Sydney, AU (EMI MUSIC AUSTRALIA) - Who is Lily Allen?
Lily Allen is a colourful, opinionated, 21 year old female pop star set to become the coolest, hippest and most musically infectious artists of this year. She releases her debut album 'Alright, Still' locally on July 29 with the focus track 'Smile', released to Australian
Radio & TV on July 3.
'Smile' is a bittersweet song of revenge on an errant boyfriend and is looking like this year's most addictive tunes to hit our airwaves.
Lily Allen signed to EMI towards the end of last year and, at the same time, started putting tracks up on the internet. Since then she has had a staggering 2 million plus people listen to her music on myspace, whilst her weekly blogs have spread details of her increasingly eventful life across the world. Her two free mixtapes, audacious mixes of her own music with a disparate selection of other tunes, have become collectors items in their own right.
At the beginning of May Lily played her first ever live show at London's YOYO in the week of her 21st birthday; fans started queuing for entry from 5pm for a show that started 5 hours later, and a coterie of female fans who Lily memorably christened 'The Lilettes', flew over from Texas, determined to see her first ever show. Since then her weekly Thursday night show has attracted a burgeoning following, with queues snaking around the block and an increasing media presence.
According to Lily, 'A lot of female artists, and male ones for that matter, are boring singers who don't say anything, certainly not to my generation. With the kind of music I do you have to be direct and quite literal. I don't play an instrument, which really makes me focus on the vocal melody, and the lyrics are incredibly important to me. I'll beat myself up for ages over one line because I don't feel that the song flows as a story'.
Of the record's eleven tracks, Lily says: 'I find it funny, that record company- speak of 'how many singles have you got? I mean, why don't you just try and do an album of 11 singles, instead of three? So that's what I did'.
Lily will tour the UK until late July with rumour of an Australian Promotional visit in August.
The UK press have embraced this year's new darling of pop:
'Lily Allen - the cool as fuck sound of the summer'. NME
'Lily is a genuine, no PR, punters-love-it success. Her debut single 'LDN' mixes giggly carnival summer reggae with lines so sharp they could have your eye out' THE OBSERVER
'Multi-genre mash ups and street love songs from Mixmag's new favourite girl about London' MIXMAG
'Allen is the archetypal singer-songwriter for the iPod generation. Brilliant.' NME
The album 'ALRIGHT, STILL' is released July 29
