A nifty Lily Allen video...

We have to admit, despite not being Lily Allen's biggest fans, that this video pleases us. Unlike the fairly dreadful 'European release' one for "Fuck You" that took a song about anti-bigotry and gave it a totally meaningless, gimmicky sheen, this is a lot more satisfying. It's basically your average tuesday night in a toilet down Hoxton, but it is pulled off with aplomb.

Is this an advert?

For a song about homophobia, racism and people like the former president of the United States of America, this has a confusingly non-political video. It's quite diverting, but what does it mean? It's not an 'Apple Mac Photobooth' advert is it?

Oh this is brilliant...

According to Dlisted (via Metro), Lily Allen has been shooting off her mouth to magazines again. And her targets? Footballers and their wives. Haven't we been here before?!

As well as calling the Beckhams "sickening", she calls Posho Beckhamz "a monster", Ashley Cole "revolting" and footballers in general (specifically English ones) "stupid". But she really let's rip for Cheryl Cole: "She is just a bitch. She represents everything I hate. She is stupid, superficial and as ugly outside as inside."

Now, we don't want to spark the same infighting between Shiny & New writers that we did LAST time we reported on Lily Allen's rudeness and our views that she was, to be honest, just jealous... but even though we do quite agree with her that Ashley Cole is a bit of a lecherous sod and footballers in general are a bit useless: this is going too far.

She insulted Saint Cheryl!!!!!!

Now let's look at the evidence properly: Cheryl has never done anything to hurt or insult Lily Allen, in fact Cheryl Cole has never done anything to hurt or insult ANYone (except that nightclub attendant, but apparently she was asking for it and it weren't a racist attack). In fact, Cheryl Cole, during her time as National Saint du Grand Bretagne has stood up for gay people, stood up for Nicola Roberts, and blessed us all with her radiant beauty and charmingly tacky tattoos.

Lily Allen has... er... given us a few catchy tunes. But then so did Henry VIII, allegedly, and I'm not about to welcome him into my home. The point of this all is not that we HATE Lily Allen (because we don't... what we feel is closer to pity)... the point is that Lily Allen either HATES HERSELF a lot more than we previously thought, or she's really really jealous of Cheryl Cole.

You know when you're at school, and even though you're actually rather popular, you're liked for being 'funny' or 'offbeat' or 'outspoken'...? And there's another girl/boy who is slightly more popular than you, but simply for being really gorgeous and nice and you just HATE THEM because WHAT HAVE THEY GOT THAT YOU HAVEN'T?!? All they do is sit there looking pretty and friends FLOCK to them!?? And they're actually NICE to their friends! HOW SICKENING! How is it possible for them to be thinner, prettier, less-clever or less-funny and yet STILL MORE POPULAR. WHY? THEY ARE SHIT.

Well that's sort of what it's like, n'est-ce pas Self-Hater Allen?

There's always a silver lining...

To be honest, if Lily Allen's going to be inflicting singles on us, they should at least be in favour of gay rights, even if they are mildly patronising and a bit behind the times (George Bush is er... gone, now, love). We're interested to see how this anti-homophobic single pans out... what will the video feature? We hate to say we're intrigued.

Quit whilst you're ahead, love

According to digital spy, Lily Allen is threatening to quit music. We say HEAR FUCKING HEAR!

We don't hate Lily Allen or even her music. There are worse things in the world. But we think anyone who threatens to quit music DESERVES to quit music because they invariably don't... it's just for attention. Being an international popstar is something you should always be grateful for, because there are millions of people worldwide who would kill to be in your position.

Anyone who feels privileged and certain enough in their career that they can threaten to quit, without actually doing so, just to drum up some drama/attention/publicity doesn't really... oh just fuck off 'Allen'. And that goes for all you other fake music quitters, too (not mentioning any names Patrick Wolf, and er... other people... we'll let Frankmusik off cuz he's barely started yet).

A boring Lily Allen video...

1) Nothing really happens in this, so you can watch the first 30 seconds and know what the whole video is like.

2) She really can't dance, can she? Or even move in a graceful or stylish way?

3) Is every single Lily Allen album going to have a song about some man who is bad at sex or has a little peen? Just askin' so we can prepare a bad peen playlist now, and save time.

We're back

Yes.

That's right. We're back.

After several weeks of procrastination, sunburn, country walks, Disney World and gluten free mince pies Shiny and motherloving New is back.

We knew you missed us.

Anyway, we don't know what you were doing on New Year's Eve but it was probably cooler than a night spent watching Jools Holland's Annual Hootenanny in a cottage in rural Hampshire. Not that that's what we did.

Here, anyway, is a video of Lily Allen performing Lady Is A Tramp at the event. It's fucking awful by the way.



Apropos of nothing here is Madonna singing Sooner or Later at the Oscars in 1991.

CHRIST

Well now that all that ridiculous nonsense about flavour of the decade Lily Allen dissing the old tart who practically invented "gobby, opinionated, subtalented popstar" (the template on which Allen is basing her career) is OVER we can get back to the real news.

Don't worry... it's still about Madonna.

This time... about her falling over. You've probably already seen this because you probably read other blogs and in fact we don't think we actually have any readers, so this is fairly pointless BUT NEVERMIND.



AMAZING.

We love how she attempts (somewhat unsuccessfully) to offset the embarrassment of falling over by snogging a woman. GOTTA LOVE IT. She doesn't "walk it off"... she "lesbian snogs it off". If only everybody was like that!

Fell up the stairs? SAME SEX SNOG!

Slipped on a banana skin? SAME SEX SNOG!

Broke your neck in tragic bungee jumping incident? SAME SEX SHAG.

Anyway

Sigh.

We quite like Lily Allen. She's a quite good pop star and the whole gobby thing is actually genuinely refreshing considering how boringly tight-lipped everyone else in the world seems to be when it comes to opinions. We even quite liked her chat show. It was alright.

We have a feeling though, she is subconsciously extremely jealous of Madonna. Now we're not professional psychologists (we're not even doing a degree in psychology!) but when someone continues to bang on negatively about someone in a rather non-constructive manner it starts to get a little suspish, n'est-ce pas?

Today on Perez she was featured banging on about how Madonna is "the most overrated artist of all time" (not for the first time) and Britney is "a goddess" and that her album is "amazing". Hmmm... let's all think about this, Lily, shall we?

Madonna can't really sing (or act, except when she's playing Eva Peron), we'll admit, but she's a phenomonal dancer, phenomonal performer, rather good songwriter and lyricist (when she's not describing how her arsehole gets down), an innovator, a feminist icon, sex symbol, fashion trend-setter and possibly the most famous person on the entire planet. She has spent over 20 years in the music industry and at 50 is still crafting opinion-dividing and musically adventurous pop albums and dancing around in her knickers a lot more skilfully than you ever will.

Perhaps, Lily, you are jealous that Madonna, a woman who you probably think you are better than in every way (you're not, love) is so phenomonally successful? Maybe you wish you could get your leg over your head, something you probably can't do at 19 yet Madonna can do at 50. Maybe you wish you could have the biggest-grossing world tour of the year - an all-singing, all-dancing pop extravaganza - instead of just standing on stage jiggling a tiny bit and looking stoned.

This sort of institutionalized and internalized sexism and ageism really gets our goat. You get a very similar thing from Julie Burchill. She is incapable of writing an article without a) criticizing Madonna and b) criticizing her with respect to her age, even if it has no relevance whatsoever. You don't have to have a PHD in psychology to notice that Julie Burchill is probably deeply jealous and resentful of the fact that Madonna is 30 stone lighter and 500 million pounds richer than her and yet seemingly "devoid of talent".

The whole idea that Madonna is talentless, is not only a lie, but also beside the point. Madonna is not an opera singer. She is not a novelist (although her foray into children's literature shall be overlooked). She is a popstar and she does the job remarkably well. At least 1000 million times better than Britney, at any rate.

Quite what Lily Allen sees in a depressed, pill-popping puppet on the brink of a nervous breakdown and quite possibly the only person in the world being forced into a pop career against their will, is anybody's guess. It's quite alright to think that Britney's album is amazing, but to attribute this amazingness to Britney herself is like saying a ventriloquist's act is amazing because of the dummy he's holding.

Anyway Lily, let's hope your career lasts 20 years, spanning genres, setting trends, changing the landscape of pop and embodying female empowerment, because unless it does you're going to look a little bit silly, aren't you?