Lily Allen

Lily Allen, the London-based pop singer and songwriter known for her wide-ranging musical interests and playful demeanor, quickly gained recognition after posting her demo recordings online. As the daughter of comedian Keith Allen, she moved between schools frequently throughout her early years, attending a total of thirteen institutions from age five to fifteen. This constant upheaval left her with few enduring social connections, prompting her to immerse herself in reading and, above all, music. Her listening spanned T. Rex, the Specials, and the Slits through to the Happy Mondays and drum’n’bass, and at fourteen she even absconded to attend the Glastonbury Festival. A year after finishing school she concluded that music offered her only viable path forward.

She focused on songwriting and performance, shaping a style that blended sweetness with brattiness, and toward the end of 2005 she launched a MySpace page where she shared her demos both individually and as two limited-edition mixtapes that incorporated tracks by Dizzee Rascal, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Ludacris. The resulting critical praise amplified her visibility, yielding tens of thousands of MySpace friends, BBC Radio One airplay, and a recording contract with Regal/Parlophone before 2005 concluded.

She began crafting her debut album alongside producers including Greg Kurstin, Mark Ronson (with whom she also recorded a cover of the Kaiser Chiefs’ “Oh My God” for her second mixtape), and Futurecut, then issued a limited-edition 7-inch of “LDN” as her first single in spring 2006. Both “LDN” and the summer follow-up “Smile” performed strongly on the charts, the former peaking at number seven in the U.K. and the latter reaching number one in its debut week. Shortly afterward she released her first full-length album, Alright, Still, and supported it with an extensive run of live dates that stretched through the close of the year. Even amid rapid success she continued posting candid blog entries on MySpace, among them a June 2006 Top of the Pops reflection that criticized the Kooks’ lead singer for “wearing broken straw hats and dark sunglasses” indoors and Dirty Pretty Things for requesting “organic sliced bread on the rider.” She opened 2007 with additional tour stops across Japan, Australia, and the U.S., coinciding with the American release of Alright, Still. That year’s Brit Awards brought nominations for British Breakthrough Act and British Female Solo, while “Smile” and Alright, Still earned nods for British Single and British Album.

Allen devoted much of 2007 to touring yet still found time to collaborate with Dizzee Rascal on the Maths and English duet “Wanna Be” and to supply vocals for Basement Jaxx’s Crazy Itch Radio. Her personal life drew comparable attention: her relationship with Chemical Brother Ed Simons and a subsequent miscarriage generated headlines in late 2007 and early 2008. In February 2008 she launched the BBC Three talk show Lily Allen and Friends, which ran through April. That same month she uploaded two new demos to MySpace, among them “GWB,” a track addressing President George Bush. For her next album she reunited with producer Greg Kurstin of the Bird and the Bee, co-writing several songs rather than supplying lyrics alone. She also partnered with Jamie Reynolds of the Klaxons and composed a piece about comedian James Corden for the 2008 Shockwaves Awards. Another new track, “Everyone’s at It,” surfaced that autumn, followed in December by an unauthorized cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.” Early 2009 saw the arrival of It’s Not Me, It’s You, an album exploring drugs, fame, family, and society that was preceded by the single “The Fear.” Despite strong commercial performance—including platinum certification in the U.K. and number-one debuts in the U.K., Canada, and Australia, plus a number-five entry in the U.S.—Allen declined to renew her contract in September 2009 and stepped away from music.

She stayed active nonetheless, establishing her own imprint In the Name Of (home to Cults), penning material for the stage adaptation of Bridget Jones’ Diary, and building a family with boyfriend Sam Cooper, whom she wed in June 2011. The following year she announced studio work on new material with longtime collaborator Greg Kurstin and contributed vocals to P!nk’s 2012 single “True Love,” also produced by Kurstin. She welcomed her second child in early 2013. By November of that year she had issued a cover of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” for a holiday campaign by U.K. retailer John Lewis; the single promptly became her third U.K. number-one hit. Two further singles, “Hard Out Here” and “Air Balloon,” both reached the British Top Ten and appeared on her third album, Sheezus, which surfaced in early May 2014. The record debuted at number one in the U.K. and number twelve on the U.S. Billboard 200. After its release Allen performed at Glastonbury Festival and launched a headline tour that continued into 2015.

In 2018 she returned with her fourth studio album, No Shame, which featured the single “Trigger Bang” with rapper Giggs. The project marked a departure from longtime producer Kurstin in favor of a more intimate, electropop aesthetic. It followed a challenging period that included courtroom proceedings against stalker Alex Gray, who received an indeterminate hospital sentence in 2016 after breaking into Allen’s home and issuing threats. After an amicable divorce from Cooper in 2018, Allen told Vulture she had endured an “identity crisis” during and after the making of Sheezus before reclaiming her artistic focus. No Shame entered the U.K. albums chart at number eight.