I remember the last time Lily Allen came to town. It was five years ago and a good friend and I spent an afternoon scouring Twitter and Toronto as part of Allen’s ongoing scavenger hunt series to win a pair of tickets to the show. We were successful – stumbling into Einstein’s pub on the clue “E=MC2” – and spent the night enjoying offerings from the pop star’s second album, 2009’s It’s Not Me, It’s You.
I preface with this anecdote because it’s evident Allen has some strong feelings on apathetic online music criticism. One listen to Sheezus single “URL Badman” is evidence enough – the lyrics stating: “I don’t like you, I think you’re worthless / I wrote a long piece about it up on my WordPress.”
She’s got a point about how easy it is to hide behind a keyboard, writing critiques of things you already know you’re going to hate. So no – I wasn’t there to hate on Lily Allen’s performance.
And to be fair, I didn’t so much hate her Sunday night performance at a near-full Sound Academy as I was disappointed by it.
It wasn’t exactly boisterous, nor did it feel like a queen pop star making her long awaited return. Instead, it was just a little obvious, Allen’s entire “I don’t really care what you think about me” persona coming off a bit too constructed. It’s perfectly okay to not care – but when you start to tell people, repeatedly, it moots the point.
The pop tunes were obvious as well, with Allen embracing a wave of electronics and bass on 2014’s Sheezus and infusing those trends into material from her 2006 debut, Alright, Still, and its 2009 follow-up, It’s Not Me, It’s You. “Not Fair”, a single from her sophomore release, was privy to the electronic adjustments, as was debut single “Smile”.
Allen herself was chatty and in good spirits, telling anecdotes about her kids and about formerly living in Toronto. She was also there to encourage the crowd to have a good time – telling them to have fun like it was a Friday and to stop judging other people’s habits and vices.
While Sheezus made up much of the performed material – Alright, Still confined to just three songs – the new offerings went over just as well as the older songs amongst the excitable crowd.
There was also time for a cover of Jhené Aiko’s “The Worst” – the Los Angeles R&B artist recently in Toronto herself, opening up for The Weeknd. Allen did a good job on the track vocally, but it definitely didn’t hit the “effortlessly cool” marker set by its original creator.
Other R&B references came in with “Close Your Eyes”, while the intro to “Littlest Things” sounded like a passable cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police”. The ostentatiously braggy “L8 CMMR” – a song written for her husband – played surprisingly well, as did the chant along chorus of set-closer “Fuck You”.
An encore of “Hard Out Here” closed Allen’s two-song finish and was, again, a little on the nose. With Allen singing “it’s hard out here for a bitch,” she was accompanied by her four back-up dancers, all donning dog masks as they humped baby bottles surrounding the stage. It seemed slightly condescending – like her audience might not understand the nuances of the song if it wasn’t smacking them square in the face.
As an artist, Allen’s no doubt benefited from “weirdness” catching on. Her songs have always been just left of standard pop and her attitude was always slightly more outlandish and outspoken than those of her contemporaries. That’s why it was a little disheartening to see how obvious her Sunday night set was. She can decorate her stage in light-up baby bottles all she wants (19 of them, to be exact), but Allen needs to do more. I think she’s capable of pushing the envelope and carrying that audience with her, but it’ll take more than blatant electronics and Yeezus references. I’m still waiting for Allen to realize that as a pop star we’re waiting for her to set trends – not just follow them.
Thanks to Live Nation Ontario for media access.
