It's June 16, 2024, 12:40:07 PM
Interview: Lily AllenInterview by Scott PlagenhoefA number of my friends and colleagues dislike Lily Allen-- and nearly all of those detractors are men. Perhaps it should be expected that a willful, precocious female whose characters have little patience for male sexual inadequacy and who threaten to avenge a broken heart by sleeping with their ex's mates would appeal more to women than men, yet the ease with which many brand the singer a bitch or worse is disconcerting.And for what? Being a brazen and sharp-witted woman who recorded a breakup album that's breezy, mischievous, and catchy rather than all acoustic-bedded tears and exposed veins? To do the latter would have been both dreadfully boring and sorely out of character for Allen, a savvy 21-year-old Brit whose readymade press stories-- to the UK tabloids she's the "potty-mouthed, pint-sized pop diva, daughter of actor Keith Allen"; to the broadsheets, she's the queen of MySpace, having captured a sizable audience after posting her demos on the social-networking site-- and charming debut LP Alright, Still made her an overnight success at home.In the U.S., Allen is merely dipping her toes into the water, having recently played a series of brief, tentative shows in advance of the January 2007 American release of her album. And even here the internet fueled much of her success. Despite a sound that's a hard sell in the U.S. indie community, American mp3 blogs embraced her early and often. Perhaps they considered this MySpace success story to be their spiritual kin, but bloggers happily tracked her every move, posting everything from her 50 Cent-biting song about her grandmother ("Nan, You're a Window Shopper") to a pep talk for her weed-smoking baby brother ("Alfie") to barbed-tongue attacks on former lovers and catty girls (most of the rest of her tracks).As with 2006's other more divisive artists-- the Hold Steady, Joanna Newsom, the Arctic Monkeys-- the reasons why this singer attracts or repels listeners are often the same. In Allen's case, chief among those are a nonchalance and impudence that make her a quote-worthy, headstrong pop star in an era of mostly PR-molded dullards. True to form, when we met Allen she did little to disguise how exhausted she was and mentioned that she had about 25 minutes to go shopping before our interview. (It was just enough time to hit Starbucks and Walgreen's.) And almost immediately after the interview, she wondered aloud why the Pipettes album got one more point on our rating scale than her own (8.4 to 8.3)-- a question Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik has been asking for months.On paper that might seem bitchy, but it was certainly not. None of it was mean-spirited; all of it was matter-of-fact and refreshingly honest. It was a demonstration of the feistiness/neediness of a young artist who, in her music, aims to seem assured and confident, but is also unafraid of sometimes painful self-awareness and vulnerability; a singer who criticizes the music industry because of her frustration with its many shades of grey but also acknowledges that her own career "could all be over in six months."Pitchfork: So are you more bored of talking about your dad or talking about MySpace?Lily Allen: I'm used to it. I'm on autopilot.Pitchfork: Actually, I would like to talk about MySpace, because there is still confusion and a little suspicion about how you started, that there weren't industry machinations behind it all.Lily Allen: No, my record company didn't even know what MySpace was. About three weeks after I set it up, my manager called me and he was like, "I think you ought to set this thing up, it's called MySpace or something," and I was like, "Already done it."Over the past two years I had been doing demos and I probably had, like, seven or eight that I was confident enough to put on the page for people to hear. I started putting them up in November [2005], two months after I signed. I just kind of swapped them around. When we did "Nan, You're a Window Shopper", literally five minutes after we finished, it was on MySpace.By February or March it was obvious that something was going on, because there were so many subscribers to the blog and so many people listening to the music-- the plays were just going up and up and up.Pitchfork: But the record company wanted to sign you then have you work with someone else's songs?Lily Allen: I signed to Regal, a division of Polygram for £25,000. It was like nothing-- a really, really small development deal. At that time they were putting out a Kylie album, a Coldplay album, the Gorillaz album had just been released. So, they didn't really care about me [Laughs].They were happy with me-- they signed me-- but at that point my album wasn't meant to come out in England until this coming January [2007]. So, they didn't really have a plan, so to speak. They didn't think that the direction of the demos was quite right. It wasn't that they weren't supportive; they just didn't think it was ready-- because it wasn't.They were trying things out, like putting me with more mainstream producers and top-line writers because they didn't think my melodies were quite there-- it wasn't sonically "pop sounding" enough or whatever.You know within a record company they have A&R and marketing and press and whatever. Obviously, A&R knew about me but nobody else in the record company did at that point. And Murray [Chalmers], the head of press, was getting calls from people who were like, "We want to write about Lily," and he was like, "I don't know what you're talking about."Pitchfork: Yeah, it took us a long time to even have an e-mail answered about you.Lily Allen: Well, they didn't know who I was. It took like four or five phone calls from The Observer Music Monthly magazine. They were like, "We're writing an article about MySpace and we want to do a thing on Lily." Murray was like, "OK, this is stupid. Now five people have called about this Lily girl, who the hell is she?" So he walked down to A&R and was like, "Have we got someone called Lily Allen on our books?" And they were like, "Oh yeah, she's this girl we got a few months ago." And that's kind of when it all started, and then three weeks later we got the offer for the [OMM] cover.Pitchfork: And it wasn't until then that they were comfortable putting your own songs into production?Lily Allen: Yeah, then they were kind of confident that the songs were okay; that those should go on the album. There were still only seven or eight that I was happy with-- "LDN", "Knock 'Em Out", "Smile", "[Nan, You're a] Window Shopper", and a few others.At that time my concentration was really bad because I was interested in going home and reading about how much people love me on MySpace, and I wasn't even thinking about writing any new songs [Laughs]. I'd read all the messages, "Oh you love me great great!" I was getting very excited about that, and I suddenly got writer's block. It was a really bad time for it to happen-- everyone was getting excited on the back of the MySpace and the album wasn't finished. So I decided to come to America and work with [producer] Greg Kurstin, as well as Mark Ronson, who was a friend and asked me to come over to New York. I finished the second half of the album in, like, two weeks.Pitchfork: When the record company execs tried to match you up with more mainstream producers, did they have any specific sounds or specific people that they wanted you to work with?Lily Allen: You know what A&R people are like-- hmm, Cathy Dennis, Johnny Douglas.And I tried it! I'm not going to say I was always adamant. I didn't know that my stuff was good enough. I'm not like an über-confident person who thinks she's amazing. If the people from the record company were telling me it's not good enough and I should be working with these people, I was like, "OK, cool, whatever," but it always sounded very contrived. I can't sit there and sing, "Ooh baby, you make me crazy, Can I be your lady, baby." It doesn't work [Laughs].Pitchfork: But was there a sense of urgency to turn the record around? You were already getting press and had nothing in the shops. Like, the Lady Sovereign record-- is that even out in England? It's finally about to come out here. It's taken two years.Lily Allen: I don't even think anyone cares [in England].Pitchfork: Her internet rise wasn't as strong or as quick as yours, but it sort of parallels.Lily Allen: She actually told me about MySpace. I met her in a bar, and she asked, "Have you heard about MySpace?"We knew that we had to put out the limited release of "LDN". You can't really have all that press and not have the little tagline on the end that says, "'LDN' by Lily Allen, out on this date". So we did the [500-count] limited edition [7"] just to have something that people could talk about and hold. And then there were the mixtapes that were around. I'm going to do another one in the next couple of weeks.Pitchfork: Are you going to be including some of your own new tracks?Lily Allen: I haven't really had time to get into the studio, so there's definitely no new material.Pitchfork: Was there a specific inspiration for doing the mixtapes? The idea certainly worked for M.I.A.Lily Allen: Well, the MySpace thing was going so well, and I wanted to create more interest so I got Polygram to pay for it, to do like 200 of them. Also, it was something for me to do because my writing wasn't happening. Every night I'd spray all the covers, and they were individually numbered. And it was free. I hand wrote everyone's addresses on the front and put them in the post and that kind of got people talking. And it was really good, because that was the time when they were trying to put me in with producers, and I'm not very good at articulating what I want with music, so it was really helpful to have the mixtape and say, "OK, this is the kind of music I like, these are my influences, so let's try to build off some of these things."Pitchfork: You opened up a lot on your MySpace blog-- much more than most artists would.Lily Allen: It just seemed natural. I don't do many [entries] now because I would just be writing a response to something someone else wrote about me.It definitely became annoying when I would write something and it would end up in the tabloids the next day, completely twisted around. It's like, fuck off [Laughs].Pitchfork: But you grew up around fame. Did you not expect those things would happen?Lily Allen: I've been around famous people, but I don't think about them that way. Joe Strummer was my father's best friend but I knew him as Uncle Joe, carrying a bottle of whiskey around. The famous people that I have been around were all really relaxed, not the Ozzy Osbourne types, driving around in limos.Pitchfork: Do you think that prevented you from putting up a PR wall?Lily Allen: I didn't need to do that because I'm not in this to be a famous celebrity. If I were, then I would be going to film premieres and standing around in couture dresses and posing for pictures. I have the connections with which I could have achieved a lucrative a pop career by doing nothing, do y'know what I mean? I could have said to my dad, talk to your friend to get me a deal and I'll go to the gym everyday, maybe get a boob job, and sing whatever songs people want me to sing, but that's not what interests me.I get annoyed that people are so narrow-minded. In England, when you become a celebrity your name is automatically followed by the way in which you're typecast. I'm always, "Lily Allen, potty-mouthed, pint-sized pop diva, daughter of Keith." It's difficult to backtrack out of that typecast-- and it's wrong. I'm not just someone who goes around being mean about people. I just have an opinion.People think I say things in order to get into the papers, but my life would be so much easier if they didn't write anything. But at the same time if Carl Barat [Dirty Pretty Things, ex-Libertines] is being a cunt backstage at a TV program, why shouldn't I say something?Pitchfork: Did you change your mind about the Kooks? You badmouthed them, but later covered one of their songs.Lily Allen: I like them and I like their music to a certain…yeah. I've known [singer] Luke [Pritchard] since I was 13 years old, and it's just really funny to me to see someone become such a victim-- wearing tight jeans, cowboy hats, sunglasses. But I like their songs. I think they're catchy. I like Keane too, and I know their songs aren't that aesthetically cool, but maybe that's what is great about them-- they don't feel the need to fuck models.Pitchfork: Tom Chaplin did end up in rehab though.Lily Allen: Yeah, so that's one point [Laughs].Pitchfork: It seems like a lot of these newer bands are just looking back and copying what older bands were doing in the past. There's no imagination. They're like little kids raiding their parents' closet and playing dress-up.Lily Allen: Until recently you had shit bands like S Club 7 that all dressed up the same and danced around and had the same message. They all had shiny white Ts and straightened hair, and that is kind of what is happening with indie music. It's the same audience that is buying the stuff...like young girls.Pitchfork: In many cases, it's probably the exact same girls. The girls who were buying Steps records in 1998 are probably buying Kooks records now.Lily Allen: Yeah, exactly. I just don't think so much of that kind of music should be covered.One of the really, really happy moments was when the NME wanted me to do the cover. I never thought that would happen at that point in my career. Then when I did the interview and it actually came out, I was so disappointed that they had sold me down the river and been such assholes. It made me completely disbelieve anything they ever write.Pitchfork: What exactly happened?Lily Allen: I was having a long conversation with them about drugs in the music industry, and the next question after that was, "How are you going to celebrate your No. 1 [single] this weekend?" And I went, "Oh, gak!" as a joke, because we just had this whole talk about drugs. They didn't print the previous part of the conversation, just the last line where I said I celebrated by taking coke. And then the PR person for their magazine called the tabloids and sold them the story.And it really upset me, because I thought if there was one magazine that could take me seriously as a female artist and be responsible about it…I mean, I read articles every week about boys in bands talking about actually consuming drugs themselves and nothing is said. I make a joke about it, and they fucking sell it to the tabloids. Anything to get the magazine some press. And that's really sad.Pitchfork: Do you think that the "potty-mouthed, pint-sized" thing, that you get that treatment because you're a woman?Lily Allen: Yeah, if a guy says something bad about another artist it's like a bravado thing to start beef. But if a girl does it then it's considered, like, bitchy and catty. Which isn't true. Everything I say is constructive and for a reason. I don't just slag someone off for the sake of it.The other thing about this industry and the film industry is that I've seen young people come in and out, fuck up their lives, become heroin addicts. So when Luke takes himself so seriously, I say, "Come on, you look ridiculous. This could all be over in a year-and-half, so just enjoy it."Pitchfork: So you think you're better equipped to deal with fame because you've seen its pitfalls?Lily Allen: I'm just very realistic about it all. I'm really happy to be here. I'm fucking exhausted, but I think a lot of people in this industry really grin and bear it, and are like, [Valley Girl accent], "Ohmigod, it's so great to be here. Thank you so much."But, yeah, I'm really happy that people are buying my record, and that I'm able to play shows for those who appreciate what I'm doing. But I know those people may move onto something else in a year's time, and I might not write a very good second album. It happens to a lot of artists. [Laughs]. The thing to do is not take yourself so seriously. The moment when you sort of start to believe all that stuff is when you get in trouble.Pitchfork: Do you think your assertiveness-- and it's in your music, as well-- do you think being a young woman that people assume that you're a bitch? Would that even bother you?Lily Allen: To a certain extent everyone expects women-- especially in this industry-- to sit and look pretty and do what they're told. Like the Tommy Mottolas of the world. There are a lot of women that come into this industry who are so scared of losing what they have that they just sort of sit up straight. Why are they so afraid? I built all of this from the very beginning, and it could all be over in six months. But that doesn't mean I can't start something else up and make that work just as well. There's so much out there for me to-- I'm 21 years old [Laughs]. There's no way I'll be traveling the world and singing to people in 10 years' time.Pitchfork: If it ends in six months what would you do?Lily Allen: Well, it'd have to happen for me to think about it. Before I was doing this, I was a florist, getting up at four in the morning and arranging flowers. I really enjoyed that, but now I couldn't be a worker. I'd have to be the boss.I'd like to work for a record company doing A&R or something. It's such a bunch of fucking idiots doing that job, who know absolutely nothing about music. There are so many clueless people, but there are laws in place that won't allow you to fire someone for not being good at their job. People have to have done something wrong to get fired, so you've got all these fucking idiots walking around with high salaries who have no idea what they're doing.Pitchfork: If you were in A&R, who would you sign?Lily Allen: Cajun Dance Party, they're little kids off of MySpace. They're really interesting. I would sign the Klaxons as well. What do you think of them?Pitchfork: I like them, yeah. I like both of the singles quite a lot, and the cover of "The Bouncer" works as well.Lily Allen: I actually sang "Atlantis to Interzone" with them at Bestival. I was so drunk. I think they're a great band. It certainly feels like something really special is happening with them. I'm a bit jealous of them because people go absolutely insane at their concerts. Maybe my next album should be new wave/rave.Pitchfork: You could have gotten clearance for [Origin Unknown's] "Valley of the Shadows" and inserted that into the official release of "Cheryl Tweedy"-- released the mixtape version.Lily Allen: Well, I wanted "Cheryl Tweedy" and "Absolutely Nothing" to be on the album instead of "Take What You Take", because I fucking hate that song more than anything in the world. It was the one thing the record company…they said the Robbie Williams market would like it.Pitchfork: Well, the Robbie Williams market is, like, half of England. Actually, I guess that's not true anymore. What did they mean by that-- guys?Lily Allen: I don't even know. Like, middle-of-the-road record buyers?Pitchfork: Because it's a little more guitar-centric than, say, Jamaican music or calypso, which is apparently hard to sell in the minds of the industry folk.Were they scared of having "Cheryl Tweedy" on the record because they didn't want a song about Cheryl Tweedy? Well, it's not really about her-- it's about you-- but one that mentions her.Lily Allen: I don't think they thought it was good enough. Or that it didn't fit in with the rest of the album, but then I don't know why they'd think "Take What You Take" does.It was very rushed at that point. On the last day, when we were putting the tracklist together, there were three songs that were fighting to get on the record: "Absolutely Nothing", "Cheryl Tweedy", and "Take What You Take". You gotta pick your battles…[Laughs]. [The U.S. version of Alright, Still will feature all three songs-- Ed.]But now that I know who [the label] people are, and how much they know about what they're doing, I definitely wouldn't listen to them. I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but basically everything that has happened with this record I've done on my own. You know, A&R'ed it on my own, chose all of the artwork, chose the right TV appearances to do, interviews to do.Pitchfork: Now that you're more successful, do you think the label will take more interest and demand more control?Lily Allen: I don't know. I made the album for £25,000 pounds and recouped that in a week-and-a-half. I'm in a position of power with them. I don't owe them anything, so… yeah they'll listen to me. Unless I'm like, working with Timbaland and Burt Bacharach.Pitchfork: You couldn't even get Timbaland for £25,000.Lily Allen: And he'd only give me two days. I couldn't work under that pressure, with all that money involved. With this next record, what I've figured out is that I'm much better writing away from home. I wrote half the record while I was in America. I'd like to hire a house in Jamaica or the South of France and build a studio in it, and ship out people. I would like to go in a different direction with the next record.Pitchfork: On something like "Knock 'Em Out"-- something even that innocuous-- you start by asserting that this track could be about anyone, that it isn't necessarily about yourself. Do you feel that you have to take pains to assure listeners that your music can connect to a wide range of people because you've had a different background than most of your listeners?Lily Allen: I'm not writing all of these songs as if they were from my perspective, and those are the things I'm experiencing. But at the same time, my mother came to London when she was 17 years old with one daughter and a suitcase and nothing else-- no money, no education. She was a punk. And, we didn't have any money for the first 10 years of my life. We lived in what you call the projects, and we ate beans on toast. My mom came from that background, but she just worked really hard to feed us and keep a roof over our head, and that probably keeps my eyes open.But people don't see that because now my mom is a film producer and my dad is an actor. At they think it must be really easy-- "she was really rich"-- and that's not true. My dad left home when I was four. I didn't speak to him really until I was 15. So, I feel that I can talk about things with some conviction because I have experienced them to some extent. But it doesn't mean that I'm saying, "This is my life." I don't live in a council flat, but I live in London, which is an incredibly cosmopolitan city. I see a variety of people and things just riding through it.Pitchfork: Well, it's the same thing in America. It's no coincidence that, on the whole, those who live in cities have a more collectivist and compassionate approach to government and other people-- they interact with a wider range of individuals, and are more likely to have shared experiences that cut across class and racial lines.Lily Allen: It's something that I find really revolting about our society. I think the more class-obsessed you become, the more that lower-class people accept their "place" and give up hope of something better. That is really sad, and that's the whole trick-- keep them down, it keeps us richer.Pitchfork: What does your family think about being subjects of your songs-- your grandmother, your brother?Lily Allen: My grandmother still doesn't know.Pitchfork: She has no idea? Nobody's told her?Lily Allen: No, it's not on the album, she doesn't know how to work the internet, and it's not really widely reported.Pitchfork: Nobody tried to ask her for a comment or anything?Lily Allen: No, none of that. When I wrote "Alfie", nobody really knew who I was. At first he was really upset about it, because he thought that I was just pointing out all of his bad points and attacking him. I thought it was really flattering [Laughs]. I thought he'd be really, really happy because it proved to him how much I loved him, that I care about him, and I want him to do something with his life. I suppose his paranoia-- induced by smoking so much weed-- made him think, "Why are you trying to be mean?"Pitchfork: Did it work?Lily Allen: Yeah, he's doing really well-- he's just done a film with Keira Knightley called Atonement.Pitchfork: What about your ex-boyfriend?Lily Allen: I don't give a shit about him. He sold his story about me to the Sunday Mirror-- like, sex and all, for £20,000. And now he's living in a nice Brownstone in Williamsburg. It really annoyed me, actually, because he sold his story for an hour-and-a-half of talking. He got about as much as I signed a record deal for, and it took me three-and-a-half years to make that album. It angered me so much. I put in all that work, and he broke my heart and fucked me over, and now he and his girlfriend are living in New York off of my fame and success.Link-arrowLily Allen (MySpace): http://www.myspace.com/lilymusic
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