9-22-2024 AA Restaurants - Flipbook - Page 9
The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, September 22, 2024
9
Songwriter
adding sizzle
to pop songs
Credited on Carpenter’s summer smashes,
Allen helps usher in era of quirk for Top 40
By Joe Coscarelli
The New York Times
Some well-played
profanity can make a pop
song sizzle.
But few expletives in
recent memory have had
the potentially career-altering crackle of the one let
fly by Sabrina Carpenter,
a former Disney Channel star, on “Please Please
Please,” her Dolly Partonmeets-Abba confection that
became a surprise No. 1 hit
this summer.
“Heartbreak is one thing,
my ego’s another,” Carpenter flutters, before a plea
to a new fling: “I beg you,
don’t embarrass me, little
sucker” — except instead of
little sucker (the radio edit),
she rhymes an unprintable four-syllable term of
tongue-in-cheek endearment, dropping her voice
low and lathering it in a
knowing hillbilly sass.
Carpenter sells it. But
she had help — a playful, foul-mouthed voice
in her ear insisting that a
pop star these days might
as well run Dolly through
a TikTok-friendly system
update, or sneak a Dada
phrase like “that’s that me
espresso” into the cultural
lexicon.
“Five years ago, I would
have never thought it was
OK,” said Amy Allen, the
hit songwriter credited
on “Please Please Please,”
along with “Espresso”
and every other track on
Carpenter’s breakout
album, “Short n’ Sweet,”
which debuted atop the
Billboard chart.
But Top 40, in no small
part thanks to Allen, is
entering a much-needed
era of quirk, in which
regular jolts of the unexpected are cutting through
a sludge of smooth-brained
content.
“Now I feel scared of
generic things that sound
like No. 1s,” said Allen,
32, who landed her first
chart-topping hit, “Without Me” by Halsey, five
years ago. “Listeners are
just getting smarter and
smarter now,” she added.
“They want something to
be odd, something to be
off, something to be really
catchy and unexpected
about a lyric or melody. The
days of really polished pop
are shifting out.”
Now a fixture in pop’s
A-list backrooms after
years of hustling in every
corner of the industry
maze, Allen would know.
She has been a smalltown aspirant in the coffeehouses and barrooms
of Windham, Maine; a
Boston College nursing
student and unsuccessful contestant on “The
Voice”; a Berklee College
of Music transfer fronting
a pop-rock band in search
of a record deal; a major
label prospect as a solo
performer; and today, an
indie singer-songwriter
who recently released an
eponymous debut album
herself.
Along the way, Allen has
become the tone-setting,
behind-the-scenes pop
writer of the moment,
aiming to join a lineage
with varying degrees of
staying power, name recognition and sonic trademark
that includes Max Martin,
Dr. Luke, Esther Dean, Sia,
Amy Allen, seen Aug. 20 in California, helped write“Espresso”and“Please Please Please.” ADALI SCHELL/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The-Dream, Benny Blanco,
Julia Michaels and many
more who never peeked
out from the shadows.
In relative anonymity, Allen wrote songs for
and with Selena Gomez,
Lizzo, Olivia Rodrigo,
Justin Timberlake, Shawn
Mendes and others,
winning an album of the
year Grammy for her work
on “Harry’s House” by
Harry Styles, and earning a
nomination for songwriter
of the year, for tracks with
King Princess and Charli
XCX, at the 2023 ceremony.
Allen’s musical fingerprints, along with her
public profile, had stayed
nearly unseen until they
piled into an unmistakable,
welcome smudge on mainstream music’s surface
sheen: Starter hits for
Carpenter (“Feather”) and
Tate McCrae (“10:35” with
Tiësto) were sugary with
subtle bite. Those made
room for stranger, vowelheavy breakthroughs, as
McCrae’s “Greedy,” and
Carpenter’s “Espresso”
and “Please Please Please,”
made down-the-middle
(notably white) pop fizzy
again.
“She is an obvious master
of pop, but her drive is to
make something that’s
a little bit more unique,
always,” said Ethan Gruska,
a songwriter and producer
who has worked with Allen
on her solo music. “What’s
cool is that sometimes in
the sphere of Top 40 pop, if
that’s your instinct, people
feel the need to dumb it
down. But she just walks in,
and she does her instinct.”
Allen’s two professional
modes are separate but
complementary. Inspired
by the “’90s girls” — Sheryl
Crow, Alanis Morissette,
Melissa Etheridge — and
also Cocteau Twins and
Edie Brickell, Allen tends to
write her own moody songs
longhand in a notebook as
poems, starting with the
verse. As a hired gun, she is
more economical, usually
typing into an iPhone and
going chorus-first (because
otherwise what’s the
point?).
But both kinds of collaborative songwriting often
start with the same nonmusical skill: gossiping about
each other’s personal lives,
or in industry parlance,
being “good in the room.”
Not every song that
makes it out of the room is
a hit. Despite her heat, the
reception to Allen’s work
on the comeback album
from Justin Timberlake,
“Everything I Thought It
Was,” was tepid, and its
singles failed to spark.
“Everything has to line
up perfectly for something
to be a hit,” Allen said. “So
much of it is out of your
hands.”
She said that she has
probably averaged writing
seven songs per week every
week for the last seven
years. “And we’re talking
about big songs I’ve had —
that’s like, what, six?” Allen
said. “The batting average ain’t strong. But that’s
enough to have a career.”
It also takes the pressure
off Allen’s own work as an
artist, a personal outlet that
now allows her to “shake
off the big scary pop music
machine without having to
compete in any way.”
As a result, her solo
debut, some five years in
the making, is without big
hooks or quippy lyrics,
opting for an alternative
singer-songwriter palette,
like Phoebe Bridgers doing
a sparer “Folklore.”
“It’s really good for my
brain to work at those two
different speeds,” Allen
said. “I think taking on so
much of other people’s
emotional things every day,
all the time, I almost forget
I have my own things to
work through.”
Allen also is aware of
the risks of representing
a trend cycle, noting that,
outside of Diane Warren,
“there’s not a lot of women
that have a ton of longevity as songwriters, which is
really upsetting,” she said.
“I will do everything in my
power to break that stereotype.”
“I would definitely never
claim to have a superpower,
but if I were to say that I
had something that is really
helpful, it’s that my stylized thing is pretty subtle,”
Allen added. “I don’t feel
like there’s ever going to
come a time when people
are listening to a bunch
of different genres on the
radio, and they’re like, ‘Oh,
another Amy Allen song.’”
Biopics about pair of Williams
reflect musicians’ individuality
By Jake Coyle
Many of the expected
conventions of music biopics are present in “Piece by
Piece,” about the producerturned-pop star Pharrell Williams, and “Better
Man,” about the British
singer Robbie Williams.
There’s the young artist’s
urge to break through,
fallow creative periods
and regrettable chapters of
fame-addled excess.
But there are a few, little
differences. In “Piece by
Piece,” Pharrell is a Lego.
And in “Better Man,”
Williams is played by a CGI
monkey.
If the music biopic can
sometimes feel a little stale
in format, these two movies,
which premiered at the
recent Toronto International Film Festival, attempt
novel remixes. In each film,
each Williams recounts his
life story as a narrator. But
their on-screen selves aren’t
movie stars who studied to
get a part just right; they’re
computer-generated
animations living out real
superstar fantasies.
While neither Williams
has much in common as a
musician, neither has had
a very traditional career.
Their films became reflections of their individuality and, maybe, a way to
distinguish themselves in
the crowded field of music
biopics.
“This is about being
who you are, even if it’s not
something that can be put
in a box,” Pharrell said in a
recent interview alongside
director Morgan Neville.
The experience watching “Piece by Piece,” which
Focus Features will release
Oct. 11, can be pleasantly
discombobulating. A wide
spectrum of things you
never expected to see in
Lego form are animated.
Virginia Beach (where
Pharrell grew up). An
album of Stevie Wonder’s
“Songs in the Key of Life.”
Jay-Z.
“I’m just so grateful that
everybody said yes,” Pharrell says. “Morgan said yes.
Lego said yes. Focus said
yes. Universal said yes.
When you get to all those
yeses, you realize how
impossible this is.”
Neville made “Piece by
Piece” like a documentary. When he interviewed
people for the film, he
spoke to them by video
conference call and told
them they’d be animated.
But he didn’t share how.
Pharrell as a Lego is
surprisingly winning. It’s
a way to represent Pharrell as, at heart, a playful
builder of beats, a man hellbent on fame who assembled his own destiny.
“I felt like everything
we were doing in the film
was totally reflective of the
subject of the film,” Neville
says. “We’re not doing Lego
because it’s a gimmick.
We’re doing it because it’s
the only way to tell this
story right.”
The high concept of
“Better Man” began with
a query by filmmaker
Michael Gracey. He
approached Williams with
a question.
“I said: ‘What animal
Brown
— so that’s coming up this
fall.
scene?
A: Something that
Associated Press
that because all I know
is Baltimore. I’ve lived in
different cities, but it was
when I was a lot younger,
and I really wasn’t into a
social scene. But one of
Baltimore’s unique vibes
reflected in a lot of its
events is a down-to-earth
feeling and that’s what
attracted me to Baltimore
to begin with. It has this
unpretentious energy of
a city that has a working-class background. I
think that’s a great combination, and it also makes for
a great party.
surprised me in the last
year or so is dress code.
With events like galas,
everybody gets dressed to
the nines or whatever. Now
you see a mix. You can go
to a casual event and see
people showing up in what
used to be considered gala
attire just because they
want to get dressed up. It’s
often women in really cool
gowns and they might be
coming with a guy who’s
wearing jeans, and that’s
OK. The whole fact is that
sneakers have also become
high fashion. So all of those
dictates kind of fell away
and that makes it, frankly,
a lot more fun. It makes
people much more watchable.
Q: Is there anything that
surprises you on the social
Q: We see so many people
being ‘social’ on TikTok and
from Page 1
price of the ticket. A lot
of the galas have gotten
extremely expensive.
Don’t start there. Go to
something that’s more
casual, something like
Maritime Magic — for
the Living Classrooms
Foundation or even, The
Legacy Chase at Shawan
Downs, where there’s
much more mingling, and
you have an opportunity
to meet different people. I
would definitely start with
something that’s a little
bit more casual like the
Ulman Foundation, which
supports young adults
with cancer. One of their
big events that’s grown in
popularity over the years is
Screw Cancer, Brew Hope.
And it’s held at a brewery
Q: Does Baltimore have a
social vibe? And if so, how
would you describe it?
A: It’s hard for me to say
Pharrell Williams attends his film’s premiere
Sept. 10 in Toronto. JEMAL COUNTESS/GETTY
Robbie Williams on Sept. 9 at the film festival.
CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV/CANADIAN PRESS
do you see yourself as?’”
Gracey told the crowd,
introducing “Better Man”
at its premiere. “And with a
big grin, he said ‘Lion.’”
After a moment,
Williams reflected and
acknowledged that the
truer answer was a monkey.
In the film, the actor
playing Williams is Jonno
Davies — only we don’t see
him, either. Not unlike the
process on the “Planet of
the Apes” films, Davies
performed in a motioncapture suit. Later, digital
effects teams placed the
chimpanzee of the film
on top of him. One part is
Williams himself: the eyes
of the monkey’s face. Every
other character, meanwhile, is human.
While “Piece by Piece”
is a more all-ages release,
“Better Man” is R-rated
and doesn’t skimp on the
rock ’n’ roll debauchery.
It’s the most cocaine you’ve
ever seen a chimp ingest.
It also makes for a peculiar viewing experience. Is
Williams a more sympathetic figure as a wounded
animal than he is as a
human? Either way, he is
delighted by the result.
“For a narcissist, it’s a
wonderful treat,” he says.
“I’ve seen it three times. It’s
not enough.”
Instagram. What’s the benefit of going out and being
social in person?
A: There have been a lot
is that they get to take
over. There’s that whole
transition, and you have
people coming up who get
more involved, and they’ll
change it to make it their
own, make it appeal more
to things that they and
their friends like. So just
take, for instance, food. You
are going to see a lot more
varying cuisines at events.
It used to be a standard,
catered, certain safe food.
Now everybody is much
more adventuresome. The
same thing with fashion.
A lot more is allowed fashion-wise.
poraries Black & White
Party is always a really good
party. You have to wear
black and/or white, and
they always have fabulous
decorations and a great DJ,
and, it’s all put together by
young professionals. The
problem is that it’s hard to
get tickets.
of news reports on how
isolating social media
actually is. You think
you’re having contact and
connecting with all these
people, and you’re actually not. There is something very different about
personally connecting. And
when you are in an environment where there’s all
that energy and all those
people, it’s very different
and so much better. I think
those feelings can kind of
fill you up.
Q: What are younger
Baltimoreans doing on the
social scene, and how are
they changing it?
A: One of the main things
that happens, probably
with every generation,
Q: What’s been your favorite event over the years?
A: Well, it switches. And
also, you don’t want to play
favorites, because there
are different things you
like for different reasons.
I mean, the Pratt Contem-
Q: What’s your must-have
accessory for any event?
A: My camera, absolutely.
But I would say for everybody else, as much as I
love, love great-looking
shoes, the most important accessory is to have a
pair of comfy ones stuck
away somewhere so you
can continue enjoying the
night if the shoes you’re
wearing aren’t comfortable.
Because, man, nothing will
destroy a night out more
than when your feet are
killing you.
