By-the-numbers carping from the mockney chanteuse

Hey, you know that one woman on your Facebook who, by turns, posts vapid inspirational memes, then – once probably the third pinot grigio is sunk – overshares her work/boyfriend/family drama?

This album is basically her.

"When I was young I was blameless / Playing with rude boys in trainers."

Fuck, I don’t have any specific beef with Lily Allen. I bloody love her old stuff. ‘The Fear’ is an absolutely perfect record; dancey, funny, insouciant, clever. Put it on now.

This album though? For god sake, you keep thinking: keep this shit to yourself.

The opening tune says it all really. It’s called COME ON THEN and it really is COME ON THEN; a mouthy bad dye-job having a barney in an Aldi car park. “I’m a bad mother / I’m a bad wife / You saw it on socials / You read it online.”

Track number two does no better, despite being leavened by the recruitment of modish spitter Giggs. “That’s why I can’t hang with the cool gang / Goodbye bad ones I’ve got cool ones”.

Groovy. It’s about cocaine. If you couldn’t tell by all the so-fucking-edgy references to ‘wraps’ and ‘sticky’.

As the album develops, to be fair, the whining modulates into her pedestrian romantic woes – "Solitude is overrated / someone else is sharing your bed / maybe you picked up where I left."

Or like this, on ‘Lost My Mind’: “I wasn’t being difficult, but till you betrayed us / I’m stuck in a rut / Kicking stones / Looking at my phone all night.”

Jesus.

As you’ll have read she’s a mummy now. Which is cool! Those lucky kids will be cherished by their emotionally literate, sensitive, well-to do parent and likely want for nothing. But just like that woman on your timeline (might be a mummy, might not be, probably is) she’s determined to let everybody know motherhood won’t change her.

Case in point, a tune on the album called ‘Three’, which is supposedly told from the perspective of her three-year-old child.

Now, reader, I have a three-year-old child, so am wholeheartedly behind this concept. But this line? “I’ve been out making lots of friends / You can’t play with us cos you’re always off tour”. Like, really Lily Allen?

Again, I’m sure you’re an excellent mother. Do you really need to wring emotional traction from how you go to work, once in a while, in this way? Nah. Thanks though.

‘Family Man’ serves to illustrate my pet theory that it’s hard to distinguish Lily Allen lyrics from those daft memes that-one-person-on-your-timeline posts all day, accompanied by a picture of a retro pinup: ’Though I’m young and stupid / I am wild and ruthless’

Or this, same song: “I don’t like people / But I’m scared and evil.”

She has a canny ear for melody, a nursery-rhyme knack for a memorable couplet. I refuse to slate this aspect of her output, because it’s a rare gift. But does the subject matter here justify any of it? I don’t think so.

Sonically, I mean, what is there to say. Does the job. Bit poppy. Saturday night in a suburban supermarket petrol station. Blah.

The one track which sums up the whole thing, really – sadly, but also not – is called ‘My One’. It marries Lily Allen’s merry-go-round melodic style with a chain of jokey rhyming couplets that are also about her old sex life.

“I fucked half the boys in Paris / I’m in New York so embarrassed / I woke up in Austin Texas / I did decline to stay for breakfast / I had a suite in Vancouver / I put that loser in an Uber.”

Cool



3/10