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Sometimes, in both life and pop music, you need to become your own engine.
That’s the case for Amy Allen, the Maine native and on-time Bostonian who filled our digital pages with her vibrant pop while fronting Amy & The Engine. Now based in New York and going by her birth name, Allen has sharpened her songwriting acumen with another tale of heartbreak and life lessons, this week unveiling a saccharine new single called “I Had You.”
But underneath the song’s glossy shine is Allen coming-to-terms with a relationship gone awry.
She tells NYLON that the song “is about frustration more than anything else,” particularly when dealing with a person who doesn’t know what they want.
“When I wrote this, I was trying to wrap my head around why some people need to lose the one person they love in order to realize how much they love them,” she adds. “I was wondering if that meant they aren’t worth being with at all, or if love sometimes deserves a second chance… still not sure. But ‘I Had You’ is [about] the first time I really experienced that feeling of giving someone everything, and it wasn’t appreciated at the moment, but months later, he was going way out of his way to get it back. This was definitely emotionally exhausting, but it also gave me some much-needed clarity about how I now define love.”
“I Had You” is the latest offering from Allen’s upcoming Get Me Outta Here!, which is expected sometime this summer. In the meantime, she plays The Mercury Lounge in New York next Saturday (July 29), and then the RiverJam Fest in Maine come September.
Featured Amy Allen photo by Josefina Santos, via amyallenmusic.com.