Lily
Allen
When she left music to start a family,
Lily Rose Cooper said she wouldn’t be back.
So what changed? Alexander Fury finds out
l
Photography David Vasiljevic Fashion Anne-Marie Curtis
Iike Lily Allen. There’s her music, of course –
but that’s not the extent of her appeal. I like
that she’s outspoken amongst a sea of bland
celebrities. I like her dry humour, and that
she Photoshopped her head onto a turkey on
Twitter at Christmas.
Actually, Allen’s Twitter pinpoints one of the
best things about her: she is normal. It’s easy to
forget just how mega Lily’s stardom is. Her 2006
debut, Al- right, Still, sold over 2.5 million copies
and garnered a Grammy nomination. Her second
album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, went triple platinum in
the UK. Her success is huge, but Lily, 28, refuses
to act the part. Nothing is fake: she’s straight-up,
which is something few pop stars – especially
female ones – are permitted to be.
I meet her at the Hammersmith Apollo, a
month after the release of Hard Out Here, the first
track from her eagerly awaited third studio album,
coming this May. The whole album, she says, is
about: ‘Female empowerment – being a mum and
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doing the right thing when they’re babies. But about
ownership
of your sexuality, too.’ She plays me a track, Insincerely Yours, while she gleefully mouths along with
its incendiary lyrics, trashing various papped popculture figures, including the Delevingnes. Another
track reels off a list of Allen’s loves and hates in the
contemporary music scene: ‘I’m ready for all their
comparisons/I think it’s dull and it’s embarrass- ing,’
she opines in that sweet voice. ‘I’m switching off,
no longer listening/I’ve had enough of persecu- tion
and conditioning.’ How’s that for a feminist anthem?
‘As embarrassing and as lame as it sounds, I listen
to my own music a lot,’ she says. ‘What’s good is
there’s no mistaking the message!’ she cackles.
Lily is at the Apollo to perform at the Under
1 Roof charity benefit. She has no entourage, just
her brother Alfie and his mates (girlfriend Jaime
Winstone and his Game Of Thrones co-star,
Gwendoline Christie), plus her husband of nearly
three years, Sam Cooper. Her daughters, twoyear-old Ethel Mary and Marnie Rose, one, are at