In Full Bloom

After a tumultuous decade in the spotlight, Lily Allen is back – with a whole new attitude.

- Lauren Sams

If it feels like Lily Allen has been narrating your entire adult life, it’s because she has. From dodging dodgy blokes at the bar (“can’t knock ‘em out/can’t walk away”), to bemoaning the guys who just don’t care that you’re not quite getting there, sexually speaking (“you’re supposed to care/that you never make me scream”), to lamenting lost friendships (“could you please find it deep within your heart/to go back to the start”), to deeply relatable body image debates ( “I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognaise/ and not feel bad about it for days and days and days”), to true #goals (“I want loads of clothes/and fuckloads of diamonds”), there is a Lily Allen lyric for every stage of a woman’s life.

After a four-year stint without an album (she calls Sheezus, her 2014 album, “a commercial and creative disaster”), Allen came back – both musically (she released No Shame last year, to critical and commercial success, and is in the midst of a world tour) and with her first book – a memoir called My Thoughts Exactly.

Calling anyone “the voice of a generation” seems trite, but in Allen’s case it just might be true: she’s honest (to the point of sensationalism) about absolutely everything. When it comes to Lily Allen, nothing (sex, drugs, alcohol, body image, mental illness…) is off the table. Which might be part of the reason she’s been tabloid fodder since she burst onto the music scene back in 2006 with her first album, Alright, Still.