Lily Allen

Lily Allen
Biography

Birth name                         Lily Rose Beatrice Allen
Birth date                          May 2, 1985
Birth place                         Hammersmith, London, England
Occupations                      Musician, songwriter, presenter
Instruments                        Guitar
Years active                      1988–present


Personal Life and Career
Lily Allen is an English recording artist, talk show host, and actress. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. Find news, articles, videos, and pictures of Lily Allen here.

In her teenage years, her musical tastes evolved from glam rock to alternative. Allen abandoned school and concentrated on improving her performing and compositional skills. Afterwards, she created several demo songs, and near the end of 2005, she created a profile on MySpace, where she made some of her recordings public.

A contract was signed with the label Regal Recordings, as the views on MySpace rose to tens of thousands. In 2006, she began to work on completing what would be her first studio album and its first mainstream single "Smile" reached the top position on the UK Singles Chart in July 2006. Her debut record, Alright, Still, was well received on the international market, selling over 2.6 million copies and brought Allen a nomination at the Grammy Awards, BRIT Awards and MTV Video Music Awards. She then began hosting her own talk-show, Lily Allen and Friends, on BBC Three.

Her second major album release, It's Not Me, It's You, saw a genre shift for her, having more of an electropop feel, rather than the ska and reggae influences of the first one. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and the Australian ARIA Charts and was appreciated by the critics, noting the singer's musical evolution and maturity. It spawned the hit singles "The Fear" and "Fuck You", popular mostly in Europe. Allen and Amy Winehouse have been credited with starting a process that led to the media-proclaimed "year of the women" in 2009 that has seen five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" long nominated for the Mercury Prize.  In September 2009, Allen stated that she sees no way that she could ever make a profit making new records. In August she announced her pregnancy and began a hiatus. During autumn 2010, Allen opened a fashion rental shop "Lucy in Disguise" with her sister Sarah and for the second time had a pregnancy not come to term.  In 2011 Allen launched her own record label.

Lily Allen explains absence on internet
lily_allen.jpgPoor old Lily Allen. We finally got ourselves a smart, cute popstar who was willing to speak her mind and not shy away from the debate and everyone went and scared her off. She was one of those rare celebrities who was candid and open, thanks to her internet presence. Now, she's likening it all to her alcohol and drug dependency of the past. The singer stopped using her Facebook, MySpace and Twitter pages in September after posting a message that she had become a "neo-Luddite".

Allen told the Evening Standard: "I don't own a BlackBerry. Or a computer. I don't even read emails.

"I was using the internet in a really destructive way. In the same way as I guess alcoholics and drug addicts have to stop taking drugs or alcohol to see how negatively it affects them."

She added: "I had to stop using the internet completely. If I was feeling bad, I'd look for negative things people were writing about me to substantiate how I was feeling: 'Look, I am fat and ugly...'

"I'd write something silly with totally the best intentions of it just being for fans to read and it would end up looking like I was trying to get in The Sun newspaper. So, this year, I'm not putting out useless information that people can use against me."




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