Oh, Lily Allen. You came on the scene with your curvy figure, raunchy mouth, dresses, and sneakers, and I, along with a lot of the UK, fell in love with you. You wandered over to the US, put out "Smile" and "Alfie" and developed an equally rabid fan base here. So with all these loyal fans desperately waiting for your next album, what do you do?
Fall into your sophomore slump.
Lily’s first album “Alright, Still” became so popular because of its sing along qualities, coupled with her ability to comedically tackle everyday situations. Allen recently said that "It's Not Me, It's You" was going in a new direction; that she had matured and the music would show it. To be blunt, the only direction this album took was downhill. In the process of showing off this newfound philosophical prowess, the actual production seems to have gotten lost. Most of the tracks are your typical electro-pop radio ditties, as repetitive as they are unoriginal. Allen has repeatedly dissed other artists, most recently Katy Perry, for using auto-tune. Yet almost all of her songs on “It’s Not You” use (something incredibly close to) autotune, making it impossible to distinguish her vocally from other pop princesses on the market.
That being said, some of the lyrics on “It’s Not Me, It’s You” are fantastic. Allen touches on the issues she had growing up without her father, (“He Wasn’t There”) age-obsessed culture (“22”) and everyone’s favorite person to hate, George Bush. (“F*** You”) There are a couple songs that still have that Lily Allen Spark previously seen on “Alright, Still.” The stand out “Never Gonna Happen” showcases Allen returning to her sassy ways, telling a guy he’s nothing more than a booty call. (“Now I know you feel betrayed/But it’s been weeks since I got laid/ This doesn’t mean that I don’t think you’re a fool.”) With a strange mix of beat poetry, accordion, and xylophone, this song is one of the few you can dance and sing along with. On the opposite end, you’ve got “Him”, a stale and unneeded revisiting of the themes in Joan Osbourne’s 1995 classic “One of Us.” (“What if God one was of us? Just a slob like one of us?” Yeah, you know you know it.) Allen attempts to update the song by mentioning 9/11, however she sings about the same ideas Osbourne did 14 years ago, personifying God and wondering if he’s just like you and me.
Overall, “It’s Not Me, It’s You” lacks direction at its best and disappoints completely at its worst. The majority of the songs are so cliché-filled or overwrought that the few good tracks on the record sound uncomfortably out of place. For her next album, I can only hope Allen will decide to further carve out a niche as an intelligent, worldly, and sympathetic figure, rather than becoming another mindless robot on the airwaves.
-V Ripson
RSS Feed