Lily Allen insists her music is “frank” not “controversial”.
The British singer made a chart comeback this year with her song Hard out Here, which mocks Robin Thicke’s track Blurred Lines and points out the double standards women have to battle.
Some have accused the 28-year-old star of overly hammering her point home, but she doesn’t care about criticism.
“It’s no use just singing about being famous, or rhyming ‘crazy’ with ‘baby’ a million times over. I still want to write about things that are relevant to other people,” she told Q magazine. “And I like to be frank whether it’s about sex or politics or feminism… but if people want to call it controversial, then, well, that’s their thing.”
Lily’s new album is due out next year and she has been working on it in the UK and America. At the moment she hasn’t decided on a title for it, although she’s had a few ideas.
“I keep suggesting names when I’m drunk with my friends, stuff that we think is funny. Brilly Allen and Illuminaughty. I don’t think that’ll make the cut either,” she laughed.
The star retired from pop music after her last release, 2009’s It's Not Me, It's You. She had two daughters, Ethel and Marnie, with her husband Sam Cooper but they also lost a baby boy when Lily was six months pregnant with him in 2010. She penned a track about that moment in her life, which she calls really “sad and powerful”.
“I hope it makes the final cut, because it’s a really important song to me,” she explained.
Other tracks are more light-hearted, such as one about partying. She also touches on her home life in Some People, notably her actor father Keith Allen.
“Oh God, it sounds really boring but the idea that I’ve been driving around in stretch limousines my whole life because my dad’s an actor couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said. “My dad’s got eight f**king kids and I think his highest-paid gig was for a [mouthwash] Listerine advert – divide that by eight and that’s not really going that far.”
