Markie Posts

With quotes like ‘James Blunt rhymes with his surname’ - 'the Pussycat Dolls are skinny lapdancers', and 'Pete Doherty needs to be exterminated', an apparent love for gold jewelry, and mad internet salad tossing c/o the blog society, I had a lot of invested interest in the British tart who, unlike her legion of cyber rimjobbers, had the balls to express the opinion that she doesn’t “ …think people buy Madonna's records because they think they're really good".

Yet, a few songs into to her debut album Alright, Still - released in the good ole U.S. of A on January 30th, 2007, almost six months after it was released in Allen’s native nation – I felt the way she feels about Madonna.

Alright, Still at first spin seemed obnoxiously poppy, vocally weak, and used way too many antiquated ska/reggae beats remnant of The Specials, Hepcat, Sublime, and even early No Doubt.

Yet, there are several explanations of why I initially regarded the album as overly hyped. When I first got my hands on the Alright, Still I was in the middle of obsessively looping Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, a completely different musical mind set – quirky, electronic, and seemingly discordant hooks that magically twist (most likely with the aid of Zoloft) into uniquely catchy songs topped off with Beatle-esque lyrics (happy melody, unhappy lyrics) – than Lily’s Billboard-friendly but clever generational personifications. Then again, maybe I didn’t grasp her sound because every time I listen to a song or an album for the first time, I like to absorb what I’m hearing and generally ignore the lyrics. Or maybe, just maybe, I didn’t get her because I felt desensitized by her song “Smile” and it’s heavy commercial play.

But like most albums I end up falling in love with, during spin 4 or 5, I caught myself, much like a brain-washed zombie, mouthing the lyrics “At first/when I see you cry/it makes me smile/Yeah, it makes me smile/at first/I feel bad for a while/ but then I just smile/ I go ahead and smile” and then thinking “well, that was a fucked up thing to say”. And then I paused, reflected, and thought, “then again, when’s the last time I heard someone say something genuinely fucked up in a pop song?”

She’s actually sums up her own sound in her hit single LDN’s chorus:

“When you look with your eyes/
Everything seems nice/
But if you look twice/
you can see it's all lies”

Swap the senses though, sight for hearing; when you first listen to her, it seems like tasty but greasy Western-fast-food-pop, but when you listen more closely, your original perception was a lie. Her music isn’t lobster or caviar either. It’s more like Indian cuisine, familiar food cooked in an unfamiliar way, each bite resulting in delight, surprise, and the occasional kick of spice.

And when I describe her music as Billboard-friendly but clever generational personifications I mean just that. Her songs cover issues and situations that affect people of her own generation, the idiocy and intrigue of clubs and bars, modern love, vengeance, credit problems, the affect and blatancy of casual drug use, physical image issues, a desire to change the world, and most importantly, small dicks. Plus, her use of old school ska and reggae mixed with the quirky spinning of classic drum beats and pop instantly grabs a generation that becomes instantly nostalgic (whether they like it or not) whenever Madonna, grunge-alternative, boy bands, and Bob Marley’s Legend album is played.

Which is why I wonder why I was so shocked to discovered during her March 20th show @ The Culture Room in Ft. Lauderdale, that her audience doesn’t consist solely of 13 year-old MySpacers, but rather that of the second baby-boom (early to late 20’s) who appreciated her mockery of traditional performance. Much like Karen O. of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs (yet, unlike Karen who’s a hyena, Lily’s more like a pissed off but domesticated pit bull) Lily prefers to rebel and have fun by taking shots, saying things she probably shouldn’t, banging on random instruments, spitting, and singing really well as she smokes cigarette after cigarette. In fact, she sounds better live, fag in hand, than she does on her polished album, adding Lily-stamped covers like Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Keane’s “Everybody’s Changing” to her relevant and exceptional repertoire.

“Lily’s gangsta,” a friend of mine said, after Allen’s Ft. Lauderdale show, “I feel like I have a new best friend,” which just validates Allen’s appeal and possible future impact on a budding generation. "[Madonna] might have meant something once but I don't know many people my age who care," Lily has also said about the archaic pop queen, and I have to agree, because I’m around Lily’s age and I’m way too busy caring about Lily.