Music
Sasha Allen’s latest single, “Just Like You,” existed in some form for nearly a decade before its release.
Allen, who was part of Team Ariana Grande on Season 21 of NBC’s The Voice, wrote the first iterations of the song at the age of 15. The song’s hook is the one part that remained untouched over the years.
“It was that little sparkly moment of something I wrote feeling like it was good enough to keep coming back to,” Allen says.
He first revisited the song when he moved to Los Angeles. When he looked at it from a new perspective — and with a few years of separation — he saw it in a different way.
“I hit a point at a certain age where the parts of it that I struggled with … started to finally flow, because I think it's easier to write about something you're looking way back on than something you're actually in,” Allen says.
Allen grew up surrounded by art and songwriting — he says he constantly watched his dad write music during his childhood — so songwriting came organically to him.
It was when he entered his teenage years, the ones where “everything starts to feel like it's the biggest deal in the fucking world,” that songwriting became an emotional outlet.
“There were so many things that I couldn't really say or be open about,” Allen says. Allen is a transgender man who came out during his freshman year of high school.
“Even when I was still closeted when I was 13 and dating a girl, and I was a girl at the time, and nobody knew. My feelings got so big that [songwriting] became my place where I could put them.”
Allen says his trans identity is a through line that impacts the way he interacts with the world — and his art.
“It’s definitely a thread through everything that I'm very thankful for because it gives me more to say.”
And “Just Like You” says a lot.
On the song, Allen sings, “Do you see me everywhere like I see you? / She can take shotgun for a week or two / She'll piss you off and you'll want a boy just like you.”
Allen worked with producer Jeremy Schmetterer to get the song across the finish line. The two had previously worked together on an unreleased EP.
“It's really nice being able to just say something to someone and they create it,” Allen says.
When Allen worked through the first demo of “Just Like You,” he had no electric guitar — he had to run his acoustic guitar through an electric effects pedal on GarageBand.
Now, he says the song’s production is what he’s most proud of. Schmetterer sprinkled in small sonic elements that made a noticeable difference, Allen says.
“There's even an ongoing harmony throughout the song that's just me and [Schmetterer] screaming in the studio and things like that, that give it a feel that I never even thought it would have,” Allen says.
Allen’s 2025 EP, Jawbreaker, was self-recorded, so having access to the right tools and equipment allowed him to take his work to the next level.
“This song was something that I was like, 'I can't really do that on my own because I need it to be bigger,’” Allen says.
Allen’s career is only getting bigger, too, but streams and tours aren’t how he defines success as an artist.
Success to him is “feeling joy from what I create and seeing other people connect to what I create.”
He recently completed his debut album, The Gallery, which is set for a summer release. When people listen to it, he wants them to feel understood.
“My goal is to walk away with a feeling of, ‘Oh my God, there's other people feeling this,’” Allen says.
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