So five years after Lily Allen gave it all up for momescity and a life far from the maddening crowd, her grand which began with a track on the last Pink album, continued with the Christmas track to end all Christmas track and reached its high water mark with “Air Balloon” which should’ve have broken pop in the UK at least but there you go, reaches the end of Act II with the release May 6 th of the wittily named Sheezus.
So what do we expect from Sheezus? From what I’ve heard , Lily’s cheekiness will be unimpaired but a quick comparison between streams of “Air Balloon” (half a mil) and “Fuck You” (14 mill) suggests Lily better have something better in the works and that might well be “Hard Out Here” whose nasty video and general bellyaching didn’t hurt its 11 million streams.
So let’s see what the publicity release has to add to the conversation: “- British pop singer Lily Allen will release her third studio album, entitled Sheezus, on May 6th on Warner Bros. Records. An album pre-order launches today.
Sheezus is the British pop singer’s first album since 2009’s acclaimed It’s Not Me, It’s You. The album finds her re-teaming with her long-time collaborator Greg Kurstin (Tegan & Sara, P!nk), except for on the title track, which was produced by DJ Dahi, and “Air Balloon,” which was produced by Shellback.
Critics have already weighed in on “Hard Out Here,” with Esquire exclaiming: “Job done, then: back with a bang,” and NME noting that she is “striding back in after four years out of the game.” Entertainment Weekly called the track “a booming critique of pop’s double standard” and “a lot of fun.”
At the end of 2013, Lily released two songs simultaneously – her cover of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know,” which reached No. 1 in the U.K. and the download-only track “Hard Out Here,” which charted in the British Top 10 that same week.”
On the bright side? One step away from being Amy Winehouse, Lily put on the breaks and backed off the entire lifestyle and lived. Her Godfather Joe Strummer would be proud.
