Interview

In the last three years, Lily Allen has become a MySpace poster girl, released a hit record, achieved international fame, punched a paparazzo, gotten drunk at an awards show, slagged off Madonna, and kicked in the door for an undulating wave of nervy female British singers armed with varying degrees of wit and attitude. Along the way, she stumbled upon a new formula for how to become a pop star in the 21st century.  The question now is if she can figure out how to stay one.

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As anyone who has ever heard Lily Allen’s music can attest, she is a fervent believer in the shock-and-awe school of relationship songwriting. This is a method by which the singer demonstrates a complete disregard for certain conventional boundaries surrounding the discussion of one’s love life, declaring all subjects and subject matter—no matter how intimate or uncomfortable—fair lyrical game, and wrapping up these paeans to outspokenness in a musical package that’s as inventive as it is uninhibited. It’s the kind of songwriting that, for example, produces couplets about the lackluster endowment of one’s former boyfriend sung over irresistibly infectious, dub-tinged pop tracks. It’s also a big part of the soulful British girl-power-charged revolution that Allen—the daughter of British actor and television presenter Keith Allen—ignited a few years back with the release of her debut album, Alright, Still (2006), kicking open the door for Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Adele, and numerous other singing ladies with big voices, attitudes, and romantic bones to pick. This month, the 23-year-old Allen returns with her sophomore effort, It’s Not Me, It’s You (Capitol), on which the themes get more all-encompassing (God, mortality), the subjects more involved (self-medication, daddy issues), and the artist emerges an older, wiser, more fully realized animal—albeit one with the capacity to deal with the aforementioned material in earnest and still write a song entitled “Fuck You.” Damien Hirst, who has known Allen since she was a schoolgirl spouting off about the boys in homeroom, recently met up with the singer at Claridge’s hotel in London.

DAMIEN HIRST: How old were you when we met?

LILY ALLEN: About 3 years old.

DH: I met you at 3? No . . . 

LA: I was pretty young.

DH: Yeah, you must have been. You were probably 6 or something like that. You used to come to Gloucester [music festival] with us. You came, like, three or four times or something.

LA: No, you came with us three or four times. I went about 10 million times. You stopped coming.

DH: Yeah. I started to hate it.

LA: It was like all of the people who were there had completely lost it on acid. This girl came up and was like, “Have you seen my boyfriend, Jacob?” I said, “What does he look like?” And she went, “He’s about this big.” [gestures with fingers]

DH: About three inches.

LA: [both laugh] I was 14 years old.