Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

(Muso's Guide, February 16, 2009)

Album review

British music’s enfant terrible, the view from here seems to suggest that La Allen’s gone from a cheeky-chopped, trainer-wearing, anti-cool urbanista ready to cock a snook at all comers to the lean demure socialite that Agyness Deyn would never deign to be.

Since 2006’s Alright Still, it seems she’s spent more time in the tabloids than the recording studio , but here is an album to refute all evidence to the contrary.

Where you fall on It’s Not Me, It’s You largely depends on how you felt about Alright, Still.

Having once declared herself as not being in music for the long haul, it’s hard to look at any of her recorded output with seriousness - if she doesn’t respect the art, why should it respect her?

That said, It’s Not Me, It’s You is a whole lot of fun.

Single ‘The Fear’ has the requisite mix of tuneful pap and yoof attitude, mocking the moral pausity of the diet-engorged elite; “I’m not a saint, and I’m not a sinner/Everything’s cool so long as I’m getting thinner.”

Elsewhere, the controversial ‘Everybody’s At It’ has galvanised the Daily Hate Mail and the like into a cold outrage thanks to its assertion that drugs are everywhere. Which just goes to show that there’s always someone ready to be offended, even by throwaway pop.

That saidm the bizarrely politicised ‘Fuck You (Very Much)’ is a sure sign that Allen has made an attempt to mature, even if it doesn’t pay off as such.

Apparently targetting the BNP, it seeks to exclude them from British society, thus removing their narrow politics from the fray. A very convincing argument, but the execution, “Fuck you, very, very much/Cause your words don’t translate/And it’s getting quite late/so please don’t stay in touch” - leaves a lot to be desired if it is intended to be an adult take on the subject.

By and large, the “I hate myself and want to diet” ethos of the debut has been channelled in an infinitely more grown up direction, slipping only occasionally (’Not Fair’ is about a gent who ahem… underperforms in bed, one can only imagine it’s autobiographical).

Also gone is the cod-reggae over-exertion of Alright, Still, replaced with the smooth sheen of electronica.

The question remains, at 23, is Lily knocking on a bit to still be wearing the ‘MySpace mouth’ hat?

She was a young pup of 19 when her first musical murmurings were committed to record, and in some ways her tales of seedy nights out in clubs and knocking back pub leches are still pertinent and on show here even after her extensive remodelling.

But in some ways it seems less honest, and more likely to be purposely pointing in a certain direction.

On It’s Not Me, It’s You, if you look past the faux-substance, it really seems that in swapping her oversized trainers for peep-toe Manolos, Lily has sold her scampish soul for style.