With the release of her new album, 'It's Not Me, It's You', singer Lily Allen talks about that difficult second album and how she went about putting it together.
Question: So, here we are with your second album, 'It's Not Me, It's You'. They always call it the difficult second album. Was it?
Lily Allen: It was quite difficult, not too difficult. I don't know how difficult it was. I suppose the most difficult thing about it was, you know, the first album I didn't really expect anyone to listen to it whereas this time people are going to listen to it and want to have an opinion about it... that was the only thing I found difficult about it, not the actual writing of songs.
Q: The album has been produced by Greg Kurstin, who has worked with the likes of All Saints, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Inara George, etc. How did you hook up with him?
LA: I think I was working in a studio in north London and he was working on a wonderful band that you might have heard of called All Saints, who used to be on my record label and they were in the studio next-door to me and so I kind of got introduced to him through them and we hit it off and we just decided to work on some stuff and we did three songs on my last record together... and yeah, I decided I wanted to make this record with one person really, so that it felt like it was one sort of body of work the whole way through and it didn't feel like it was me just working with lots of different sort of pop producers and thrown together.
Q: So how did you work out a system? He normally lives in the US, of course.
LA: Well, I went over there a couple of times for short amounts of time. We'd swap it because you know Greg's married. He has got a wife so I think it was a bit mean to sort of ask him to come over here for long periods of time. And I wanted to take it slowly because I think, with the way that I write songs, it's so much in the moment, about what I'm thinking about at that particular time. I can't really keep coming up with stuff, just like one after another, one after another - so I have to kind of do a week or a week-and- a-half and then have, you know, three or four weeks off and then go back in again and try it again once I've, you know, experienced some more life.
He came over to England for the first session that we did and we hired out this tiny little cottage in... I can't remember... what was it?... Morton-in-Marsh it's called. And we just sat there for a week-and-a-half and we just banged out five or six of the songs and I think they're all on the record. The way that me and Greg work, you know, the first sort of couple of days we listened to other people's stuff and tried to get inspired... and we listened to lots of Keane, who I love, and some Coldplay stuff and then we listened to lots of sort of happy hardcore dance music...
Q: One of the most noticeable things about this CD is that, although the subjects are often quite dark and serious, the musical treatment is often quite bouncy and jolly. Greg's musical ideas presumably make you laugh sometimes?
LA: Yeah, really a lot. That's why I work with Greg, it's because he makes me laugh so much and he's such a funny character to work with and, at the end of it, we are really, really good friends. But he's mad. He's constantly playing really weird things... I think one day we might even write a musical because I think... you know, we love just writing silly things and things with a lot of character. I think he definitely finds my lyrics, if I've got a sort of one-liner, he'll laugh at that, if it's really kind of staring out at you. But I don't think he listens to the lyrics of the songs from start to finish at the beginning. I think when he's in the studio he's thinking about his part and I'm thinking about my part. I think he saves his reflections for later.
Q: So, as part of the process of writing songs, you make notes of things that you observe and things that happen to you. Those notebooks are really important. Ever lost one?
LA: Yeah, I found whole books. I never keep any of my books... in the back of cars, when I go to a studio I haven't been to in six months, they're like 'aw you left all your books'... with all my songs. I don't know where any of them are. They're all... somewhere. I don't throw them away. I just misplace them. They're not things that I hold on to, that's what I'm trying to say.
'It's Not Me, It's You' is out now on Parlophone.
