Lily Allen, Material Girl
In his article about Lily Allen’s new album and dealings with fame, Sasha Frere-Jones returns again and again to “The Fear,” which he calls “her best song” and “one of the few compelling songs about fame by a famous person.”
“I want to be rich and I want lots of money,” she sings, as the guitar continues. “I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny. I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds. I heard people die while they are trying to find them.” At the end of this first stanza, the rest of the music comes in, a bright rock song meant for dancing, like a Blondie song with fewer guitars. More to the point, Allen is playing a role, though some people will assume that the first-person lyrics are her own thoughts.
I’ve been listening to it a lot lately, too, somewhat guiltily. Alright, Still was a lazy, hot mess of a debut, but what strikes me most about It’s Not Me, It’s You—especially “The Fear”—is how put-together the thing is. Lily Allen has made a pop record with lyrical and melodic muscle.
I don’t hear “Material Girl” when I listen to “The Fear” (though the videos, right down to the butler choreography, are eerily similar—see above), but the misinterpreted sarcasm and delightfully ersatz, bleepy production are both what made Madonna’s song a classic—and what make this new one such a surprising pleasure. The media, apparently not getting the joke, for years referred (and refers) to Madonna as the “Material Girl” without any hint of irony, and journos similarly mistake Allen for a cokehead because…I don’t know, because she has opinions? Maybe Allen isn’t so dumb. Like Madonna, she becomes fame-girl, plays with the role, and decides that what she really wants, in the end, is the broke stud in the pick-up.
2 years ago • Notes