Lily Allen
Lily Rose Beatrice Allen is an English singer, songwriter, and actress. Her accolades include a Brit Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award.
Allen's musical career began in 2005 when she was signed to Regal Recordings and began publishing her vocal recordings on the social networking site Myspace. Their popularity resulted in airplay on BBC Radio 1. Her 2006 debut commercial single, "Smile", reached number one on the UK Singles Chart by July of that year and received double Platinum certification by the British Phonographic Industry. Allen's debut studio album, Alright, Still, was met with positive critical reception, peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart, and sold over 2.6 million copies worldwide. The album also yielded a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Album and spawned the follow-up singles "LDN" and "Alfie".
Her second studio album, It's Not Me, It's You, debuted atop the UK Albums Chart and the Australian ARIA Charts, and spawned the singles "The Fear", "Not Fair" and "Fuck You". This success saw her receive the Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist at the 2010 Brit Awards. Allen and Amy Winehouse were credited with starting a process that led to the "year of the women" media label in 2009 that saw five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" nominated for the Mercury Prize. Her third album, Sheezus, peaked atop the UK Albums Chart once more, while her fourth album, No Shame, peaked at number eight. Her fifth and most recent album, West End Girl, peaked at number two and was met with broad critical acclaim.
Allen also ventured into other careers; in 2008, she hosted her own television talk show, Lily Allen and Friends, on BBC Three before launching her own record label, In the Name Of, in 2011. In 2018, Allen released her autobiographical book, My Thoughts Exactly. Her personal life, including an affair with Liam Gallagher and hiring female prostitutes, has attracted media attention. As an actress, Allen appeared in the 2019 film How to Build a Girl. In 2021, she made her West End debut in the new play 2:22 A Ghost Story, for which she received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. She is a daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen.
Early life
Allen was born on 2 May 1985 in Hammersmith, west London, to Keith Allen, a Welsh-born actor, and British film producer Alison Owen. She has an elder sister, Sarah; a younger brother, actor Alfie ; and a younger sister, Rebecca. Alison Owen was from a devoutly Catholic working-class Portsmouth family, and was 17 when she gave birth to Sarah. Allen is the goddaughter of director Daniel Kleinman and Wild Colonials vocalist Angela McCluskey and a third cousin of singer Sam Smith.At the age of three, Allen appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... episode "The Yob", which her father had co-written. When she was four, her father left the family. During her early childhood, Allen lived with her family on a council estate. They later settled in Islington. For that time, the family lived with comedian Harry Enfield whilst her mother dated him. The Clash singer and guitarist Joe Strummer was close to Allen.
Allen attended 13 schools, including King Charles III's junior alma mater Hill House School and Bedales School, and was expelled from several of them for drinking and smoking. When Allen was eleven, former University of Victoria music student Rachel Santesso overheard her singing "Wonderwall" by Oasis in the school's playground; impressed, Santesso, who later became an award-winning soprano and composer, called Allen into her office the next day and started giving her lunchtime singing lessons. This led to Allen singing "Baby Mine" from Disney's Dumbo at a school concert.
Allen told Loveline that the audience was "brought to tears at the sight of a troubled young girl doing something good". At that point Allen said she knew that music was something she needed to do either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system. She played the piano to grade 5 standard and achieved grade 8 in singing. Allen also played violin, guitar and trumpet, and was a member of a chamber choir. Her first solo was "In the Bleak Midwinter". In 1998, Allen appeared in the music video to the Fat Les song "Vindaloo". She dropped out of school aged fifteen, not wanting to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life."
Music career
2001–2005: Career beginnings
When her family went to Ibiza on holiday, Allen told her mother that she was staying with friends but remained in Sant Antoni de Portmany instead. She earned money by working at a Plastic Fantastic record store and dealing ecstasy at the age of 15. Allen met her first manager, George Lamb, in Ibiza. She first recorded the vocals for "On Me Head Not Off Me Head" written by her father for Mike Bassett: England Manager in 2001, and was featured in the 2002 song by her father's group Fat Les, "Who Invented Fish and Chips". She started to work with music producers, and recorded a demo. She was rejected by several labels, which she attributed to her drinking and being the daughter of Keith Allen. She eventually used her father's connections to get signed to London Records in 2002. When the executive who had signed her left, the label lost interest and she left without releasing the folk songs many of which were written by her father. She then studied horticulture to become a florist, but changed her mind and returned to music. Allen began writing songs, while her manager introduced her to production duo Future Cut in 2004. They worked in a small studio in the basement of an office building.In 2005, Allen was signed to Regal Recordings; they gave her £25,000 to produce an album, though they were unable to provide much support for it due to their preoccupation with other releases such as X&Y and Demon Days. Allen then created an account on Myspace and began posting demos that she recorded in November 2005. The demos attracted thousands of listeners, and 500 limited edition 7-inch vinyl singles of "LDN" were rush-released, reselling for as much as £40. Allen also produced two mixtapes – My First Mixtape and My Second Mixtape – to promote her work. As she accumulated tens of thousands of Myspace friends, The Observer Music Monthly, a magazine published in The Observer, took interest in March 2006. Few people outside of her label's A&R department knew who she was, so the label was slow in responding to publications wanting to report about her. She received her first major mainstream coverage, appearing in the magazine's cover story two months later.
2006–2008: ''Alright, Still''
The success convinced her label to allow her more creative control over the album and to use some of the songs that she had written instead of working with mainstream producers. Allen decided to work with producers Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, finishing the rest of the album in two weeks. Allen's debut album, Alright, Still, was released in July 2006. Most of the tracks had been previewed on her Myspace page, including the singles "Smile", "LDN", "Knock 'Em Out", and "Alfie".In September 2006, "Smile" was made available on the US version of iTunes Store. By December 2006, her music video for Smile had been played on various music channels as well as the song getting a little airplay. Entertainment Weekly named Alright, Still as one of the top 10 albums of 2006 despite the fact that it had not yet been released in the US. Allen also did several promotional ads for MTV as their Discover and Download artist of the month for January 2007. The album was released in the US on 30 January 2007, landing at 20 on the Billboard 200. By January 2009, the album had sold 960,000 copies in the UK and 520,000 copies in the US.
In 2007, she played the newly launched Park Stage at the Glastonbury Festival, replacing MIA who had cancelled. During the festival she reunited two members of The Specials, an act that guitarist Lynval Golding claimed played a "massive part" in the group's 2009 reunion. She also sang the vocals on the top ten single, "Oh My God", a cover of the Kaiser Chiefs song by Mark Ronson. On 1 July 2007, Allen appeared at the Concert for Diana held at Wembley Stadium, London, to celebrate the life of Princess Diana. She sang "LDN" and "Smile". Allen's single "Littlest Things" from her album produced by Ronson helped earn him a "Producer of the Year – Non Classical" 2008 Grammy Award. She also provided background vocals for a couple of songs on the Kaiser Chiefs' third album in 2008, co-produced by Ronson. Allen won a 2008 BMI songwriting award for "Smile".
In October 2007, Allen contributed a cover of the Pretenders' "Don't Get Me Wrong" for the covers compilation album Radio 1: Established 1967, in celebration of the fourtieth anniversary of BBC Radio 1 signing on air. Allen later performed at a benefit concert for War Child, an international child protection agency that works with children affected by war. Backed by Keane, Allen sang "Smile" and "Everybody's Changing".
2008–2011: ''It's Not Me, It's You'' and musical hiatus
After the release of her first album, her parent record company, EMI, was taken over by Terra Firma. She also changed her management company from Empire Artist Management to Twenty-First Artists, although her core team remained in place. At the urging of her record company, Allen tried unsuccessfully to create the album with several writers and producers. Allen eventually returned to Greg Kurstin who had written three songs for Alright, Still. The album was produced by Kurstin at Eagle Rock Studios in Los Angeles. Before returning to Kus, Allen co-wrote the songs for the album with Kurstin who played piano on it. This is a change from her earlier work in which she wrote lyrics for finished tracks. Allen released a statement saying "We decided to try and make bigger sounding, more ethereal songs, real songs... I wanted to work with one person from start to finish to make it one body of work. I wanted it to feel like it had some sort of integrity. I think I've grown up a bit as a person and I hope it reflects that." She posted two new song demos on her Myspace page and planned to release a mixtape to give her fans an idea of what the new direction was.Allen cancelled a scheduled appearance at the 2008 Isle of Wight Festival, telling festival promoter John Giddings the reason for the cancellation was that her album was behind schedule. Giddings said that the reason given was not acceptable and possibly a lie. Giddings decided not to sue her. Photos of her drunk and topless in the Cannes Film Festival were also widely covered in the press. Her appearance at the 2008 Glamour Awards also generated criticism, as she showed up intoxicated wearing a dress covered in decapitated Bambi figures, and had an on-stage, expletive-laced exchange with Elton John. On 29 June 2008, Allen performed at the Glastonbury Festival alongside producer Mark Ronson. An emotional Allen dedicated her performance of "Littlest Things" to her grandmother who died the night before. It's Not Me, It's You was first scheduled for an early 2008 release, but her miscarriage and creative issues delayed the release date to the autumn. In autumn 2008, EMI underwent a restructuring. Due to this environment, a decision was made to move the album's eventual release date. An online game, Escape the Fear, was created by Matmi as part of the viral marketing campaign targeted at people unaware of Allen or the album. Since its release, "The Game" has topped the worldwide viral charts three times, including the week of Christmas—a highly contested time of the year. By 18 February 2009, "The Game" had been played over two million times. The singer and the Clash guitarist Mick Jones performed the Clash's song "Straight to Hell" on an album for the charity Heroes.
File:Lily Allen @ INmusic festival.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Allen performing at the INmusic festival in Zagreb, Croatia, 24 June 2009
It's Not Me, It's You was released in February 2009. It debuted at the number 1 position in the UK, Canada, and Australia and the number 5 position in the United States. The album has been certified platinum in the United Kingdom. The release of the album was a factor in EMI more than trebling their earnings. The first single from the album, "The Fear", was number 1 for the first four weeks in the UK after its release. The second single released from the album, "Not Fair", reached the number 9 position. She began her It's Not Me, It's You World Tour in March, touring throughout the next two years until September 2010. Her work on this album with Greg Kurstin earned her the Songwriters of the Year at the 2010 Ivor Novello Awards. In addition, she won with Kurstin Best Song Musically and Lyrically and Most Performed Work for "The Fear". Allen appeared overwhelmed by this recognition from what she considered "real awards". In October 2010, Allen won her second BMI Pop Song Award by the United States music licensing organisation Broadcast Music Incorporated for extensive United States radio airplay of her song, "The Fear".
Allen and Jamie Hince, guitarist for The Kills, raised £48,350 for the children's charity The Hoping Foundation. The pair sang "Dream a Little Dream of Me" at a karaoke auction fundraiser.
In September 2009, Allen announced that she was considering a career in acting, that she would not renew her record contract, and that she had "no plans" to make another record. In September 2010, she gave her last performance for two and a half years, supporting Muse at Wembley Stadium in London, England. She featured on the UK top five single, "Just Be Good to Green" by Professor Green in June 2010. The following month, she started writing songs for the musical version of Bridget Jones's Diary which was scheduled to open in London's West End in 2012. Also in 2011, T-Pain used a verse from Allen's "Who'd Have Known" as the chorus to the song "5 O'Clock", which became the second single from his album Revolver. The song, which also features Wiz Khalifa, was released in September 2011, and reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making it Allen's first Top 10 single in the United States.