The Fear- Lily Allen Cover

Click Here to Download: The Fear - Lily Allen Cover with Brendan Kennedy guest vocals

Perhaps the most insensitive moment in a pop song this year comes in this new Lily Allen track. And I think that is what makes it pretty genius. Here are the opening lines:

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them

Zero in on that last line. And read it again. What????????? Nothing else in the song reaches the blasé absurdity of that statement.  It is an awful song lyric that scans terribly and seems worthy of Britney at best.  What makes the song soar though, is that we finally have a pop singer again who has no problem dealing with their own celebrity failings. And within a song.  Courtney Love was a master of this particular strain of self-reflectivity but her music was a bit far from pure pop, Malibu being the best exception.  

Lily Allen goes for the purest of pop mixed with a commentary on celebrities that doesn't shy away from her own, well, 'issues'.    

I think she has once again given the world a reason to watch her, and not just for her next mental breakdown in front of paparazzi.   

Kenny Mellman

p.s. - "i totes had fun---love brendan"