What a week it's been for poor Lily Allen. Apparently motormouth has had another opinion recently, although one can't tell if it's her opinion, EMI's or Peter Mandelsons. In any case she's pulled her blog
idontwanttochangetheworld.blogspot as the 'abuse' became too much. Not sure you could call 99% of people who disagree with you as abuse but anyway. So what has she been getting her leotard in a tangle all about this time?
Well Keith Allen's daughter is concerned about music piracy. It's theft, it's stealing and its damaging up and coming artists, who need that money to create and develop. That is about as eloquently as Bat For Las--sorry Lily has been putting it in a recent myspace rant which then transferred to a blog called 'It's Not Alright', accompanied with emails and posts from the likes of Glasvegas, Guy Chambers and Mark Ronson. OK...Yep, she's much more than a guilty search on google images is our Lily.
Many of the posts to her blog received many, many comments, (including a couple by myself) some were silly, some were slightly insulting but generally the vast amount were reasonably trying to engage in the debate but pointing out why Lily was a bit wrong, hypocritical and quite possibly out of her depth. For her part, Lily refused to engage, coming back with the same, poorly reasoned repetitive party line. Then, like the devil himself she was gone, or I should say, her blog was taken down. Poor Lily, cwying, cwying till she gets her own way. You see, my dear reader, what Miss Allen hadn't figured or thought through was that not only did she lift material from techdirt.com but she even includes mixtapes on her official website, thus infringing copyright. Now while these have prompted, quite rightly, accusations of hypocrisy what irked dear Mr Kool, yours truly and still the best, was her complete silliness about the whole 'music isn't free' business. Of course it's fucking free to create. How much does it cost to write some lyrics, to come up with some chords on a mate's guitar? If you want stylists, graphic designers, PR guru's, etc,
you pay for them. Many artists can't afford them, nor do they get the exposure, promotion, or even have success but they don't whine. They get jobs, they still find time to write or play gigs or hammer together a difficult piece of electronic in their bedrooms. Lily and her lot are entitled to nothing.
Secondly, record companies could and should have dealt with the emerging digital technology about 14 years ago, instead of giving huge advances or discovering a dirge of mediorce 'landfill' indie or pushing manufactured pap onto kids like drug pushers. Perhaps it's the dumbing down of culture and media as well as those who feels it's acceptable to live in a reality TV, minor celebrity, cheaply produced dominated culture? Who in the right mind would wish to pay for, or even download for free 90% of the mainstream stuff in the charts anyway when you have to rely on your wits and tastebuds to discover your own music online, and with any luck, if you see it available anywhere, buy it? I can't prove this but I reckon that many of the artists who are whining about this haven't had as much stuff downloaded by whatever means, than say, um, Radiohead. I reckon that James Blunt struggles to have his stuff illegally shared, given that the majority of his audience are probably over 50. Face it he's the Chris De Burgh of the noughties.
No Lily, all this, as I said in a response to your post, smacks too much of the Lars Ulrich/Paul McGuinness school of protectionism. It makes you seem right wing, and selfish and goes against many of the ethics of your musical heroes, and, I gather your dad, who I recall on a music programme on channel four about 8 years ago had a pop at Ronan Keating and some idiot from Five when he passionately tried to explain what pop music used to mean and say something that the likes of Boyzone, Five and Richard Blackwood were failing to do. He was spot on. This is important as these standards I feel are something to do with the falling sales not just people grabbing the odd mp3. Funnily enough Lily didn't seem to have a problem with file sharing a few years ago. What she has to understand is that album sales tend to drop with every album. Most artists, unless you're Abba or The Beatles could tell you this. And Bjorn Ulvaeus should know better.
Even Matt Bellamy from Muse has tried to wade into the debate, suggesting that ISP should up their prices. As if they want to alienate the consumers, much in the same way Lily's already done. Stick to making third rate prog rock, Matt. As for Fergal Sharkey, he doesn't help the debate either. But at least he has a nice, pristine, self-important job to do since he hasn't had a hit for twenty five years. Memo to Fergal: don't use John Peel's love of 'Teenage Dreams' to highlight your cause. I highly doubt he would be with you on your anti-music stance and, more than this, its really underhand and creepy of you. x Smirnov
If you're short of cash, Lily, get yourself down to Jobcentre Plus, instead of throwing your things out of the pram. There's a few going in the Healthcare Sector. Perhaps you could aid, bathe, feed and toilet the elderly for money, and imagine how great you used to have it. Look, there has to be some content medium that doesn't involve Lars Ulrich making a twat of himself or that involves constant, brusque advertisements buggering up your listening pleasure. Here's some ideas:
1. Make better albums.
2. Bring back more focus on music television, such as Top of The Pops they way it used to be, or the Chart Show. More programmes like Jools Holland which focuses on better and more exotic music.
3. Kill Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell. In a sense it would be a spiritual death if they knew the X-Factor was cancelled and all this 'I want to be famous' nonsense would disappear.
4.Hose MTV down and return to 24 hours of music television. Re-instate Ray Cokes. Or re=classify MTV1 as MTV2 and make MTV2 the real music channel because it actually plays MUSIC VIDEOS.
5.Hang George Lamb/Radio 1 controllers/A&R deps/Schedulers/DJ's that don't actually know anything outside of Primrose Hill or Hoxton about music. We could watch them swing in Trafalgar Square. All the proceeds could go to unsigned artists on myspace who haven't had anything downloaded yet.
6.Why can't record companies actually cut their massive advances they give to mediorce artists and employ some Internet savvy people to delete mass content from torrents where they are being 'infringed'? Even though they leak material anyway.
What's the worst that could happen? Lily and her lot would have struggled to make it into the Top 50 in 1994. Be thankful you've been allowed to last this long. Free ride over.
