You might not know it, but Amy Allen’s songs have been stuck in your head all year. With songwriting credits on tracks like Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” and actually every other 'Short n’ Sweet' track, as well as Tate McRae’s new single “Two Hands,” Olivia Rodrigo’s “scared of my guitar,” and Justin Timberlake’s “Selfish,” just to name a few, Amy has had an undeniably massive year, and she checked it with Audacy's Bru to chat all about.

Recapping how 2024 has been for her, and what it’s been like to write songs so many people have positively responded to, Amy expressed, “It has been insane, but it's been very fun. And I've gotten to travel a lot for work this year, which has been amazing and really inspiring to be in so many different locations and writing there with friends and collaborators that I love. It's just always like a cherry on top to be able to make music that you love and then also have the world react to it in a positive way, and other people love it as well.”

On top of all her success with songwriting, Amy also dropped her solo self-titled debut album this year. Opening up about her own personal sound, Amy noted, “I grew up on a lot of Classic Rock and then also being a child of the 90s, I fell in love with like Flaming Lips and then for songwriters, I've always loved Dolly Parton and John Prine, so it's very singer-songwritery. But it also has some more Rock elements and then it also goes a little bit into experimental like some electronic bits. But I think the storytelling is like… the heart of music for me and what I love to do the most.”

Sharing why now felt like the right time to put out music of her own, Amy said, “I always had been in bands growing up, like ever since I was 9 years old… And then when I started writing for other people like 7 years ago, I really fell in love with the collaboration process and making songs for and with other artists. So my own music kind of went on the back burner as I made this conscious decision to get better at songwriting. And then I think last year at some point I just realized that it makes me a better songwriter for other people to keep writing for myself.”

“I had just accumulated this like body of work of songs that I loved and they felt really poignant to me, and like an artist statement kind of, and I never really felt like that about a body of work of my own before. So I just felt like, you know, why the f*** not, like just go for it.”

“I love these songs,” Amy added, “and I think it's important for me as a creative to not only be giving my love of music away to other artists all the time, but also to make some just for myself. It keeps me grounded and why I do this. So yeah, it was a very cathartic fun process.”

Amy shared that nerves weren’t really present in the choice of putting out her own work, because she took all the pressure off of it. Unlike when she works with other artists that have massive profiles and this expected response to a lot of the songs, when it comes to her own music, that’s not what Amy expects.

Plus, having her co-written tracks become smash hits, heard on the radio and all over the world, is already fulfilling that part of her life. “So I can totally kind of remove any type of response from my own music that I make for myself, because I already have that part being fulfilled by songs I write with other people.” So putting emphasis on how it's received, "nerves didn’t play much into it."

“It felt good to just put out something that I like and be like… it doesn't matter if anybody besides my mom streams this song… So it was a very freeing place to be creating, and it just makes me a better songwriter all around.”

Her five 2025 GRAMMY nominations including Song of the Year for “Please Please Please," Songwriter of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for her work on 'Short n’ Sweet,' plus a nod for Song Wri ...

Joining host Abe Kanan today for a special Audacy Check In, Neil Sanderson of Three Days Grace is here to talk about the band's brand new single "Mayday," their 2024/2025 plans after reuniting with singer Adam Gontier, and more.

After first teasing fans that an important announcement was on the way, Canadian rockers Three Days Grace revealed they would be reuniting with original vocalist Adam Gontier following a decade away along with co-founders Neil Sanderson on drums, Brad Walst on bass, Matt Walst continuing his vocal and guitar duties, and lead guitarist Barry Stock who joined the band in 2003.

Today, fans get the first taste of what's on the 3DG horizon with their first single of 2024, "Mayday." "Sometimes life is turbulent," Matt Walst told us of the new song's inspiration, "but beyond the clouds is blue skies. So, just keep going."

“First of all, I feel just gratitude for being at this point in my career,” Neil tells Abe at the start of their chat. “We've been doing this almost 25 years, and just to have so much excitement about the new music and, you know, we were able to pull this off, put it together, all good vibes. We don't look back, we only look forward and it's gonna be just bigger and better than it's ever been at this point. I'm in my 40s… it's like, ‘Damn, let's go!’”

With Adam back in the band, 3DG will now have dual singers he explains. “It's kind of crazy to think that we have this huge chapter with Adam and then this massive chapter with Matt and with like 17 number 1 singles thanks to people like you and people that care about the music and the fans… We've got all these songs that were really successful at Rock radio and now we can just play them all any way that we want. I have envy for the singers, because they only have to sing half the show. I still got to play drums the whole damn time."

On the new single, “Mayday,” both singers are featured. “At first it was like we didn't know how we were gonna kind of like slice it all up and who was going to do what,” Neil remembers, “as we first started sitting down and writing new stuff and trying things out and experimenting. As soon as each guy kind of laid their thing in, it was like, ‘Oh man, this is deeper than we would have thought. We played to each singer's strengths and they didn't try to be anything that they're not. It just creates this completely new dynamic, a new facet to the sound.”

“I did see them at one point, like rock-paper-scissors to see who's going to sing the next line, which was kind of funny, but that's how naturally organic it happened,” he adds. “It wasn't forced at all. We started thinking about bands like Pink Floyd back in the day that had two singers and they were both completely different characters with different voices -- but that's part of the magic with it. So, we just really leaned into that.”

The impetus to get Adam back in the band he says started with simple conversations. “A lot of the stuff on the Internet over the years is like all this bad blood and stuff, and I think a lot of people made that up in their mental cinema… We were kind of like, ‘Stuff happens.’ The thing about being in a band is, it's like being in a marriage with three other people. So things happen, people go different ways, people have different life directions and stuff. 13 years ago, we kind of came to a crossroads where that became a major factor, but all this time later, it just made sense to investigate what it would be like to make this thing that would be bigger than better than anything we've ever done.”

After performing guest vocals with them at a concert and seeing the crowd’s reaction, “We're like, ‘Let's sit around with some guitars and see if we can be creative together because that was the only thing that mattered,” he says. “We need to be able to vibe out; it's like we could pull a stunt or something, but that that's not what we wanted to do. He’s coming ba ...