Alright, Still
Lily Allen
Alright, Still is the debut studio album by London singer Lily Allen, released July 13, 2006 on Regal Recordings. Recorded between 2004 and 2006 with a rotating cast of producers including Mark Ronson, Greg Kurstin, Blair MacKichan, and Future Cut, the eleven-track, thirty-seven-minute record had an unconventional path to release: most of the songs had been circulating on Allen's Myspace page before the album was formally announced, building a devoted online following that preceded and partly drove the record's commercial breakout. It debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart, eventually achieving four-times platinum certification in the United Kingdom, gold in the United States, and over 2.5 million copies sold worldwide. Lead single "Smile" — a breezy reggae-pop song about revenge on a cheating ex, built on a sample of Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" — spent two weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart and established Allen as a distinctive new voice in British pop almost immediately.
Musically, the album sits at an unlikely and highly effective intersection of ska, reggae, R&B, and kitchen-sink pop — what Apple Music described as "a sleek listen with clever samples, sonic nods to classic R&B, squelchy reggae and even scratchy grime beats." Allen's lyrics are conversational, bluntly funny, and pointedly autobiographical: "LDN" sketches the gap between London's glossy surface and its grittier underbelly over a bouncy music hall piano loop; "Not Big" dispatches a former partner with cheerfully brutal specificity; and "Alfie," a gentle but exasperated address to her then-directionless younger brother (actor Alfie Allen), closes the record on a note of wry familial affection. Wikipedia notes the album earned a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 50th Grammy Awards, and the record has since been recognized as a defining document of mid-2000s British pop — unflinching in its honesty, effortlessly catchy, and distinctly its own thing.
Alright, Still
Lily Allen
Alright, Still is the debut studio album by London singer Lily Allen, released July 13, 2006 on Regal Recordings. Recorded between 2004 and 2006 with a rotating cast of producers including Mark Ronson, Greg Kurstin, Blair MacKichan, and Future Cut, the eleven-track, thirty-seven-minute record had an unconventional path to release: most of the songs had been circulating on Allen's Myspace page before the album was formally announced, building a devoted online following that preceded and partly drove the record's commercial breakout. It debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart, eventually achieving four-times platinum certification in the United Kingdom, gold in the United States, and over 2.5 million copies sold worldwide. Lead single "Smile" — a breezy reggae-pop song about revenge on a cheating ex, built on a sample of Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" — spent two weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart and established Allen as a distinctive new voice in British pop almost immediately.
Musically, the album sits at an unlikely and highly effective intersection of ska, reggae, R&B, and kitchen-sink pop — what Apple Music described as "a sleek listen with clever samples, sonic nods to classic R&B, squelchy reggae and even scratchy grime beats." Allen's lyrics are conversational, bluntly funny, and pointedly autobiographical: "LDN" sketches the gap between London's glossy surface and its grittier underbelly over a bouncy music hall piano loop; "Not Big" dispatches a former partner with cheerfully brutal specificity; and "Alfie," a gentle but exasperated address to her then-directionless younger brother (actor Alfie Allen), closes the record on a note of wry familial affection. Wikipedia notes the album earned a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 50th Grammy Awards, and the record has since been recognized as a defining document of mid-2000s British pop — unflinching in its honesty, effortlessly catchy, and distinctly its own thing.