Lily Allen - This summers biggest racist?

v noble feminist sentiment of 'other women are oppressed because they're stupid' too.

Sonically I'm reminded of "Va Va Voom". lyrically it's typical lily, gauche and to the point. video to me appears to be an attempt to "show up" the foibles of "we can't stop" and "blurred lines", but misses what was wrong with those videos (particularly the former)

expecting waves and waves of thinkpieces to appear by the end of the week.

is the autotune meant to sound intentionally horrible? like in a LOL lonely island way?

xp but I can't even be upset about this, it's the spoof parts of "All the Small Things" meets the sex parts of "Bad Romance" with the execution of a Weird Al video and in 2013 that is an elevator pitch for a day's worth of day-thinkpieces

Is it possible that she aimed for the thinkpieces? At this point it seems like the new parcours to success.

I mean fuck, this clip is probably as objectionable but the conditions (including the artist being a solo female artist known to be shit on in the past, also including, to be fair, lack of name recognition) were not right to start a THINKPIECE TEMPEST:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTJkE8Ki3Gg

That video though. The disapproving zoom of the camera as it lingers on the bodies of those black dancers. Did those women know the director wanted viewers to sneer at their bodies when they signed up for this shoot?

please tell me there will not be any thinkpieces on this song. we should put it in a radioactive waste container and bury it deep in the ground instead of letting it clickbait-climb the billboard charts.

That worked very well for Macklemore and Lorde.

Why is she styled like Jessie J?

I guess also I think her points are more about patriarchy and the toxic misogyny of the gossip press. particularly your perez hilton types who play like a bitchy gay friend who by extension has zero actual stake in female sexuality.

This is a huge misfire from her. I expected a lot more from her after that surprisingly good last album. It makes the Keane cover sound like a masterpiece.

would the numbers thinkpieces drive to videos really have a statistically significant effect? I mean sure, at some level the people who make these things are working off the same vague generalizations as the people who comment on these things, but a lot of this seems like media outlets making more of their own influence than is reasonable

I guess also I think her points are more about patriarchy and the toxic misogyny of the gossip press. particularly your perez hilton types who play like a bitchy gay friend who by extension has zero actual stake in female sexuality.

yeah, there's def more than just "lol at hip-hop" but it's so sloppy that in the current environment it's all going to get bulldozed by (valid) intersectional critique.

while lily's got some intimation of who's calling the shots in her vid, i think part of the reason these "i'm different!" songs always veer towards "lol at gold chains" is because they're never really going to bite the hand that feeds them.

I do definitely think race has a part in it. I mentioned "Bad Romance" upthread because the first half or so (everything but the ending, that is) is basically what this video would look like if there were no racial stuff

(also because the whole fake-handlers-illuminati-conspiracy angle is just so cliched at this point that it baffles me how person after person can treat it as not cliched.)

i don't think it's really "lol hip hop" ... i mean the cover art of 'alright, still' trades in obvious hip hop visuals. also one of her first songs was a remix of "window shopper"

i think it's more... "lol at girls like miley cyrus who approach rap culture in a really baldfaced, sloppy manner" which is a valid point of critique but i don't think the video makes that point well at all, and is in fact mostly guilty of the same sins

that's the thing - the message is so vague (beyond that lily allen obv thinks she's above everything in pop music) that there's no wrong way to be offended by it

The video's message is so muddled though. It opens satirizing the music industry for suggesting Allen is too fat and for enforcing impossible beauty standards, then just one minute later gawks mockingly at black women for having actual asses.

i think it's more... "lol at girls like miley cyrus who approach rap culture in a really baldfaced, sloppy manner" which is a valid point of critique but i don't think the video makes that point well at all, and is in fact mostly guilty of the same sins

Yeah, I've been trying to put this exact thought together, but it came to J0rdan first.

knowing more about allen and paying closer attention the video may nuance your sense of what she's going for, but no one owes you a look through wikipedia before saying "fuck this shit"

well, people getting paid to write about you might benefit from having something to share, but casual viewers are free to just say "no, this sucks"

i think fuck this shit has been everyone itt's initial response

yeah there's a valid point that could be made about how it's apparently 'hard out here' for black women (who aren't the lead artist at least) to be in videos for anything other than ass-based purposes (which in turn fuels this same generalisation about them in both directions) but can't see how this video was aiming for anything like that when it's just showing the exact same thing in the same way even if it's meant to be sarcastic, tongue in cheek or whatever

I see what this is trying to do, but the satire feels too forced, too direct, too slapstick. Crudely so. It's not half as smart as it thinks it is or it ought to be. In fact it's not even as smart as the stuff it's meant to be exposing, which isn't saying very much.

That's a nice summation of Allen overall.

Well, this won't be getting Best Music Writing anytime soon: http://flavorwire.com/424859/hard-out-here-proves-lily-allen-is-the-pop-star-we-need-in-2013

We live in a post-Miley Cyrus / post-trollgaze world.

Sure, the video for (and the lyrics in) “Hard Out Here” is heavy-handed — not to mention the fact that the cadre of mostly black backup dancers twerking and getting their asses slapped in slow motion muddies the satirical message a bit. But the pretty blatant disses at the heavy hitters on the current pop charts are perfect. There’s Cyrus’ twerking, Gaga’s cheeky product placement and transparent media critiques, even a reference to Robin Thicke’s embarrassing bragging about the size of his penis, and acknowledgment of all three performer’s cultural appropriations. All comparisons of raw talent aside, Lily Allen seems to be the only pop performer still standing who has the self-awareness and wit to nail such a timely message in the space of a four-minute pop song.

how soon we forget weird al

not to mention pink

not to mention

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ht5RZpzPqw

People think of Weird Al first and foremost as a comedian, I believe.

that piece makes no sense

how can you write these two sentences back to back and not notice a problem

Sure, the video for (and the lyrics in) “Hard Out Here” is heavy-handed — not to mention the fact that the cadre of mostly black backup dancers twerking and getting their asses slapped in slow motion muddies the satirical message a bit. But the pretty blatant disses at the heavy hitters on the current pop charts are perfect.

"the execution of this video and song is heavy-handed and muddled but also PERFECT"

I am no expert on youtube views but isn't 70 000 low for someone as big as Lily Allen?

Youtube freezes view counts on first-day/viral videos in the initial hours.

yeah there was a while where "301 Views" was a pretty reliable indicator of "this is big"

It's getting hard out herre...

:(

can't respect writers who start sentences with "Sure"

sure you can

"Sure" followed by equivocation. It's the Jonah Goldberg Rule.

Popjustice like it too. Apparently it's heart is in the right place..hmm.

http://www.popjustice.com/songs/lily-allen-hard-out-here/

"While her last album showcased the sort of scalpel-sharp social commentary and deft put-downs that have been missing from pop in the age of #clubLOLZ, Allen fans will have to make do, for now at least, with a cover of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know to mark her return. And it's nice and pleasant and all those sorts of adjectives, with Allen's delicate and deftly nuanced vocal rooted firmly on the right side of schmaltz. Fingers crossed the comeback proper is slightly less warm and cosy, though."

Translated, this means its fucking awful, yeah?

(From The Guardian).

scalpel-sharp metaphors

Here's the Keane cover/ad for people who haven't seen it yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqWig2WARb0

People who I respect *like* that advert.

I think it's a good helping of cuddlestein for the holiday, and the creation/animation is top-notch.

Not sure why Keane and not sure why Lily Allen.