Splendour In The Grass has announced its 2014 line-up, which includes Outcast, Two Door Cinema Club, Lily Allen and Interpol. Courtesy: Splendour in the Grass...
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Splendour In The Grass has announced its 2014 line-up, which includes Outcast, Two Door Cinema Club, Lily Allen and Interpol. Courtesy: Splendour in the Grass
Entering a new phase of life ... Lily Allen back in 2009. Picture: Chris JacksonSource:Getty Images
DON’T call it a comeback — Lily Allen has been here for years ... she’s just been up to her elbows in nappies.
A flippant remark in 2009 saw Allen apparently put herself out to career pasture at age 24 after two albums.
“I didn’t really quit,” Allen clarifies. “Someone said to me in an interview what’s next, I said I don’t know, I’ve got this boyfriend, I’m probably going to buy a house in the country and think about having kids. Then someone wrote ‘Lily: I’m Retired’ as a headline and it became fact.”
Allen did add fuel to the flame — opening a fashion boutique and stating on Twitter she’d retired from writing, recording and touring under the name Lily Allen and changed her twitter handle to Lily Rose Cooper after marrying Sam Cooper. You can understand the confusion.
When she came out of “retirement” to feature on Pink’s True Love in 2012 she was credited as Lily Rose Cooper.
She’s now back trading as Lily Allen — she says her record label “weren’t having” her change to her marital name to minimise any potential risk from leaving five years since her second album, It’s Not Me It’s You.
She’s Lily Cooper on her passport when it comes to her day and night job as mother of Ethel, two, and Marnie, one.
“I don’t think I have come back,” Allen says.
“I’ve just done what most mums do, which is go back to work after their babies are big enough for them to do so.”
It was being a parent that prompted Allen to return to songwriting, with her musical partner Greg Kurstin (Sia, Pink) coaxing her back into the studio.
The first song she wrote was As Long As I Got You, her ode to her husband, which is on her third album Sheezus.
The BRIT Awards 2014 - Red Carpet ArrivalsSource:Getty Images
It’s classic Lily Allen — one minute singing “my life had lost its meaning, but you saved me from myself” then a punchline to puncture the mood “staying home with you is better than sticking things up my nose”.
Allen says the country-tinged song was easy to write.
“I love listening to Adele and love songs and power ballads but that’s not my strength,” she says. “I can’t write observational love songs, I think it’s too earnest. So I try and do something a bit more ballsy.”
Previous hit, Not Fair, was a graphic slapdown of a selfish lover leaving Allen unsatisfied after she’d put in major bedroom jaw grease.
The antidote is Sheezus’ L8 CMMR (or Latecomer), where she hails her husband’s sexual prowess and stamina.
“In the past when I was putting albums out I didn’t have stable long-term relationships,” Allen says. “Not Fair was directed at one person in particular but it could have been about any of my conquests, should we say, back in the day. But I’m happy now, happy with my husband, and he works for me.”
Allen admits her husband is thrilled and embarrassed with L8CMMR. Their intimate life is also the subject of Close Your Eyes, which is as close as Lily Allen has ever got to a Sade baby-making tune. Except Sade would never sing “I’m gonna yank your chain and we can do it all over again”.
Unique with style ... Lily Allen attends the annual NME Awards this year. Picture: Tim P.Source:Getty Images
“I find it difficult to be serious when being sexy, “ she says, “unless I’m with my husband alone.
“But I feel the need to touch on those subjects.”
There’s also something that has never been on a Lily Allen album — domesticity.
Life For Me is about a mother who briefly regrets giving up her party life as she’s covered in vomit, that’s not her own, in the wee hours.
“Any new mother will know when you first have children it’s a shock how exhausting it is and how little sleep you get. There’s two and a half hours between feeds, I find it difficult to sleep. I’d sit on myFacebook and see exactly what other people are doing. When you’re exhausted you think ‘That looks like so much fun in comparison to what I’m doing here’.
“But then it just takes seeing your baby smile and all those fears vanish. I really don’t miss the party life.”
Facebook envy aside, there’s plenty of the online world covered on Sheezus.
Insincerely Yours targets the world of D-list celebrities who live to get featured in gossip columns as well as the trend of ‘celebrity’ DJs with the lyric “Whatever happened to the real DJs ‘cos the chick you paid can’t mix for s---.”
“It’s annoying, especially when they’re not even celebrities,” Allen says. “It’s a weird part of our culture. It’s click-baiting isn’t it, getting someone famous to come and pretend to play records and get a picture of them doing that and then people will read about your party. I find it much easier to write narky, sarcastic songs than I do earnest and sincere songs. I’m just a horrible person I guess!”
Sexy and sassy ... Lily Allen performs during the 'Etam Live Lingerie show' at Bourse duSource:Getty Images
She’s already predicting people will take the title track the wrong way. Sheezus is a tongue-in-cheek play by play of how she plans to re-enter the ring to take on the women dominating the charts right now. She sings “Riri isn’t scared of Katy Perry’s roaring, Queen B’s gone back to the drawing, Lorde smells blood, yeah she’s about to slay you, kid ain’t one to f--- with when she’s only on her debut, we’re all watching Gaga, LOL like ha ha, dying for the art so really she’s a martyr, second best will never cut it for the divas, give me that crown bitch I wanna be Sheezus.”
Allen says the song is meant to be “light hearted and funny” and is particularly proud of getting the word “period’’ into a singalong moment in the song.
“The people that I’m singing about are at the forefront of that world, so it’d be weird if I didn’t mention them or namecheck them. But I don’t feel like all famous people are part of an exclusive, elite club and we mustn’t do anything to offend each other.”
She’s a big fan of Kiwi teen Lorde, who gets her first namecheck in the song.
Entering a new phase of life ... Lily Allen back in 2009. Picture: Chris JacksonSource:Getty Images
“I really like her songs,” Allen says. “It’s not very often I listen to lyrics of songs, usually you can tell they’re pretty boring before they’ve even started talking.
“I feel like she’s trying to convey some sort of message. For someone so young to be able to do that and execute it so well, it’s kind of amazing. It means she’s a force to be reckoned with.”
When she announced the title Sheezus Allen was worried Kanye West would think she was mocking his album Yeezus.
The Sheezus album credits, as well as thanking both her shrinks and her Spanx, says “Kanye and Jesus I’ve got nothing but respect for both of y’all” and says that while calling herself “Sheezus” was “a bit of a LOL” that if Amy Winehouse was alive “she’d pull off Sheezus with ease”.
Lily Allen Sheezus Wiki
Since writing the album thankyou’s Allen has heard from Kanye. Or his people. “I don’t need to worry, everything’s fine,” she says. “I know he’s not angry, which is all I wanted to hear.”
HEARSheezus (Warner) out May 2
SEE Lily Allen, Splendour in the Grass, North Byron Parklands, July 25-27, $149-$355+bf, moshtix
Lily Allen Sheezus Download Rar 64-bit
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