallout I had with a friend that I had known for forever. I felt like it was a kind of coming of age thing, growing apart from people you've been friends with your whole life and then you get to high school and you’re kind of different people. It’s like turning into your own person and somebody else turning into their own and moving apart.
**What is your source of inspiration when you’re writing a song?**
I’m the youngest of three sisters and I have a lot of cousins and a big extended family and I think for a long time those were all the experiences I was drawing from. You know how every family has its ups and downs, from everyone going off in their own way. Growing up as the youngest of three in a small town in Maine I wanted to get out and pursue a dream and also still feel close to my family. That’s what I was writing for a while, as I got into college more inspiration is coming from relationships and feeling torn about wanting to follow this career path of mine while also being in love and having somebody I feel really close with which is a constant struggle really. I think that a lot of women, especially those in the music industry, want to have that independence of following these dreams that takes so much, it’s very intimate and very time consuming, while also wanting to have a relationship and be vulnerable with someone. It’s a pretty hard line to tow sometimes about how to have both and that’s what my new album is about, it’s a bit tricky to balance that sometimes.
**Being a female powerhouse in the music industry can’t be easy. What is it like to be a woman in this industry?**
It obviously has it’s up and downs. It’s still very much a male dominated industry, but I think that it’s a really exciting time to be a woman in music as well because you’re seeing a lot of changes, you’re seeing a lot more women on the charts, you’re seeing a lot more female songwriters. Most of my favorite female writers are women probably because we all kind of have a lot of shared experiences and are trying to pave this path that is still uncharted in a lot of ways. Everyday is something new, of course there’s all these moments where it's assumed you don't know how to adjust your microphone or record your own vocals or play multiple instruments. It's like this ingrained thing that is still on a lot of people's minds, that women can’t do these things or they’re surprised that we absolutely can. I’m feeling a lot of positivity in the sense of a lot more women being spotlighted for being great writers and artists, there is a long way to go, but I think it’s an exciting time to be a female in music.
**Tell me about your single “Queen of silver lining”. What was it like to write it and how did it feel to record your own music?**
It was so refreshing to be able to record my own music after the past couple of years. You know just singing on demos so other artists can cut songs that I’ve written, which has been a blessing, but it was all leading me closer and closer to the decision to go back to singing my own songs. It felt really good to be able to write a song and not worry about how to tailor it to pop radio right now and how to tailor it to a specific artist. It was just really refreshing to just not have to care about that anymore and have this be a very pure outlet for me to write about how I’m feeling and what it feels to be me right now. It felt really good to put vocals on that I know are going to be the actual final vocal that comes out and to play guitar and piano on it and feel like they are connected to it and not going to get rerecorded by a producer somewhere I’ve never met. I still love writing for other people of course, it’s a passion. I think it’s so beautiful to write something and have it come out to a massive audience on a stage that it wouldn't otherwise be if it hadn't come out with a huge pop artist.
**Do you think music is intersecting with our current realities at all? Such as the Black lives matter movement, COVID, isolation…**
It’s almost a strange time to talk about anything else. I know for a while we were all going to these protests and we were all trying to educate ourselves and our families and support our friends who need support. It felt very odd to be writing about anything personal or it felt egocentric to do that because there are so many bigger things at hand right now in the world.I think that we probably will be seeing some songs coming out, and I hope we do, that are about social change and justice and that are actually speaking a bit more to our generation and the world right now. In the 70s and 60s so many big songs were about Vietnam and what was actually happening and social change and we kind of moved a bit away from that. I hope that that’s what I try to do with my music too, to write about what’s really happening in the world. Some of the songs in my album are about what’s actually going on, what our generation is going through.
**How has your headspace changed with the pandemic? How will that change the future of your relationship with music and how you produce music?**
I think for me it’s kind of funny because a lot of the songs I wrote when I started the album over a year ago. A lot of what I grew up listening to are classic story tellers like John Prine, Carole King, Tom Petty, just people that really talk about what is happening in the world today and were not ashamed to try to write songs that would be meaningful and resonate now. I’ve always tried to strive to write lyrics that have a timeless effect and talk to the common person. I think that a lot of songs on my album are oddly fitting for right now. There is this one song on the album that I’m really proud of that’s called “What A Time To Be Alive” and at the time I was writing about what it’s like being a woman in this world right now and what it’s like to see global warming actually really feet to the fire happening in our generation. You know kind of picking up these pieces that other generations before left behind and how we now are the ones trying to deal with it. And now of course with the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID it kind of continues to take on this weight. So I’m just going to try to keep writing the way I’ve been writing for this album which is just really personal stories about being alive right now and just the common person walking through the streets of the world and seeing it falling down, but also turning into something new.
**Your new single Difficult will be coming out shortly, can you tell me a little bit about it and the album coming out?**
Difficult is kind of this satire on the word difficult because as a woman, when we speak or mind or we disagree it’s much more likely to be seen as difficult, but if a man just speaks his mind it’s empowered and righteous. It’s a satire on the word calling myself difficult because wanting to be independent and wanting to follow this dream and wanting to better myself and thriving for excellence in my career makes it also really hard to be vulnerable and fall in love and weave someone else into that. I feel like men get to do that all the time, but if you’re a woman and you’re really fighting for your career and pursuing it and you’re putting yourself first you'll be seen as difficult or whatever you want to call it. That’s what that song is about, jokingly calling myself difficult because I’ve been going after what I really want. I hope it will speak to a lot of women who have felt the same way.
