Lily Allen

One Liner: Raunchy, but funny in lyrical realism, British pop star

Wikipedia Genre: Electropop, reggae, R&B
Home: London

Poster Position: 8
Day: Friday at 4:45
Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts:  When your most popular tune is a Keane cover, you know you're killing it!

Just kidding.  That cover is lovely, and the commercial you can see there being created with that tune as the background is amazing.  Who knew it took like 700 people a million hours to make a simple-seeming cartoon commercial?  147.5 million streams for that song.  

Allen is kind of the British answer to Katy Perry.  She came up right as Amy Winehouse did, and the two of them created a good bit of buzz about the new, strong female British singer.  Part of her mystique was all about how she had been repeatedly kicked out of schools for smoking and drinking, she was like Winehouse with the whole bad girl persona.  But she played and sang and gained some notoriety as a kid, and later used connections (her dad is an actor named Keith Allen) to score a record deal (well, she went through a few before her first album), and then get famous through MySpace.

Personally, I think her first album is the most interesting.  Just a more original sound on there than you get on the new discs.  Its like a dancehall sound, a little bit reggae or dub or something.  The top track from that album is "Smile," which has 59.3 million streams.

Catchy, groovy, I like it.  Although the message of the song is damn twisted.  They scratched his freaking vinyl, man!  Evil!  "LDN" is also a good one from that album, and honestly, the album just has a lot of fun stuff on it (although it can get campy/goofy, like "Alfie," a bouncing lark about her little brother).  After the popularity of this album (3x Platinum, Grammy nods, multiple top album of the year placements), she got her own TV show on the BBC called Lily Allen and Friends.

After that one, she went slightly more mainstream pop with 2009's It's Not Me, It's You, which includes her rudely titled most popular track.  "Fuck You" has 109.9 million streams.  Here is a clean version.

But the message works - don't be a small-minded asshole.  Although, you either have to listen to the original (and the repeat F-bomb dropped like an Eminem song) or that terrible clean version with the duck farts used in place of the word.  I don't know which is worse.  And honestly, I don't really care for the tune anyway.  I like the message, but the overly sunny goof of the song is annoying.  And the rest of this album looses the funkiness and ska bounce of the first one in favor of a generic pop electronic stuff.  Like "The Fear," just a boring sounding track of future synth squeals and clicks.  Not interesting at all.  "Not Fair" is kinda clever in its lyrics about an unsatisfying man, but has a weird, goofy country sound.  I don't know what the hell is up with this album as a sophomore issue.

The third album seems to cater more closely to what everyone else is doing, further leaving behind the originality and new sound.  And some of it tries really freaking hard, like "Sheezus," the album opener (and the album title), from 2014.  She name drops several other lady pop stars, in declaring that she's ready to take the throne and become the top dog.  Feels hollow.  And then the auto-tune assisted weirdness of "L8 CMMR" is not great.  "Air Balloon" sounds like a nursery song or something, treacly cute while still stealing some sounds from MIA.  After that cover mentioned up above, the top track on this album is the final tune, "Hard Out Here," with 60.9 million streams.

Well, OK.  Yeah, that one, with its synth riff and bass line stolen from "Super Freak" and raunchy lyrics, is actually pretty fun.  Makes me a little sad, in the way satire can sometimes do, at the truth in the lyrics.  She also has one that sounds cajun?  "As Long As I Got You" leans on some accordion and a Bo Diddley beat - just sounds hokey.

Then the new album, 2018's No Shame, stays with that electronic pop thing, with a little more nod back to the reggae on some of the tracks.  The top track features a rapper - "Trigger Bang," featuring Giggs - has 10.7 million streams.

The rapper only gives us one little verse at the start.  So weird.  Not a bad verse though, and a catchy song overall, even if the lyrics are freaking depressing as hell.  "What You Waiting For" goes back to some of that old dancehall sound she had at the first (although now it just sounds like she's copying Rihanna or something).  Which is funny - several songs go back to that rhythm, which I wanted her to keep using on the second and third albums, but now that sound is overused in popular music, so it doesn't sound as vital.

"My One" mentions her waking up in Austin, Texas, which perked up my ears as I listened through this album.  But I won't say that the tune itself is very interesting.  More like a generic Beiber tune based on a very simple synth beat.

I'd say that, overall, I kind of like her.  She's brash and raunchy and good with lyrics (even if they are usually pretty sad observations about her shortcomings, made to seem funny).  Some of this suffers from a generic pop-ness, but other portions of it are refreshingly different and kinda fun.

But, she's up against a tough lineup in that 4:45 slot.  Manchester Orchestra are legit good.  Jungle seems like a really fun live band.  The Arkells are interesting (although they'd still rank fourth in this time slot to me).  So I likely won't see her, but I get the appeal.