Saturday Night Magazine - Lily Allen: On Common Ground

Lily Allen: On Common Ground

Written by Carla Thorpe

Thursday, March 15 2007

{rjp Lily-Allenweb.jpg|left}If you haven’t yet heard of Lily Allen, chances are you soon will. Hot off the streets of LDN (that’s London for the uninitiated), she’s the latest in a short but sweet line of British rappers, the poster girl for Myspace Music success stories and one cheeky lass.

At age 15, Lily Allen was a drug dealer living in Ibiza. At 21, she’s one of the brightest new stars of British music and is only just getting started in the industry. She signed a record deal back in 2005 but was frustrated that the label wanted to produce her album in a cookie-cutter ‘hit factory’. Instead, she started uploading tracks to a Myspace page. As more people discovered her profile, the tunes were soon sucked into the viral-verse, reaching UK music mag NME and various music blogs. It wasn’t long before the demo of ‘LDN’ was played on BBC Radio One and she found herself at number one in the UK singles chart with ‘Smile’.

Allen’s quirky blend of observational lyrics and sweet singer/rapper sound make her easy to listen to but damn hard to categorize. She can best be described as a ‘Commoner’, part of that new collective of British musicians - including Lady Sovereign and The Streets – who deliver cool street lingo with a big dose of Cockney charm, all laid out on a catchy beat.

The question is, can such a quintessentially British artist find fame in the US? Well, Entertainment Weekly named her CD ‘Alright, Still’ as one of the top 10 albums of 2006 despite the fact that it had not yet been released over here. And when it was released on January 30, 2007 it sold 34,000 copies and landed at #20 on the Billboard Album Charts. We'll take that as a 'yes' then.

Lily's on a US tour this Spring, with notable dates at LA's Gibson Amphitheatre on April 14 and the Coachella Festival on April 29.

Check out our current Lily Allen song-crush, ‘Knock ‘Em Out’ (about how annoying it is to dodge skeezy barflies), at her Myspace page: www.myspace.com/lilymusic

Comments (5)

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Lily Allen
written by Chelsea , September 26, 2007

Lily kicks ass!!!!! My whole family loves her, My step father (from Brit) introduced us to her and James Blunt! I love lily!!!!!!!!!!

AMAZING
written by BC , September 17, 2007

This is it. This is what I knew was out there, just waiting to be heard. I overplay that song with Common ("Driving me crazy") way too much, but I don't care. I can't get enough. smilies/tongue.gif