Day 34: The Sounds of Writing 7

January 29, 2010

I know, it's been two and a half weeks since my last entry in this series. I promise to finish this up by tomorrow.

2. Lily Allen: It's Not Me, It's You 2009

The British singer/songwriters 2006 debut album Alright, Still, was one of my favorite albums of 2007. Her fresh lyrics were filled with enough sarcasm, snark and truthfulness to fill three albums worth of material, so my expectations for her follow up were quite big. Not only did she match Alright, Still's originality, she has actually exceeded it with her sophomore effort. With the addition of social concern and a touch of sadness, she adds another layer of depth to her writing ability. The album still has the same bite as her original did, but it is obvious that Ms. Allen has grown up a bit.

The album starts off strong with the track, "Everyone's At It", a song that deals with societies unstoppable dependency on drugs. She has real concern in her lyrics that show she is genuinely worried about this problem. Lyrics like, "From grown politicians to young adolescents/Prescribing themselves antidepressants/How can we start to tackle the problem/If you don't put your hands up and admit that you're on them", show that she knows the only way for us to begin to solve this problem is to first, start with ourselves. She follows that up with "The Fear", a song dealing with consumer culture. She remarks that we have completely lost our way when it comes to caring about what really matters. She attacks tabloids and over spending, portraying our "Fear" as our inability to stop trying to fit in with what pop culture and mass consumerism tells us is correct. "Fear" is a track that hits home to what I believe pop culture has become; a never-ending distraction to what really matters in the world.

The final track along these lines is "22", which tackles the issue of our youth obsessed culture. It is about a woman nearing the age of 30 and how she already feels like she is obsolete. The song has such a sadness to it that it makes me wonder how many woman are out there feeling this exact same way. It also brings up the idea that one of the outcomes of the feminism movement, was that it puts woman in the same position as their male counterparts. I could naturally be wrong with this point, but it was one of the first things that I thought of when I first heard it. The song makes me wonder as I approach the big 3-0, how much different it is for men than woman at this age. Though I feel for the girl in this song, I feel none of the same pressures as Lily Allen brings up in it. I suppose I wouldn't, which shows the inequality that still exists in our society.

The rest of the album is closer in tone to her first album, with songs involving her lover not being able to perform sexually, to her telling a group of intolerant assholes "Fuck You". Musically she goes a little less poppy on most of album, almost sounding like the band "Garbage" on a couple of tracks. The rest of it is very electronic based, though with a much darker tone to it. She even sings a waltz on the track, "Never Gonna Happen". In it she sings about how, despite the fact that she is still occasionally sleeping with the person, she does not understand why he will not stop trying to get with her. It is a hilarious send up of misread signals and double standards.

Overall, the album is filled with the most entertaining and thought provoking pop music that you are going to find. Lily Allen announced last year that she was going to be taking two years off from the recording industry, not knowing if she will ever come back. If she does this, I will be very disappointed. On the flip side though, if taking a couple of years off will get us another album half this good, then by all means, take as much time as you need.

I'll be back tomorrow with the final album.