Alright Still, by Lily Allen
Alright Still
By Lily Allen
Released July 2006, by EMI
So, two of the magazines I reviewed for this project (Shout, and Bust) both had interviews with Lily Allen. In fact, she was on the cover of the Shout magazine I looked at. I had heard of Lily Allen from last summer, when her song "Smile" was featured on a blog I frequent; and then in an end-of-summer wrap-up in People magazine or something, they mentioned her song "LDN" as one of the songs of summer.
So, I had slowly started downloading Lily Allen songs, and the more I heard her songs, the more I liked them. My initial favourites were "Knock 'em out" which is a song about telling off jerks who make moves at you in clubs; and "Take what you take," a kind of cheeky life manifesto.
Lily Allen's songs are all filled with cheeky British attitude, and very interesting musical samples set to kind of old-school hip-hop beats. Most of the songs are easy to sing along with, as she sings mostly in the same range as her speaking voice, and it's mostly sort of talk-singing anyway.
I can see teens really enjoying this album. Her fun, irreverent attitude and refreshing lyrics where she makes fun of the beauty industry are a nice change from the "I love you forever" lyrics of other singers in her age range like Jessica Simpson or Brooke Hogan. In addition, seeing her healthy body image makes her songs where she makes fun of double-standards in the fashion industry ring a lot more true than when someone like Beyoncé or Christina Aguilera makes similar statements.
I guess from a library perspective, the main concern about this album would be that there is an awful lot of profanity in almost every songs. Her accent is so strong, though, that it's hard to make out what she is saying so a lot of the profanity would probably go unnoticed by listeners. The album does have a parental advisory sticker on it, and I believe from looking at the Amazon listing, that there is a "radio-friendly" version of this album that maybe a library in a more conservative environment might prefer to purchase.
However, I find the profanity a lot less offensive in her cheeky songs than in the more sexually-charged, exploitative songs and videos coming out in a lot of hip-hop albums (i.e. 50 Cent, Bubba Sparx, et al)
Rating: Great, catchy, cheeky music for ages 15 and up. I'm sure younger teens would like it and would probably listen to this album, but due to some of the lyrics, I wouldn't specifically recommend it to them. But I wouldn't stop them from borrowing this album.
And for your listening pleasure, here is one of my favourite songs from this album, "Everything's just too wonderful":
