IN FULL BLOOM
Lily Allen’s cool comeback.
If it feels like Lily Allen has been narrating your entire adult life, it’s because she has. From dodging dodgy blokes at the bar (“can’t knock ‘em out/can’t walk away”), to bemoaning the guys who just don’t care that you’re not quite getting there, sexually speaking (“you’re supposed to care/that you never make me scream”), to lamenting lost friendships (“could you please find it deep within your heart/to go back to the start”), to deeply relatable body image debates ( “I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognaise/ and not feel bad about it for days and days and days”), to true #goals (“I want loads of clothes/and fuckloads of diamonds”), there is a Lily Allen lyric for every stage of a woman’s life.
After a four-year stint without an album (she calls Sheezus, her 2014 album, “a commercial and creative disaster”), Allen came back – both musically (she released No Shame last year, to critical and commercial success, and is in the midst of a world tour) and with her first book – a memoir called My Thoughts Exactly.
Calling anyone “the voice of a generation” seems trite, but in Allen’s case it just might be true: she’s honest (to the point of sensationalism) about absolutely everything. When it comes to Lily Allen, nothing (sex, drugs, alcohol, body image, mental illness…) is off the table. Which might be part of the reason she’s been tabloid fodder since she burst onto the music scene back in 2006 with her first album, Alright, Still.
The UK tabloid press are notorious for their voracious pursuit of celebrities and Allen seems to be particularly targeted. “Oh,” she says plainly, when asked why she thinks that is. “Because I was a young woman who expressed my opinion unashamedly.” From day one, every move Allen made was scrutinised by the press. It got so bad that at one point, she lied and put out a statement saying she’d had a miscarriage, because she was afraid the papers would find out she’d had an abortion. Her only form of recourse, she says, is to sue the publications for defamation. When asked how much she’s spent on lawyers so far, she rolls her eyes. “Millions.”
Fame, she says, isn’t something she’s interested in anymore. “I want to move on from the craziness of the last decade of my life. I’m not focused on being famous now, like I was before I had kids. I want to create. I look forward to getting up in the morning, going to the studio and writing great songs – not writing great songs and then getting them on the radio and going to an awards show. That stuff just doesn’t feel very real to me anymore.” In an ideal world, she’d move back to the country, to a place like the one she lived in with ex-husband Sam Cooper, and their daughters, Ethel and Marnie. “I like my peace and quiet. When I got to the end of my driveway I felt like I was completely alone; I do miss that.”
The book is exactly as no-holds-barred as you’d imagine: from Allen’s mid-air romp with Liam Gallagher to her struggle to have an orgasm to the breakdown of her marriage with Cooper, and the various vices she used to cope at the time (sex with female escorts, drugs and alcohol). But it’s the less salacious bits of the book that are the real meat in the sandwich: the passages that muse on a lonely childhood spent buffeting from one distracted parent’s house to another, the devastation of losing her firstborn, George, to stillbirth and the emotional wreck she was during the first year of Ethel’s life, due to a life-threatening illness the baby suffered. Then there are the pages that detail exactly how hard it is to succeed as a musician: from Allen’s early days cutting out her own record covers on the floor of her mum’s flat in London, to losing millions in royalties because she “accidentally ripped off Take That and couldn’t be bothered to do the paperwork”, to the grind of constant touring, something she says contributed to the breakdown of her marriage.
She wanted to write the memoir, she says, partially as a record for her daughters. “This is a very important period of their lives that they won’t remember, but it will shape so much of their future. I wanted them to hear how it all happened from me, not on the internet.” She says writing was cathartic (“I mean, kind of depressing to go through all of it again, but yeah, positive in the end”) and allowed her to take responsibility for her actions. Writing the book, she says, helped her “grow up” and draw a line under the past decade of her life. But it’s not the sort of memoir that leaves the reader with a sense that everything’s going to be alright. She’s honest about her shortcomings, her vulnerabilities and mistakes. Body image is a particular concern: “It’s an ongoing battle; every day I look at myself in the mirror and see the flabby bits on my waist or legs and I have to say over and over, ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to look like those girls on Instagram, like a model.” She worries about the effect of social media on her children and tries to be a positive role model, but that, too, is a work in progress. “The conversation is always evolving,” she says.
The one constant in Allen’s career, the thing she’ll always love, is touring (she’ll return to our shores in early February). If you’ve ever seen her live on stage, you’ll know exactly how electric and alive she becomes when she’s got a mic in her hands. Glastonbury – where her dad, the comedian Keith Allen, organised the comedy tent for years – is her favourite place to perform, but, she says, “I’ll perform literally anywhere. It’s an honour, and I genuinely mean that. I’m always shocked that people will pay money to see me perform, it’s overwhelming to think I can fill a room with thousands of people.” She smiles and leans back. “I’ll do it until people don’t want me to anymore. There’s just nothing better.” E Catch Lily Allen from February 2-12; lilyallenmusic.com. Her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, is out now ($34.99, Penguin)
“I WANT TO CREATE. I LOOK FORWARD TO GETTING UP, GOING TO THE STUDIO AND WRITING GREAT SONGS”