LILY ALLEN: BASICALLY IT’S JUST THE SAME
“People have been asking me, ‘What’s different about this album compared with your last one?’,” begins Lily Allen, fresh from performing a lunchtime acoustic set at Spotify’s London office. “And I always say: ‘Absolutely nothing!” She laughs one of her big, playful, Lily Allen laughs.
“Basically it’s just the same,” she smiles, “but five years later.”
Did you know what you wanted to do with this album, right at the start?
A bit. I’d spent three years in the countryside with my children and apart from the country music education I’ve received from my husband the only other point of reference I had was Radio 1, as I was driving up and down the motorway. I suppose what I wanted was to be somewhere in the middle: between songs I connected with, and songs I heard on the radio.
How many songs did you record for your album?
I’ve no idea. Lots.
100?
No!
50?
There were maybe fifty ideas for songs – I tend not to finish a song unless I know it’s gonna happen. Greg [Kurstin – Lily’s producer] and I start with tempo and then build the songs from drums upwards.
What was the last music you listened to?
Drunk in Love by Beyoncé, this morning while I was driving in the car. I put it on: it’s my get-going song at the moment.
On your new album, in the slowjam Close Your Eyes, you rhyme “You can be my HOVA”, with “Baby come on over”. Do you often feel like Beyoncé in a romantic scenario?
(Screams in mock outrage) NO! NEVER! “Come on, shall we dress up as Jay Z and Beyoncé?” NO! (Laughs)
Do you ever wake up in the kitchen saying “How the hell did this happen”?
No. There’s a time and a place for all that: in our own bed, on a Thursday. Missionary. (Laughs)
What’s your earliest musical memory?
Watching Neneh Cherry play at Glastonbury when I was really little. I remember my dad driving his Range Rover – or someone’s Range Rover – out to the front of the Other Stage, through the mud and into the middle of the crowd, and us all getting on top of the roof and dancing.
What’s your ultimate Saturday night record?
That would be Christina Milian’s Dip It Low.
Have you ever rolled around in crude oil in the middle of your front room, as Christina Milian does in that video
Many, many times. It’s a regular Saturday occurrence for me.
What music do you make your family listen to?
My whole family is made to listen to country and western music, soul, rock ’n’ roll and Elvis – mainly because we don’t have broadband so I can’t download things onto my computer, and my husband won’t let my vinyl in his room, which just happens to be the room with the record player in it. So we have to listen to his music. Oh, and I listen to Absolute 80s in the kitchen. My kids make me listen to Air Balloon. “MONKEY TUNE, MUMMY! MUMMY SONG! MONKEY TUNE!”
Is the pop landscape you’ve returned to much different from the one you left?
Yes. I wish Amy Winehouse was still here. I really do. I miss her a lot, I’ve got to be honest. She wouldn’t stand for any of this. “You’re fackin havin a laugh!” So sad. People sometimes say (adopts posh voice) “Oh, Lily changed the face of music for women in this decade”. And it’s like, well, Ms. Dynamite did quite well before me and Amy, even though we’re given the accolade of paving the way for females in music. And also, no we didn’t, so what are you talking about?
You are quite an unusual voice in music though.
Yeah but nobody else has been an unusual voice in music since, so…
Well there’s Jessie J.
Yeah…
Another song on your album, Life For Me, is a Fear Of Missing Out anthem about having kids and seeing your friends still having fun on social media. But in the chorus, you realise you’re happy with your life. Did it take a long time for you to get used to staying in?
With quite a lot of my songs the verses are confused and the choruses are a conclusion. These days, one of us – me or Sam – has to be at home with the children. There’s not a night where that doesn’t happen. But when I’m out in London on my own I’ll go out for dinner with my Godmother or something or I’ll end up at some place where there are other people enjoying themselves. And when it gets to about twelve o’clock, or 1am, and those people have ‘let themselves go’, I think to myself, “hmm, it’s nice that I’m not like that”. The thing is, I’m now struggling because I’m working all the time and I don’t see enough of my kids, so if you asked me to write a song right now it would be completely different to Life For Me!
What was your own response to the way people reacted to the Hard Out Here video?
I was shocked. Completely and utterly. And alarmed, actually. URL Badman on the album was a direct response to the negative reaction Hard Out Here got. I was really shocked by how in a relatively short time – three to four years of my having left the scene – newspaper ‘think pieces’ and opinion columns had just exploded. Although some people might say I’m partly responsible – I was quite good at wearing my opinions on my sleeve…
Did it ever get to the point where there were enough people saying a similar thing about the video for you to think, ‘I actually may have made a mistake with this’?
No. Once somebody prolific has put out their opinion and planted the seed that this is how you should look at something, if you’re a decent human being you’ll be like “yeah, actually that IS fucking out of order, I can see exactly – she’s a fucking racist, the stupid bitch!”. And that’s fine, and fair, in that you’ll put something out there and people are entitled to their opinions, but that doesn’t mean they’re correct in their assumptions that I was being racist. I don’t walk into a room and count how many people are black and how many people are white. And I would say that makes me not racist, but who knows. I think any segregation and putting people into boxes for whatever reason – the colour of their skin, sexual orientation, gender – is just gross, and I tend not to make judgements on people for those things that they can’t control. It’s not fair. And that’s how I feel…
