Lily AllenIt's Not Me It's YouRegal/EMI
Two-and-a-half years ago, as a mouthy 21-year-old, Lily Allen's
stupendously successful first album was all Me, Me, Me: drinking,
drugging, shagging, bitching and being inordinately proud of her
witticisms.
It was good fun, too: the plain-speaking and barbs as funny as
they were occasionally eyebrow-raising; the reggae-dusted pop tunes
as sunny as they were easy to learn.
Having gone through the celebrity wringer, one serious personal
crisis and a whole lot of touring since, album number two is all
change. Now it's Me, Me, Thinking About The World A Bit and Me.
Meanwhile, the reggae-ska has gone, replaced by a somewhat
buffed 1980s pop feel, which brings home some of those early
Bananarama hints.
Smart-alec dig aside, Lily Allen is better when she is
self-centred. An inadequate lover cops it in the neck in the
skippity jaunt of
Not Fair (he's perfect in every way except
"when we go up to bed/you're just no good, it's such a shame") and
an ex who thought a late-night booty call meant a reunion gets it
in the cods in the fairground spin of
Never Gonna
Happen.
Meanwhile, there are reconciliations — with her sister in
the dancing-around-the-handbags synth pop of
Back To The
Start and her father in the surprisingly sweet soft-shoe jazz
He Wasn't There — a return to the joys of domestic
living in the too mild
Chinese and some
there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I in the Madness-referencing
straight pop of
22.
More hit and miss lyrically and musically are the wider-world
cuts, including a quite pretty setting for a reference to God in
Him.
In an opening pair of electro-pop turns, which may remind you of
early Stock, Aitken and Waterman productions, there's a bit of
self-awareness mixed with a sharp point (that we're all responsible
for the likes of Paris and Jordan) in
The Fear, while the
social consciousness of
Everyone's At It (to wit, let he who
is without legal and-or illegal drug-taking sin cast the first
stone) doesn't entirely convince.
On the other hand, while the political insight may be year 9
standard, anyone who hasn't lost all of the 14-year-old inside will
smirk and find themselves singing along with the
Carpenters-meet-vaudeville sunshine of the Bush kiss-off,
Fuck You. Stupid? Sure — but I laughed.
So, yes, while she may be a little too diffident in delivery
rather than presenting the insouciance you suspect she's aiming
for, Lily Allen still has a pop album that entertains. Which is not
at all something to be sneezed at.
Bernard Zuel