Topic: Lily Allen- Inform The American

B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
HMGovt said:
Why does her moderate success offend you so much? Do you:

A) hate success?

B) hate young women?

C) hate yourself?

D) A + B + C
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(sorry to head backwards in the discussion - haven't checked Dissensus since y'day)

Lol - it's so easy to bait people on here. I KNEW someone would have to come out with the 'do you hate young women?' line, after I committed the crime of praising a young man (Mike Skinner) over a young woman (Lily Allen). So obviously I MUST be a sexist. Just like all black people are wonderful, all young women are wonderful, aren't they? And all white people and young men are, frankly, abysmal, n'est-ce pas?

Jesus.

As for (A), what are you talking about? And as for (C), the same question.

Think before you answer someone's comments next time, please. ;)
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
And as to the question of why her moderate success offends me 'so much':

(i) Her success has been much more than moderate - much to the credit of her marketing machine;
(ii) As others have said, the whole 'pretending to be working class' phenomenon is the preserve of wankers;
(iii) I'm not that offended: this is a messageboard where people often let off steam in a melodramatic way.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Just read that HMGovt rates the Chili Peppers as the worst band in the world. I'll let him/her off this time, then.
 
U

UFO over easy

online mahjong
baboon2004 said:
And as to the question of why her moderate success offends me 'so much':

(i) Her success has been much more than moderate - much to the credit of her marketing machine;
(ii) the whole 'pretending to be working class' phenomenon
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I don't understand the problem with either of these.

(i) - good marketing leads to success. Duh. And?

(ii) - what's so offensive about this? Young lady, very well spoken amongst her elders and her family, creates an accent for herself, a bit of bravado, what about it? Almost every kid in the world, ever, has done this at some point. What's with the bitterness?
 
D

D84

Well-known member
UFO over easy said:
I don't understand the problem with either of these.

(i) - good marketing leads to success. Duh. And?
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Is it just my memory playing tricks or was there actually a time where the songs that got radio play etc got it on the grounds of merit/ DJ approval, rather than how much cash/coke has been swung in the way of programmers/journos?

(ii) - what's so offensive about this? Young lady, very well spoken amongst her elders and her family, creates an accent for herself, a bit of bravado, what about it? Almost every kid in the world, ever, has done this at some point. What's with the bitterness?
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No bitterness here, mate, just the usual online critical evaluation... easily misinterpreted on a flat medium. What bitterness there is I take as directed more at the system rather than the usual sad suspects taking advantage of it...

Basically it's a bit fake isn't it? Instead of it taking years for the world to cotton on: it now takes a couple of days/weeks with the internet...
 
M

mms

sometimes
D84 said:
Basically it's a bit fake isn't it? Instead of it taking years for the world to cotton on: it now takes a couple of days/weeks with the internet...
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but as far as music is concerned. in the vaccum her music is a bit of a ray of sunshine compared to all the fucking dull grumbly men in their early 30's playing guitar songs and being exactly the same as each other.
 
B

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
UFO over easy said:
I don't understand the problem with either of these.

(i) - good marketing leads to success. Duh. And?

(ii) - what's so offensive about this? Young lady, very well spoken amongst her elders and her family, creates an accent for herself, a bit of bravado, what about it? Almost every kid in the world, ever, has done this at some point. What's with the bitterness?
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(i) Um. You've misunderstood what I was saying.

(ii) If you don't find the phenomenon of very privileged people (not kids: c'mon, she's 21, not 14 - stop patronising her with low expectations) acting under-privileged and 'street' extremely patronising and annoying, then you have far more patience with twattish behaviour than I'll ever have.

Bitterness? What bitterness? ;)
 
F

ford.anglia

Member
Slothrop said:
Teachers, eh, what a bunch of posh wankers. Hang the lot of 'em.

To me they sound a lot like most upper-working to middle-middle class people[1] from the north of england - local vowels stuck on to otherwise fairly neutral ways of talking. If that's the thickest of thick sheffield accents then I'm a) not impressed and b) worried that a lot of my elderly relatives also talk in a way that would hardly be plausible from someone who's never left Parson Cross.

[1] did I mention that I'm not convinced that a model of british society developed in the nineteenth centre can fully describe the subtleties of 21st century class structure...
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Agree up to a point...completely agree that the class model of british society has been on its way to redundancy probably since the dawn of grammar schools back in the 20s/30s(?).
For example (and using the accepted 19th cenury terms) the lower middle class and upper working class now having far more in common (their wider families usually being composed of a mixture of those two classes) than they ever have respectively with the upper middle or lower working class.

What pisses me off is that the Arctic Monkeys are marketed as "an authentic working class voice" (whatever that is) using those selfsame outmoded class ideas...just look at their reviews and lazy pieces written about them. And theyre quite happy to play up to it. To me that makes the whole concept completely fake.

Plus its common knowledge that their accents do seem to have become somewhat "Sheffielded-up" in the last couple of years.

ps nothing against teachers too...my girlfriend happens to be one...
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
ford.anglia said:
What pisses me off is that the Arctic Monkeys are marketed as "an authentic working class voice" (whatever that is) using those selfsame outmoded class ideas...just look at their reviews and lazy pieces written about them.
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I've not really been following the hype (prefer to listen to the records, innit) but I got the impression that the marketing was more "guaranteed real teenagers" than "guaranteed working class". I mean, they're basically commenting on the stuff that pretty much anyone growing up in Britain would have experienced, and that seemed to be what people were picking up on. There's nothing exclusively working class about going out on the town on a friday night...
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
mms said:
she's part of that whole mike skinner > artic monkeys > lilly thing where people speak about going to clubs, relationships etc being hung over and crying, taking drugs,
was talking to my brother about this, he's 23, it just connects on the level that he does the stuff they talk about and they say mobile phone and myspace in their songs rather than constant indie wining or lovely dovey stuff etc.
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To be honest I'm a bit sick and tired of this trend for writing songs about ordinary everyday things - let's face it, boring things (fucking MySpace?) - that seems to be in vogue at the moment. Tesco Disco, to coin a Gristle-ism. I think I'd rather listen to Robert Plant wibbling on about ring-wraiths and Vikings.
 
M

mms

sometimes
Mr. Tea said:
To be honest I'm a bit sick and tired of this trend for writing songs about ordinary everyday things - let's face it, boring things (fucking MySpace?) - that seems to be in vogue at the moment. Tesco Disco, to coin a Gristle-ism. I think I'd rather listen to Robert Plant wibbling on about ring-wraiths and Vikings.
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absolutley - or anything except boring 'walking to the shops' style lyrics done in a mockney accent, it's rubbish, not endearing and totally lacks any ambition.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
All depends how's it done though innit. Morrissey and Mark E are both masters at wringing genius from mundanity.

I'd like to think there's more to Lily than namechecking shops we all visit (she's such a poor singer there simply HAS to be some compensating quality about her music or lyrics), but the truth is I don't really listen to her, so i'll duck out.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
she wears the earrings that latinas in brooklyn have been wearing for 10-20 years.

other than that i barely take note of her except to realize that she is famous because she is an indie boy's idea of a cute girl all styled to appeal to innercity teen girls.

$$$$$
 
N

neupunk

Active member
I think the interest in her stateside is both from the indie crossover segment (they love those british, self-proclaimed indie types do) and the NPR crowd, which is where a few of my friends picked up on her from. Amusing British girl is an angle that sells well, especially when references to anything cultural seem quaint to Americans. We never really understand the class issues and all your accents sound similar to us, anyway.

Yes, I'm painting that with broad strokes and being a little abrasive, but for the broad majority, it's true.
 
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