Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Fear

For your consideration, Lily Allen's "The Fear":




A catchy, harmless little pop ditty for sure. It sticks in my head due to the lyrics below:

"And i’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cuz everyone knows that’s how you get famous
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m on to a winner"

The song, about the search for celebrity no matter how trashy, includes that great little line about The Sun and The Mirror. As well as their obvious meanings, Leen pointed out to me later that both are UK tabloids.

I love that little turn of phrase, that double meaning where a lyric of seemingly general imagery transitions into something of greater relevance.

1 comment:

Luke said...

I am in love with Lily Allen. She is fantastically caustic in her songs, but even more so in her interviews and blog entries. Still, I couldn't help feel that she was holding back on this recent album - some reviews have cited her shift towards being a social commentator rather than document her own life (which is quite obvious in The Fear), but I think to be effective as a social commentator she needs to name names, as she repeatedly does outside her songs. It's almost a cop-out to hear a Lily Allen song using allusions (clever as they are).

May 23, 2009 at 12:41 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)