Ashley Allen

There are always assumptions people can make when they don't dig a little deeper to find the truth. One could think an ambitious singer with a music industry dad got her deal handed to her, when in fact all she got was a strong work ethic instilled in her. One could also think that a pretty blonde who likes to have fun and sings upbeat pop songs has nothing deeper to say.

On the surface, those assumptions could wrongfully be made about pop's rising star, Ashley Allen, but scratch that surface and dig a little deeper and you get a few surprises. And, that's exactly who Ashley Allen is, a surprising fresh, young, and provocative new talent who is putting some substance into the pop world with a batch of infectiously catchy future hits that make you want to sing, dance, and wild-out on the surface, but think, dream, and wonder on the inside.

"When you hear certain songs of mine, like 'Body Say No, Heart Say Yes' or 'Mr. Valentine,' people think they're about a boy, but there is so much more to me and what I have to say as an artist than that," explains the 23-year-old singer/songwriter with looks more like a California beach blonde than the native New Yorker she is. "I went through a lot when I was younger, some really challenging times dealing with bullying, anxiety, depression, and eventually drugs. I was in a very dark place and my music is what got me out of it. It doesn’t matter where you grow up or what your parents do, everyone has unhappiness and struggles and I've definitely had my fair share."

To escape her sadness, Ashley would hole up in her room and write poems and songs as a way to release her emotions and express herself. One early childhood song was called, "Love Will Find A Way," which is about learning to love yourself before you can love another. Wise sentiments for a fifth grader, who as a little girl would dance and sing around the house with her mother to the sounds of Barbra Streisand, Cher, and Celine Dion.

It was those troubling times that fueled Ashley's ambition and need to get these songs out of her. Her debut album is the product of going from dark to light, negative to positive, unhappiness to bliss. With influences ranging from pop princesses Britney Spears (her first music idol when she was a kid) and Taylor Swift to the intensity that is Marilyn Manson and the electronic dance sounds of dubstep to country chart-toppers Rascal Flatts, Ashley comes at her own music with an eclectic musical taste and a wide-ranging array of life experiences that she's poured into her songs.

Take the aforementioned lead track, "Body Say No, Heart Say Yes", for instance. "'Body Say No, Heart Say Yes' is about when you're drained or tired because life is hard or you're burned out and your young heart wants to go out with that 'you've got one life to live' attitude, but you can't rally to the occasion," she explains. "'Mr. Valentine' is about that one thing in life that you want and how you just need to go for it.' 'Still Holding On' is about a boy, but not how you think. It's about a boy I knew who passed away from a drug overdose. His loss touched me deeply," she reveals.

But, don't get the wrong idea. Ashley's music is far from dark or serious; it's fun, upbeat, and danceable pop. Songs like "Let's Go" show the Ashley that she is today: positive, fun, and uninhibited. "Touch Me" shows off the sexy singer's flirty, girl-in-charge side. "You Ruined Love" is indeed about a certain blue-eyed tattooed boy she once knew, while "Dancing In My Head" could be very well be her unofficial theme song as it perfectly sums up her light and quirky side. "I was working with my producer and I'm kind of a weirdo," she explains. "I'm always saying and doing weird things and he looked at me one day and asked, 'What goes on in your head?' I said, "I'm just dancing in my head!' It's a happy, fun song that I was singing when I was put in jail for a nightclub misunderstanding gone horribly wrong. It's like, 'When bad shit happens, just keep dancing!'"

As a whole, the record is stamped with the artist's unmistakable "Ashley Swag," which she describes as "a little pop, a little indie, and a little dance-y. Sometimes I want to dance. Sometimes I want to get serious. It's a little bit of everything that makes the Ashley Swag." And, that is the mercurial force that is Ashley Allen: a mix of light and dark, funny and flirty, pop fun but with deeper substance, unassuming on the surface and delightfully surprising underneath, instantly contagious, and fun to figure out all at the same time.

“Body Say No, Heart Say Yes" was so immediately infectious, in fact, that shortly after the track landed on the desk of Robot of the Century Music, which is run by music industry veterans from Roadrunner Records, she was signed to a development deal. Even though Ashley grew up around the music industry (her mom was an inspiring singer and her dad owns a talent agency; his client, James Brown, used to call her his "little princess!"), her career path was not paved by her father's connections. She did this on her own, including insisting on bucking the trend of pop acts not writing their own music. Instead, Ashley, who's been singing and dancing as long as she could walk and talk, writes her own lyrics, conceives her own songs, and then works with others to help bring her dreams to fruition.

"I was working with producers one day and they told me they had written a song for me," says Ashley, who, as a precocious child of age 9, formed girl groups with her friends that sang and danced around her bedroom. "I was like, 'Listen, I don't know what you think. I 'm not gonna sing anything you write for me. We're gonna sit down now and write a song.' I think they thought that some dumb girl with daddy's money for a demo had just come in. They were wrong. We wrote 'Body Say No, Heart Say Yes' in 30 minutes and it's the exact definition of who I am. It's happy and positive and fun and it's 100% me."

Get ready for Ashley Allen: unassuming, instantly infectious pop music with so much more than meets the eye.