Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter. Getty Images (2)
Songwriter Amy Allen already has one Grammy win under her belt, but getting nominated never gets old — and neither does celebrating the honor.
Allen, who racked up four nods last month when the 2025 nominations were announced, found out about her latest accolades in the most appropriate place possible: work.
“I was in London in the middle of a session,” the Los Angeles–based artist exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month. “I was obviously nervous because there’s so many phenomenal writers that are friends of mine, and you just never know which way it’s gonna go. But I was in the middle of a session and my manager texted me just, in all caps, ‘YES!’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And then I checked in and then the text messages from friends started coming in, and it was very exciting.”
Allen couldn’t take too much time out for celebration — she was at work, after all — but she and her fellow musicians broke for “a little congratulatory” toast with Aperol spritzes, “which was very cute and fun,” she said.
The musician — who previously won an Album of the Year Grammy last year for her work on Harry Styles’ Harry’s House — is nominated for four awards at the 2025 ceremony: Song of the Year (Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please”), Album of the Year (Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet), Best Song Written for Visual Media (‘NSync’s “Better Place” from Trolls Band Together) and Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical.
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Allen is particularly honored to be nominated in the Songwriter of the Year category, which is only in its third year of existence (she previously scored a nod in 2023).
“It’s a chance to be recognized for your body of work and not just one specific song. And for me, that’s really exciting, especially this year, because I have country songs that have allowed me to get to the nomination,” she told Us. “And then I have a whole variety of different genres of songs with the Sabrina project, because she’s such a phenomenal artist and writer. She crosses genres. It’s a really exciting time for me to be able to move through genres and get to showcase the type of songwriting that I love to do, which is really varied and holistic.”
The tracks listed in Allen’s Songwriter of the Year nomination are indeed quite varied: in addition to three Carpenter cuts (“Please Please Please,” “Taste” and “Espresso”), the roster includes songs by Justin Timberlake, Olivia Rodrigo and Leon Bridges as well as two hits by country artist Koe Wetzel.
Amy Allen. Lorne Thomson/Redferns
In between writing all those songs for other artists, Allen found time to record her own self-titled debut album, which was released in September. While she loves the variety of musicians she collaborates with when she’s writing for other people, she takes a totally different approach when she’s working on songs she plans to keep for herself.
“I usually start the songs at home by myself. It comes out of a place of like, I’ve been writing with and for other people so much that, for my soul, I need to just sit in silence for a little bit with my own thoughts and just write from the heart and get back to what I love about music,” she explained. “So that’s kind of where all the songs off of my first album came from, is just taking a break from always helping somebody else tell their story and giving a ton of my emotions to pop radio. It’s really nice for me to live outside of that world of collaborating all the time and go a little bit more internal, and it’s very cathartic for me. … It’s not swinging for the fences in any way of like, ‘Let’s make this the biggest song possible.’”
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Allen certainly can write the biggest song possible, though, as evidenced by her work on Short n’ Sweet. She cowrote all of the songs on the acclaimed blockbuster album, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and gave Carpenter her first Hot 100 No. 1 in “Please Please Please.”
The duo first collaborated on Carpenter’s 2022 album, Emails I Can’t Send, and Allen “instantly loved” their connection. “The chemistry just started building from day one,” she told Us. “I feel like people can spend their lifetimes as a songwriter looking for collaborators, and I just feel really grateful that I’ve gotten some great ones so far in my career that I really cherish and learn from constantly too.”
Allen said her favorite Short n’ Sweet track changes depending on her mood, but she confirmed that “Juno” was indeed inspired by the teen-pregnancy movie of the same name — and the playfully raunchy idea was “fully Sabrina.”
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“I’m so grateful to have her as a collaborator for moments like that, because I think being a pop songwriter, like, five years ago, if somebody had come in with that concept, that would’ve been like, ‘I’m not sure people will get that,’” Allen explained. “But because she’s so authentic and her artistry is so intact and she knows who she is, the second she started talking about her idea for that, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this, it’s gonna be great and it’s gonna be witty and it’s gonna be heartfelt.’ She’s such a fearless leader with ideas like that.”
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Allen truly believes in the old adage that it’s an honor just to be nominated — “having your name up there in any capacity already feels like a win because music is so subjective” — but if she wins again in February, her mom has ensured she has a great place to put her second Grammy.
“I actually had [my away] in my little home studio, and then my mom was visiting a few months ago and she moved it from my home studio down to my living room,” she recalled. “So it’s a little bit more visible now, which is a classic mom move. … [My mom’s like], ‘Let ’em know, let the world know!’”
The 67th Grammy Awards air on CBS Sunday, February 2, at 8 p.m. ET.
