Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You

Lily Allen - everyone has an opinion on her, whether she is your Naughties' Wordsworth, your Myspace pioneer or your gobby neptonic irritant, there really is no escaping her. And so it is that at the beginning of 2009 she releases the follow up to her, now two and a half year old, debut - 'Alright, Still'.

With not a Mark Ronson credit in sight, Allen has swapped trumpets for synths, Ska for Electropop. She has always been an artist who writes directly, both emotionally and literally, from the heart and there is no hiding in this record. Her feelings are out there and very little is shrouded in clever metaphors or smilies. No more is this apparent than on the closing track 'He Wasn't There', a nostalgic look at her childhood and the effect her famous father, Keith Allen, had on her. Set the the sound of a 1930s beach holiday it is one of the more captivating and unique offerings on the album.

Other highlights include number one single 'The Fear': a dreamy ode to fame in which Allen blurs the lines between reality and pastiche when addressing her place in the world of celebrity. 'Everyone's At It', the obvious choice for the second single, is much more lyrically challenging. Assuming that the whole world is on drugs, when one suspects this is not wholly true of the real world, more of London, L.A. and the kind of places one would expect to find the glitterati. Starting off like the backing track to a horror movie, Allen produces a song that would have fitted amazingly on the Kaiser Chiefs's debut. She, however, is much more apt at reflecting real life through her lyrics.

'Fuck You' is her most effecting effort to date. Set to a nursery rhyme-esque tune, the song addresses not only, as has been heavily written about, George Bush, but the bigots, racists, homophobes and prejudice of the world. When we live in a world where tolerance is the most important thing, but the one most lacking, Allen has poured all her feelings towards discrimination into a simple but memorable chorus - 'Fuck you, fuck you very, very much'. Simply this song is brilliant.

Whilst no one would excuse Lily Allen of resting on her laurels she evens tackles Existentialism with the quirky 'Him'. By projecting human qualities onto the world's most unhumanly being, God, Allen throws up some brilliant lines like 'Do you think he's any good at remembering people's names / Do you think he's ever taken smack or cocaine'. By looking at God through a series of questions and human foibles she has perhaps asked all the things we have always been wondering. Are Creedence Clearwater Revival actually God's favourite band?...Perhaps, not!

As for the rest of the album, 'Who'd Have Known' comes off poorer from pinching from Take That's 'Shine', whilst 'I Could Say' talks about moving on from someone you used to adore set the the backing track of a beautiful love song.

All in all 'It's Not Me, It's You' sums up the world in 2009 almost perfectly. Put in a time capsule and opened in 1,000 years time the listener (if they have a CD Player?!) would get a brilliant idea of what has been going on recently. Perhaps Lily Allen will be viewed as the Wordsworth of 2004 +, but i guess we will never know!