Lily Allen: The New Girl Power

02/09/09 6:03pm

by Christine Estima (CHARTattack)

LONDON — Two nights before I'm supposed to interview Lily Allen, I get a few text messages from her wanting to know what kind of questions I'm planning on asking her. Why such precautions?

"I just don't want to get upset," she texts back.

You could dismiss such precautions as a paranoid need to control every situation, but looking at the past year of Allen's life, she's had more upset and instability than an African government.

Allen's 2008 started off with the happy news of her pregnancy with her partner, The Chemical Brothers' Ed Simons. Allen suffered a miscarriage a few weeks later, and then she also lost her relationship with Simons.

In paparazzi-fuelled London, where all celebrity outings are documented and instantly YouTubed, Allen has been filmed (and criticized) for public drunkenness, inciting fights on the streets with hecklers and trying to brush off the inappropriate advances of random men while out shopping.

All of this, coupled with her past experiences of drug dealing, an absent famous father (comedian/actor Keith Allen), brutal tabloid scrutiny of her weight and several public feuds with other pop stars (Cheryl Cole of Girls Aloud, Lady Sovereign, Corinne Bailey Rae, Katy Perry) where the media was used as a battleground, and it's clear upset seems to follow Allen everywhere. And it's affecting her in more ways than text messages.

"I don't really leave the house," Allen quietly admits as we chat in the basement of a Chiswick diner.

"I don't like people staring at me. I don't like people filming me walk down the road with their camera phones. I don't like people chasing me with long lens cameras.

"I'm becoming a hermit. I leave the house when I've got something to do, but, on the whole, I don't really... Sometimes I go out shopping and stuff. I don't like going out with my friends for walks in the park like I used to."

The more we chat, the less nervous Allen gets. She's wearing all black and sports a new Chita Rivera-esque haircut, looking the classic BoHo part. She resembles high street gloss coupled with an East London grit.

The fidgeting and inability to look me in the eye soon fades into a stronger voice behind her words and an infectious laugh that could shake the mice out of the walls. She has a thing or two to say about her time in the music industry thus far, and the tracks on her soon-to-be released It's Not Me, It's You are her first in a line of attack strategies.

"Got an opinion/Yeah, you're well up for slating," she sweetly sings in "Everyone's At It." She's quick to admit that it's about drug use. And yeah, so what?

"I guess people always have got something to say about people being high," Allen says with a laugh. "People being on drugs, people having a drug habit.

"It's a reaction, especially in this country with tabloid journalism and stuff, to the way they treat people like Amy Winehouse. That kind of sensationalizing of drug-taking I find fascinating.

"Because I know the people that edit some of those newspapers and magazines, and they're all doing those things! And I find it quite amusing — but quite detrimental — that they talk about drug use in that way and sensationalize it. I think it also creates some more interest for young people!

"Drugs aren't a good thing, they're not... But it's easy to say that drug culture exists within a certain class of people and results in crime. It does, yes, very much so, but it also exists in very middle class and very upper class societies, and doesn't have those kind of end results... But those are the things that are never written about."

"Fuck You," a to-the-point musing on homophobia, is probably the standout track on It's Not Me, It's You. It's also the song she'll field no end of questions about. Allen's not mincing her words when she sings "So you say/It's not okay to be gay/Well I think you're just evil/You're just some racist/Who can't tie my laces/Your point of view is medieval/Fuck you very much/'Cause we hate what you do/And we hate your whole crew/So please don't stay in touch."

"I just hate that sort of bigotry," explains Allen. "It's just narrow-mindedness and misogyny. I think it's rife throughout the world right now."

Allen admits it's difficult to let things roll off her back when she touches on her public feuds with other celebs and the way the music press treats female artists.

"Some of it is so ridiculous that, yeah, it does get a giggle. A lot of it is really hurtful. I think it's really difficult. Things can get really confused.

"Like the things you do for the music press — you get offered a cover for a music magazine. If you're a boy and you show up to do the cover of a music magazine, you can show up in your own clothes and someone will just take a picture. If you're a girl, you have to be there two hours earlier, you have to go through hair and make-up, they get a full-on fashion photographer and full-on stylists.

"That's a bit confusing... because you're sitting there thinking, 'Wait a minute, am I a singer or do I work in fashion now?'

"The sex issue in it, it's a contentious issue... I get angry about things. I don't feel like a particularly sexy person, anyway. And I wear clothes to keep me warm. If I take off an item of clothing, it's not to look more sexy, it's because I'm hot!

"I think it's difficult for women in the music industry because people assume that you are being controlled by some kind of a man. And it's impossible that you could have achieved on your own. I always get really angry when people say, 'Oh, Lily's been going out and getting really drunk and her management are really angry with her! And so is her record label!'

"But I pay my management. I'm their boss. My record label are a bank that lend me some money. None of them can get angry with the way I behave because they haven't got a right to. They don't talk to me in that way. We don't have that relationship.

"I don't think you assume that people like James Morrison or Paolo Nutini are being controlled by management. I think they assume because they have a guitar and they sing songs about how they've gone through some kind of hardship that women haven't gone through, that we must have slept our way to the top... or it is someone else who is the brains behind the whole thing. We couldn't possibly come up with it ourselves."

Strong female artists like Allen are nothing new these days. We've seen dozens of women singers burst through the doors Madonna built nearly 30 years ago who employ sexual language, manipulate hungry male listeners and dominate popular culture. But is it easier to dismiss Allen's music along with the rest because she's not being coy and girlish?

"I think certain men get kind of incensed by it, and it irritates them," Allen admits with a smile. "It embarrasses them because I talk about them in a derogatory way, especially in songs like 'Not Fair.'

"It's being honest, but it's not being nice. And I think guys think, 'She's just being crude.'

"Well, actually I'm not. I'm just being... it's only been relatively recently that women have been able to talk in that kind of way and it be considered acceptable. For women, I think they listen to it and find it funny and accept it. Men write it off as being rude and crude and silly because it makes them feel embarrassed."

As we've been talking, Allen's cheeky outspokenness has surfaced full throttle. But all it takes is the mention of the impending release of It's Not Me, It's You to make her fidgety and cautious again.

"Umm, I feel... nervous a bit, generally excited. People seem to like it. Just want to know what my fans think of it really. I don't have expectations, I have hopes. I hope it will do well. I hope my fans like it."