Lily Allen - This summers biggest racist?

Murphy
Stevens
'Frapp
Bush
MIA
Alesha (probably)
Allen
Nixey
Lady Sov
Church

but i haven't heard any good LadyGrime recently apologies

i expect she will in terms of exciting pop production. but she won't have quite the same commercial success. ho hum.

(okay obviously they're different and I can see why you'd prefer "Stars Are Blind" but the point is we're not living in a world of absolutes here)

(also I like Lily's lyrics too, they are kinda spiteful but the bad vibes feel like a put-on to me, in the best possible sense... she reminds me of my younger sister in that way, who's always in a bit of a bad mood when I first see her but within half an hour she's warmed up and we're making plans to open cinemas which only show films starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith)

Sorry, there appear to be no titles for which

* Keith Allen (I) (Actor)
* , Maggie Smith (I) (Actress)

are both/all credited.

i don't like the spitefulness in 'ldn' towards poor people but i would probably like the spitefulness directed at men - i have not heard any of the latter.

Hilton reserves this for outside the recording studio of course.

Lallen odds on for next year's Only Fools On Horses.

She's pleasant, and I like her lyrical personality, but overall, what I've heard is kinda dull, dry and overly polite (for all the vaunted/villified "spitefulness"). Nothing world-shaking, certainly.

The mixtapes are cool, though...

hilton = more real than allen!

Maybe you have to be English. Or indie...

I am neither and I love the album to bits! (Except "Take What You Take", which should have been on another person's album, and "Friend of Mine", which is not as good a tune as the rest.)

Most of the Lily songs I've heard fall into the latter category, and "LDN" is also one of my least favourite Lily songs. Lex you should search "Not Big" and "Shame For You" before you close the door on Lily forever.

"tim - i was called out for this on my lj as well - my response was basically that i love 'stars are blind' despite it being cod-reggae, and also because paris hilton has absolutely no investment in its cod-reggaeness whatsoever."

I agree with the second part of this statement, but I think it overrules the first part: I agree that it is important that Paris is making cheap fako cod-reggae, but it's that very cheapo fake cod-reggae that makes it so magical (the other thing I like about it is how Paris's lyrics/delivery capture a certain dazed fucked-up simplicity - I was saying in a review of it I had to write today that it comes off as kind of honest b/c you could imagine her using these lines to try to pick up some celeb's boyfriend at a boozy charity function). Certainly "Stars Are Blind" takes many more cues from "Mysterious Girl" than Lily ever does, and this is probably a good thing for Paris. But this doesn't mean that Lily is necessarily bad-indie. The difference is a matter of degree more than anything.

I like a lot of pop-cod from the past few years - e.g. both Rihanna and especially Eve's versions of "No No No" - and I broadly approve of it as a stylistic manoeuvre.

Did Dannii ever do any cod?

Also there needs to be a revival of vaguely post Soul II Soul cod-reggae-house e.g. Madonna's "Why's It So Hard".

except lily's cod-reggae isn't actually cheap fako stuff - it's a facsimile of it in the same way that MIA was a facsimile of baile funk and so on. allen uses reggae/ska as a means of demonstrating her 'realness', paris uses reggae/ska as...well, not a means of demonstrating her fakeness, i am not sure what the intention is but a great deal of its appeal lies in the fact that it seems almost accidentally great.

(the other thing I like about it is how Paris's lyrics/delivery capture a certain dazed fucked-up simplicity - I was saying in a review of it I had to write today that it comes off as kind of honest b/c you could imagine her using these lines to try to pick up some celeb's boyfriend at a boozy charity function)

YES - also it captures a certain desperation which is at once a debauched-celeb desperation and a naive little-girl desperation. the lyrics and delivery really tap into the gilded princess archetype very well.

i think 'why's it so hard?' is the only crap song on erotica :(

there's quite a lot of cod-reggae on the rihanna album though it doesn't seem cod (which implies coming at it from outside) so much as lite (coming from the inside but diluting it to good effect). like wayne wonder or shabba ranks.

why is this a problem again?

What does ska signify? I don't get a sense of there being a particular purpose behind its use in Lily's songs, but maybe I'm missing something. M.I.A. is at pains to draw out the links between the sonics and her persona, I don't think Lily is doing that though. What is the link b/w the music and Lily's realness, and how is she real? The choice of style seems arbitrary in fact, to me at least.

If anything I think it's being used because it conveys a certain lightness of touch and easy prettiness, which is probably not too far from why Paris is using it. Certainly I'd be surprised if Lily wasn't aware of a certain distance between the simple reverie of the music and her lyrics. There is no such distance in "Stars Are Blind".

I'm not sure about the interchangability of ska and reggae in all this. I have this idea that "ska" denotes more guitar than is present in Lily's songs? I know next to nothing about the application of these terms really so somebody school me.

"i think 'why's it so hard?' is the only crap song on erotica :("

I don't necessarily disagree! The production works much better than the song on top of it. I used to dislike "Words" but I've come around to it a lot in the last few years. For some reason i hated the lyrics and now I think they're great.

it really reinforces this 'cockernee charm' which is a massive part of her appeal - this cheeky street ladette character which seems to be her entire public persona (going on interviews as well here), which makes it easy to call her "female mike skinner". like lady sov but not actually a real chav - in fact, like a drama school student playing a sov-type character in a school play.

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i dont care if she was gay or bi id still drooole of her shes hawt hehehe wud b nice for lily to b gay cos then she cud be like in with tatu and......has a quick day dream...... huh where was i????
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Ooooooh Oh Deary Me!!

Umm, I shouldn't really repost stuff I found on other boards, but ah here you are.

The ska thing is only a problem if you want it to be. It does signify - in the UK at least - a kind of Radio 6 dad-friendly black music - it's not "dangerously" urban and people like Phil Jupitus, Mark Lamarr, and - yes - Keith Allen like it. In that sense it's a perfectly understandable contingency - she found a load of music she liked in her dad's record collection, as anyone might do. It doesn't seem like an affectation. There's actually less of it on the album than you might think.

allen uses reggae/ska as a means of demonstrating her 'realness'

Ooh, inauthentic pop stars. Ooh, not black or from a council estate. Ooh, Keith Allen's daughter.

hahahahahahaha stevem you just made me cackle like a drunk wizard, and i am neither of those.

Lord kitchener

it isn't London Is The Place For Me, but it could well be another Kitch tune. what i want to know is, what's that piano sample on "knock 'em out"? it's doing my bloody head in.

i absolutely completely love "alright, still", btw fwiw etc. there's one bloody awful track - say what you say, or whatever it's called - which sounds like bad bad bad happy mondays or something, but the rest of it? splendid.

PS Charlie, you mean "Take What You Take", which sounds awfuller every time I hear it.

although I could be wrong...

As for Lily Allen. Definitely Pop for rockists IMO (despite the mixtapes which I kind of approve of and wish there was more of in her own music!) and I can well understand Lex's infuriation, my own aversion I think is still coming down to an unsettling aftertaste about her.

That's a pretty accurate summation, actually.

http://www.nme.com/images/84_NMEcoverlilyallen_L150706_uk_01.jpg

Pure Speculation
http://inleaguewithpaton.blogspot.com/2006/07/pure-speculation.html

Lily Allen qualifies, as album is released on July 17th 2006

Is Dom hoping that Editors will NOT win? they qualify as released on July 25th 2005.

http://rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s343690.jpg

I mean, the only name I can come up with at the moment is Sway, but surely if he can't get Radio 1 playlist he can't get a Mercury prize win?

corinne bailey rae.

Shame this album was a bit of a disappointment, because the "LDN"/"Knock 'Em Out" seven-inch is the debut single of the decade. The pop sheen production on the album sounds horrid!