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Lily Allen talks about writing number one single after bout of depression July 21, 2006
Click here to read about the most researched St. John's Wort formulation in America. Click here to read about other natural antidepressant/emotional mood balancers My Space Diva Lily Allen, 21, is the epitome of now: intelligent, opinionated, cynical and brandishing solid MySpace credentials. Her career started at MySpace, the web's networking powerhouse. Last year, Allen posted three tracks to MySpace and soon had 1.5 million people streaming her tunes and 30,000 registered as friends. Allen's regular blogs only heightened the charm quotient of a rising star. She still blogs today. Her most recent entries tell of happiness, depression, embarrassment and, last week, she split with her boyfriend. "I'm holding up OK," Allen says. "A split is hard for anyone. But if you can't break up with someone when you're No. 1 in the charts, you'll never be able to." Britain loves her twisted perspective, foul-mouthed narratives and brutal honesty. Her long player, Alright, Still, produced by Futurecut and Mark Ronson, is one of the year's best albums. Allen's blunt couplets and dark dancehall underlays seem unstoppable. Sample lyric: "Riding through the city on my bike all day, because the filth took away my license . . . A fella looking dapper and he's sitting with a slapper, then I see it's a pimp and his crack whore." Lily's story is equally controversial. Her parents split when she was four and Allen, the second of three children, was raised by her mother, film producer Alison Owen. She attended 12 schools by the age of 15 and was turfed out of a private school for selling weed. Allen admits to taking cocaine and ecstasy and claimed to be selling 'E's (drugs) while on a working holiday in Ibiza. "I'm very honest about drugs because I don't want to lie," she says. "What I do in my private life is nobody's business and I don't feel I have to justify that. I have experimented with drugs. I am not ashamed of it and I'm not going to deny it." In that, Allen says her mission is simple. She wants to be the opinionated pop star so sorely missing in this sterile music climate. Ronson, New York hip hop producer du jour, oversaw Allen's melancholic tune, Littlest Things, then assigned her to a "special project" -- backing vocals on Robbie Williams' new album, which he co-produced. "I sang on three tracks which has worked out pretty well for Robbie, I'd say," Allen chuckles. "I mean, me being a No. 1 artist and all. I met Robbie a couple of times. He's a sweet guy, but he's very affected by the last 10 years of his life. But I think anybody would be." Allen is braced for the inevitable romantic link by association with Williams. "I really don't care. I don't care what people think and I don't need the affirmation of others," Allen says, verging on blog-speak. "And besides, any press is good press." |
British singer LILY ALLEN wrote her number one UK single SMILE after she was treated for depression at a top London clinic.Lily Allen pulls out of Isle of Wight festival, is being treated for depression
March 5, 2008
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Lily Rose Beatrice Allen (born 2 May 1985) is an English singer-songwriter best known for songs such as "Smile" and "LDN". She is the daughter of actor/musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. Allen also hosts her own BBC Three talk show Lily Allen and Friends.
Her single "Smile" reached number one on the UK singles charts in July 2006. In December 2006, her debut album Alright, Still was voted the third best album of the year by Mixmag. In 2007, it was nominated for the award of Best British Album at the Brit Awards and for Best New Artist at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards. The album was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of "Best Alternative Music Album".
In 1988, Allen appeared on The Comic Strip Presents... episode "The Yob", which her father had co-written. When Allen was four years old, her father left the family. Allen claims to have grown up with her mother in a working class environment, living in a council house environment for most of her childhood. This certainly seems at odds with the fact that she attended some of England's costliest public schools; Allen attended 13 schools in all, including Prince Charles's junior alma mater, Hill House School and Bedales School, and was expelled from several of them for drinking, smoking and performing fellatio.
Allen told Loveline that at age 11 she was singing an Oasis tune in the schoolyard when a teacher overheard her and told her she had talent and suggested she do something with it. She took singing lessons with the teacher. She sang at a school play and claimed 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 became a member of the Groucho Club at the age of 17 and in her free time, she listened to artists such as The Specials, T.Rex, and Happy Mondays and read.
Allen made an appearance as a lady-in-waiting in the 1998 film Elizabeth, produced by her mother. She dropped out of school at age 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." After her family went to Ibiza on vacation, 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 in ecstasy.
Allen's vocals appeared on the single "Who Invented Fish & Chips?" by Fat Les, in which her father was the lead singer of the band.
