Cover Story
URB
March 2007
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When Lily Allen steps onstage at Chicago’s Double Door, one of the year’s most talked about new singers suddenly becomes an enigma. Her face, framed in strands of jet-black hair and a jade headband, is greeted with applause as she strolls past a trio of horn players limply bobbing to the carnival-esque melody of her song “LDN.” And when she sings, the crowd reacts warmly to her sweet voice and wry lyrics about the dark side of London life-no surprise considering that only a few months ago, critics were tripping over each other to find new ways to praise her breezy debut album, Alright, Still.
But on this, the final stop of her first American tour, England’s Lily Allen is more than just hype generated by glowing reviews and MySpace downloads. She is a slightly nervous 21-year-old squarely in the spotlight. She sings softly but not quietly, bantering briefly with the crowd between songs and periodically borrowing a lighter from the front row to spark a cigarette. She is far from a seasoned vet, but she shows cheeky confidence. After she announces that the two new songs in her abbreviated set might sound terrible (they don’t), she plunges right in. Allen is just being herself, which, more than any buzz or online marketing, has made her a singer who is capable of more than a few hit singles.
“I’d tell you all to buy my album,” she deadpans, “but it won’t actually be out here until January.”
Allen’s emergence last year as the latest object of affection for England’s fawning music press was a phenomenon. In the space of a little over nine months, the demos she placed on her MySpace page in November 2005 became underground hits-one track, “Smile,” topped the charts upon its release the following July-and fodder for endless remixes. BBC1 DJ Jo Whiley, one of the first DJs to spin Allen’s songs on the air, was an early convert.
“I really believe in her because of a live session she did on my show,” Whiley says. “She sang like a choirgirl, with the sweetest, purest voice. From beginning to end it’s enchanting, nursery rhymes with pop sensibilities and acid lyrics.”
When Allen announced on her site last May that she would play her boyfriend’s club night at the Notting Hill Arts Club in London, 700 people lined up to see her. The hype forced her label to speed up her album’s UK release, originally scheduled for February, and spawned numerous features about the dress and sneaker-clad singer.
The tabloids even bit; one story taking Allen’s joking about cocaine out of context to make her into the next Kate Moss.
“I didn’t really notice it, to be honest,” says Allen of all the online attention. “You don’t notice the days getting shorter in the winter. It all happened gradually. When I got 10,000 friend requests in a week, then it was like, ‘OK, this is a bit crazy.’ The attention made the album sound like it does now. At the time, the label thought it sounded all right, but after all the attention, it was like, shit, this girl’s really good.”
It only took a few bloggers, Pitchfork plaudits and magazine write-ups to make Lily’s songs-especially “Smile,” an infectious ode celebrating the suffering of a cheating ex-boyfriend-indie summer anthems in the United States. And now that the album will finally be released in the States on Capitol, Allen just wants to relax. But that’s unlikely, with Japanese and Australian tours in the works.
“I really couldn’t tell you what I’m doing in the future, because I’m too scared to look at my schedule,” Allen says. “It’s been incredibly intense. It’s something I’m not used to and never expected. No one thought it would be as big as it has been.”
The well-earned joy she feels from her current success is comparable to the righteous delight she sings about in “Smile,” both examples of karma in action. Despite Allen’s young age, she’s worked for years to get her music released on her own terms. Most of her songs were written back in 2004, and she’s had her fair share of failed deals and former managers. It’s made fame all the more sweet.
“All those record label execs look pretty sheepish when I see them now,” she says. “They gave me the runaround, and now it’s like ‘ha ha.’ It feels pretty good.”
Allen grew up in West London with her mother Karen, a film producer who divorced her father, British actor and comedian Keith Allen (who played the dead flatmate in Shallow Grave) when Lily was four years old. She grew up surrounded by records. Her mother, a bit of a punk, loved The Clash, and the neighborhood was a Carib-bean enclave, filled with sound clashes and reggae record shops on All Saints Road. Allen’s favorite groups were located in the middle ground between styles, bands like pop favorites Squeeze and ska revivalists The Specials.
“[Reggae] is something that’s been around my whole life,” Allen says. “It was constantly in the background, so it felt weird to ignore that when I made the record.”
Allen started singing at age 13, after a music teacher heard her hum Oasis’s “Wonderwall.” Impressed, she asked her student to perform at an upcoming parent’s night. Allen’s first “gig,” singing the Dumbo soundtrack tune “Baby Mine” to a room full of moms and dads, was an auspicious beginning, but she was hooked on singing. She certainly wasn’t hooked on her studies, transferring back and forth among different schools and attending raves.
“Not a big fan of school at all,” Allen admits. “I was just terrible at school and smoked and drank and had sex with boys and did terrible things. Especially when I should have been learning chemistry. That will come in real handy in life.”
Her first break came when her father, who had friends in the music industry, made it known that Lily was available to provide backing vocals. Allen started working with producers, and eventually one of them suggested Lily record her own music. She did a demo and landed her first deal in 2002, but it was short lived. She didn’t write her own music, so the songs, penned by men, sounded contrived. When the exec who signed Allen left the label, the imprint lost interest. During the aftermath, she studied at horticulture school to become a florist. But “Get Well Soon” bouquets weren’t enough for her. She jumped back into music and began writing her own songs and, in 2004, a new manager introduced her to Future Cut.
The Manchester-based production team composed of Tunde Babalola and Darren Lewis-who made their names in the drum & bass scene during the ’90s working with artists like Goldie-weren’t an obvious fit for Allen. But the match-up proved fortuitous. The first song they collaborated on was the breakout “Smile,” and the studio is where Allen set up the rainbow-colored Web site that made her a star.
Located in the basement of an office building, Future Cut’s studio wasn’t exactly Abbey Road. It just contained a single computer, and Allen would set up in the middle of the room and sing into headphones. During early sessions, Allen would smoke and set off the fire alarms, which they eventually covered with masking tape. But the group gelled in the bunker-like room. Lewis was blown away by her amazing sense of melody. When Allen couldn’t come up with lyrics, the trio would often make up stupid ones on the spot, a practice that inspired Allen’s excellent 50 Cent spoof “Nan, You’re a Window Shopper.” Plugging in to Allen’s musical tastes, Future Cut sampled artists like keyboardist Jackie Mittoo to create a loose, reggae vibe and the singer penned entertaining, no-nonsense lyrics. “It’s very natural, very autobiographical,” Allen says of the album. “When I wrote the songs, it was something to do every day and entertain myself. I never thought anything was going to happen with it, to be honest.”
Despite being tagged a simple pop chanteuse by some, Allen, an occasional DJ, has pretty impeccable taste in music. She loves Ghostface, Rick Ross and Jay-Z-whom she saw perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall last year-and she toured with Baltimore club baron Aaron LaCrate (who made a killer remix of “Smile”) and New York producer (and cover cohort) Mark Ronson (who produced the track “Little Things” on her debut album).
“She actually has an almost geeky knowledge of all types of music,” says Lewis. “She would probably be able to tell you Nas’s shoe size and favorite color if you asked.”
Blunt, biting and humorous in the tradition of foul-mouthed Brits like Mike Skinner and Lady Sovereign, Allen’s charm really comes from her lyrics and her delivery. Simple observations on life, from the blandness of bad pick-up lines to her pot-smoking brother’s motivational problems, sink in slowly as her voice sashays across sunny beats. It’s not a radical formula, but once that intoxicating voice hits, it’s hard to deny. When Allen sings in concert, all the hype in the world can’t help her out. Lucky for her, she doesn’t need any assistance.