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Molek FMLily Allen: Girl Uninterrupted
Lily Allen laments sexual sterotypes, bad sex, the media upsetting her grandad and shares her pulling technique – it involves pretending to be asleep. Very cunning. It’s all on It’s Not Me, It’s You, the follow up album to debut Alright, Still. We discuss it track by track.
Text & Image Warner Music
So, here we are with your 2nd album, It’s Not You, It’s Me. They always call it the difficult second album. Was it?
Er, it was quite difficult, not too difficult. I don’t know how difficult it was. I suppose the most difficult thing about it was, the first album, I didn’t really expect anyone to listen to it, whereas this time people are going to listen to it and want to have an opinion about it, which, that was the only thing I found difficult about it, not the actual writing of songs.
The album has been produced by Greg Kurstin, who has worked with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers. How did you hook up with him?
I think, I was working in a studio in North London and he was working on a wonderful band that you might have heard of called All Saints who used to be on my record label. They were in the studio next door to me and so I kind of got introduced to him through them and we hit it off and we just decided to work on some stuff. We did 3 songs on my last record together and, yeah, I decided I wanted to make this record with one person really, so that it felt like it was one body of work the whole way through, and it didn’t feel like it was, you know, me working with, you know, lots of sort of different pop producers and thrown together.
So how did you work out a system? He lives in the US.
Well, I went over there a couple of times for short amounts of time. We’d swap it because, you know, Greg’s married and he has got a wife and I think it was a bit mean to ask him to come over here for long periods of time. And I wanted to take it slowly because I think, with the way that I write songs it’s so much in the moment, about, you know, what I’m thinking about at that particular time. I can’t really keep coming up with stuff just like one after another so I have to kind of do a week then have, you know, 3 or 4 weeks off and then go back in again and try it again once I’ve, you know, experienced some more life.
He came over to England for the 1st session and we hired out this tiny little cottage in Moreton-In-Marsh, and we just sat there for a week and a half and banged out 5 or 6 of the songs. It was quite weird the way me and Greg work: the 1st couple of days we listened to other people’s stuff and tried to get inspired and we listened to lots of Keane (laughs), who I love, and some Coldplay stuff, and then we listened to lots of like sort of happy, hardcore dance music and, you know, ragga, and jungle, and stuff that I used to be influenced by when I was a teenager, and the dance music that I really, really like. So we tried to mix the 2 and have that sort of ethereal, big-sounding, you know, chord progressions, and then, mixed with the, you know, more modern beats.
OK, so the two of you are in the studio. Who does what?
We both do it all together really. There’s not really a routine. It just happens how it happens and sometimes, you know, he’ll just be playing the piano and I’ll just be sitting there scribbling on my notepad, not really writing words, but doodling and he’ll suddenly play some chords that I like and I’ll go, ‘Oh, that was really nice,’ and, you know, then he’ll kind of make that into a verse and I’ll put some words to go over it and then he’ll come up with some more chords and we just kind of build things. Sometimes we’ll get a verse and we won’t get a chorus. We’ll leave it and come back to it in a couple of months. I’m quite impatient so if I feel something isn’t working straight away I don’t want to carry on with it. Sometimes I’ll really tear my hair out and go, ‘Oh, I can’t think of anything today. I’m really driving myself insane,’ and that is when Greg will go, ‘Why don’t we have a go at some of the stuff that we gave up on last time?’ And usually because I’m familiar with that track I’ll be able to come up with something, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
One of the most noticeable things about this album is that, although the subjects are often quite dark and serious, the musical treatment is often quite bouncy and jolly. Greg’s musical ideas presumably make you laugh sometimes?
Yeah, a lot. That’s why I work with Greg because he makes me laugh so much and he’s such a funny character to work with and at the end of it we are really, really good friends. But he’s mad, he’s constantly playing really weird things. I think one day we might even write a musical because we love just writing silly things and things with a lot of character. If I’ve got like a sort of one-liner, he’ll laugh at that if it’s really kind of staring at you, but I don’t think he listens to the lyrics of the song from start to finish at the beginning. When he’s in the studio he’s thinking about his part and I’m thinking about my part. I think he saves his reflections for later.
As part of the process of writing songs you make notes of things that you observe and things that happen to you. Those notebooks are really important. Ever lost one?
I never keep any of my books. I don’t know where any of them are. They’re all in somewhere. I don’t throw them away. I just misplace them. They’re not like the things that I hold on to. You know, if I’m in a studio, sometimes I won’t even take a book, I won’t even take a pen, I’ll write it on the back of a receipt if I don’t have anything to write on.
So, track by track through the album. The 1st song is called ‘Everybody’s At It’ which is about taking drugs. Do you feel moved to change society through music?
No, I think I’m just an observer of things and I get annoyed about hypocrisy within our society and within the press and the government, and that’s more what the song is about. It’s more about the hypocrisy of it all, really. It’s such a big thing, isn’t it, drugs? It’s such a sort of taboo subject. Maybe it is just me and the environment that I’ve grown up in, but literally everyone I know is on drugs or has been. It’s just saying, you know, everyone’s at it. It’s just sort of saying, you know, I haven’t got a right to tell people to ease off on their views or that taking drugs is a good thing, or a bad thing, or any of those things, you know. I haven’t got a right, I’m not well educated enough to be able to talk on the subject, but I can observe what I see and that’s what I’ve done.
‘The Fear’ is about pursuit of fame and celebrity. Is this from your point of view, or somebody on the outside?
Well, actually it’s not. Actually it was never written about me, although, in retrospect, listening to it I could see how people could put the 2 together and assume that it was. You know, it makes me sad just to think of young kids reading Heat magazine and being on gossip websites and thinking that that’s what they should be aspiring to be like. It’s not even saying, ‘Take it from me,’ but I know from being on this side that it isn’t all as fun as it looks. But that’s the case and it makes me sad to think that’s what our society is becoming. Listen I’m not going to sit here and complain about my life because I feel really happy for the things that I do have.Â
There aren’t many 23 year olds especially in today’s financial climate that have got their own house and can pay off the mortgage and get sent nice clothes all the time, and I do have that. But that doesn’t mean that I have to enjoy 10 middle-aged men standing outside my house with cameras all day. And I don’t like them following me in their cars when I’m on my own. And I don’t like people writing about my personality when they don’t know me. I think, if people stuck to facts, you know, I wouldn’t get so upset, but when people make judgement on my character from sources that don’t actually exist, that’s what upsets me, because I feel like the general public are getting some idea of who I am and actually it’s not true at all. I hold back on that now really. I don’t blog so much. I don’t kind of give so much of myself away. And now it’s got to the point where I don’t even let myself be photographed with a drink, even if it’s water, in my hand just because I don’t like giving people ammunition any more, because it’s just too upsetting for me. And not only me but for my widowed grandfather who has nothing better to do than sit in his house reading The Sun and The Mirror and comes across all these horrible stories about his grand-daughter and he doesn’t know any better than to believe them, and that’s what upsets me, is those people that get affected.Â
Lines have got blurred because I think now everyone feels that they have access to you as a human being, so I get annoyed with people that when you’re just walking down the street, they take out their camera phones and start filming you, because I just start feeling like, ‘Oh, I don’t even have a right to walk down the street any more. I’m not a human being, like you own me.’ The only thing I can sort of compare it to would be being in a zoo and people sort of pointing and looking.Â
The 3rd song is called ’22’. The female at the heart of the story is now nearly 30, but behaving as though she was still in her early 20s. But the ‘rules’ say her life is already over….
It’s more about being a young female. Within a professional environment I don’t think that you can get away with as much being a woman as you can being a man. That’s what it’s about, really. I think that people assume that with people like Duffy and Adele and me and Amy, that we are puppets being run by some big powerful men in the background. Whereas I don’t think people would think the same about Paolo Nutini and James Morrison, you know. The sort of legalities and stuff have come a long way but I think there’s definitely an undertone of sexism that exists everywhere.
More humour on the Johnny Cash type intro and backing track of ‘Not Fair’ but the song is about a subject that obviously matters to you. The business of your man not staying the course in the bedroom department, is that funny?
I don’t like baring my soul without a boom-tish! at the end. (Laughs) So, yeah, I think that’s probably a character trait of mine. I don’t think that necessarily humour in music is important. I think it’s just something that I do in order to not take myself too seriously. I find it very difficult to communicate my feelings to people seriously so I think it helped me to be able to put it down in a song and give it to them, tell them, ‘You go and listen to that.’ Which I think probably brings us back to the sex thing. You know, I can get on with someone really, really, really well and if they’re no good at having sex with me it really upsets me because I think, ‘Oh, God, this is someone I’d really like to spend the rest of my life with but I cannot face having bad sex for the rest of my life.’ You know, it’s just like, ‘Come on. You’ve either got it or you don’t.’ (Laughter) I’m sure that a very small amount of men, have said the same about me, have said they don’t think I’m very good. Why are we talking about how good I am in bed? (Laughs) Because I like it and I think some people are really rubbish at it and it’s not fair.
Track 5 ‘I Could Say’ is about someone growing, after the end of a relationship. You?
Er, it’s about a relationship that I had with someone and when I left that person everything felt … I’d never been in a relationship before where it had ended and I’d felt okay and that was the first time it had happened really. You know, I felt like that person was sort of holding me back a bit and, you know, the arguments that we had were almost quite childish. I wrote that pretty much 3 weeks after I’d broken up with that person.
Track 6 ‘Go Back To The Start’ is 140 bpm. That’s miles faster than we’re used to….
You know, I felt one of the things that I definitely wanted to confront with this record was, I wanted some of the songs to be a lot faster, because I felt with doing the last album live, I felt like the show only kind of worked in a very daytime, kind of afternoon setting. And it was all like ‘Let’s put Lily on at 2 in the afternoon and she’ll stay there for ever,’ and so I wanted to kind of go a bit darker and faster on this record to try and, not get myself headline slots at festivals, but to just try and be a bit more dancier and have a bit more of a sort of party atmosphere at the gigs. So I don’t get bored as well. So I can dance on stage and jump around and get into it. You know, that’s the music I like. Not my most comfortable place but a place I hope I will learn to exist in.Â
Is ‘Go Back To The Start’ about a personal relationship?
It’s actually about my sister, that song. We have a very tumultuous relationship, you know. Is that the right word, tumultuous? Yeah, stormy, there you go. I’ve just like heard it in the movies. (Laughter) We had a very, you know, rocky relationship for years and years and years and I think we’re both getting to the, you know, she’s nearly 30 and I’m 23, and I think it’s got to the point where we know we can’t argue like teenagers any more and I think that was sort of my olive branch really to her. I played it to her a long time ago and it’s kind of worked, you know. We’ve sorted a lot of things out.
Track 7 ‘Never Gonna Happen’ is another serious look at a relationship. As a writer, you sit around watching people, often at 5 in the morning, when they’re not at their best. Is there a point where you think, ‘I could be doing something much better, like going to bed’?Â
Yes, there is indeed. Yeah, what am I doing up? You lot are idiots. I’m going to bed. I can’t bear watching the sun come up. Even in my Ibiza days when I was raving, just nothing makes me feel more sick than knowing the sun’s coming up and it’s going to get warm, ugh! (Laughs) I’m always trying to put it into a way where it’s like, ‘Hey, this is how I’m seeing things. Do you see it like this as well?’ It’s kind of like trying to find a common ground between me and the listener, really.
Track 8 is called ‘Fuck You’; the iron fist in the velvet glove again, because it has a lovely tender opening….
Yeah, I know, it’s good isn’t it? (Sings) It’s about sort of Fascist, horrible, nasty people really. Not about one particular person although it became about one particular person. I’m not going to talk about who the specific person is because that would create a lot of unwanted publicity, but at first it was about, yeah the BNP and stuff, and then it became more of a worldwide thing. It was definitely deliberate to do that and I think it was something that is almost a trademark of mine really. It’s something you saw on ‘Smile’, something you saw on ‘LDN’, it’s that thing of having positive, bouncy music and trying to counteract that with something dark and real and scary and hurtful and upsetting and unjustified. That’s a lot of what making music is about for me. It’s about listening to it, I want people to just kind of hear it as if it’s almost like, you know, elevator music, like lift music and then suddenly be like double-take, like, ‘What? Did she just say that?’ I think you’re more likely to get people to listen to those things if you disguise it within that kind of music than you are if you’re really hammering those points home because then it just becomes preachy, you know, rather than enjoyable and thought-provoking.
The 2 lead characters in ‘Who’d Have Known’ seem strangely separate. Why is there distance between them?
You know, it’s because they haven’t even ever kissed yet, before they … (laughs). That song was about getting together with somebody, and, I mean, actually that’s always been my tactic. I’ve never been very good at like kissing people in public, you know, like the first kiss thing. It would always be me orchestrating going back to someone’s house, and then literally taking my clothes off and then jumping in their bed and pretending to be asleep. That’s the only way I’ve ever been able to pull (laughs). I don’t ever see the point of getting into a relationship with somebody unless you think it’s going to last forever. I think it’s pretty pointless, whereas I’ve got lots of friends that are completely the opposite.
Track 10 ‘Chinese’ is about you and your mum. Why write a song about your mum?
It’s important this song. It was the only way that I could really write about my mum without it being really, really nauseating, and I guess that’s why you don’t really know it’s about her. But that’s what I do love about my mum the most, it’s her ability to make me feel like I’m at home and she does that, and that’s what the song is about. It’s about literally flying over London and me being able to see my mum’s house and going, ‘Oh, gawd, I’ve still got about 4 hours till I get there,’ which is something I get every time I fly into London, which is about twice a week. And it does get quite repetitive and it’s just, ‘I just want a cup of tea and I want beans on toast,’ and, you know, my mum’s good at knowing what’s going to make me happy.
‘Hymn’ is about God, but God seen from an unusual point of view. Well, the LA point of view.
You know, I always had this thing of, like, when I first got my car when I was younger I used to have this thing ‘I don’t understand why I can’t park my car wherever I want.’ Double yellow lines meant nothing to me. I was like, ‘God did not make the world so that I could not park my car on there.’ I suppose that’s what the song is about really. It’s like okay if God really did exist on this earth, you know, would he be really ashamed of the people that did petty crimes like driving their car without insurance or evading their tax or which political party would he vote for? These are all questions that we’re confronted with every day, you know, moral questions, and I just wonder whether he would or not.
The lyric says ‘God’s favourite band is Creedence Clearwater Revival’. Bit out of your time isn’t it?
Actually, I’ll tell you how I first got into them. It was on someone’s All Back To Mine album and I listened to that and Lee Dorsey ‘Get Out Of My Life Woman’. I can’t remember whose it was now but I loved it, both those songs. And ‘Aphrodite’s Child’, such a bad tune but I love it. (Laughs)
And finally, on this new CD ‘He Wasn’t There’.
Errm, it’s a song about my dad (laughs). I suppose it explains a lot about my dad and how he wasn’t there a lot. It’s quite simple really. He wasn’t there a lot and, you know, I think that it would have been very easy to have given up on our relationship. I think holding on to anger against people is quite a detrimental thing and I think, you know, I was angry with my dad for a long time and I kind of let go of that anger and we’re now very, very close and very good friends and that’s what the song is about.
It’s Not Me, It’s You is released on Warner Music in February 2009. More lovely Lily at www.myspace.com/lilymusic and www.lilyallenmusic.com. You can also follow Lily Allen at twitter.com/LilyroseAllen.
