Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Lily Rose Beatrice Allen

Born on 2 May 1985

Lily Rose Beatrice Allen is an English recording artist, talk show host and actress. The daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen.


Sexiness

For those who consider sexiness to be a blonde with Barbie-like dimensions, Lily might not be your bag. But if you like a fiery, independent woman who’s bubbling over with equal parts sass and charm, then this lovely Londoner is most definitely your kind of gal.

In 1988, at the age of 3, Allen appeared on The Comic Strip Presents... episode "The Yob," which her father had co-written. When Allen was four years old, her father left the family. Allen claims to have grown up with her mother in a working class environment, living in a council house environment for most of her childhood. This seems at odds with the fact that she attended some of the UK's costliest public schools; Allen attended 13 schools in all, including Prince Charles's junior alma mater, Hill House School, Millfield, Bedales School, and a primary school in Leixlip, Ireland, and was expelled from several of them for drinking and smoking.

When Allen was 11, former University of Victoria music student Rachel Santesso overheard Allen singing Wonderwall by Oasis in the schools playground; impressed, Santesso, who would later become an award-winning soprano and composer, called Allen into her office the next day and started giving her lunchtime singing lessons. This would lead to Allen singing Baby Mine from Disney's Dumbo at a school concert. Allen would tell Loveline that, the audience was brought to tears at the sight of a troubled young girl doing something good. At that point Allen said she knew that music was something she needed to do either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system. Allen played piano to grade 5 standard and achieved grade 8 in singing. She also played violin, guitar and trumpet as well as being a member of a chamber choir. Her first solo was "In the Bleak Midwinter." According to The Sunday Times "the only school that seemed to have a positive impact on her was" Cavendish, an all-girl Christian school located in Camden Town. At Cavendish, Allen "played a boy in a production of The Railway Children and sang 'Baby Mine' from Dumbo."

Allen made an appearance as a lady-in-waiting in the 1998 film Elizabeth, co-produced by her mother. She dropped out of school at age fifteen, not wanting to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life." After her family went to Ibiza on holiday, Allen told her mother that she was staying with friends but remained in Sant Antoni de Portmany instead. She earned money by working at a Plastic Fantastic record store and dealing ecstasy.

At the age of 17, Allen became a member of the Groucho Club and in her free time she listened to artists such as The Specials, T.Rex and Happy Mondays.

Allen created an account on MySpace and began posting demos in November 2005. The demos attracted thousands of listeners, and 500 limited edition 7" vinyl singles of "LDN" were rush-released, reselling for as much as £40. Allen also produced two mixtapes — My First Mixtape and My Second Mixtape — to promote her work: they included tracks by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dizzee Rascal, and Ludacris. As she accumulated tens of thousands of MySpace friends, The Observer Music Monthly (OMM), a magazine published in The Observer, took interest. Few people outside of her label's A&R department knew who she was, so the label was slow in responding to publications wanting to report about her.

In March 2006, OMM included an article about Allen's success through MySpace. She received her first major mainstream coverage, appearing in the magazine's cover story two months later. The success of her songs convinced her label to allow her more creative control over the album and to use some of the songs that she had written instead of forcing her to work with mainstream producers. Allen decided to work with producers Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, finishing the rest of the album in two weeks.

The social networking site was the primary hub for messages of support and condolence following her January 2008 miscarriage. Allen received a 2008 NME Award nomination for the category of "Best Band Blog." Allen's songs have been downloaded from her MySpace page 19 million times.

Allen's debut album, Alright, Still, was released as a limited-edition 12" vinyl in the UK on 3 July 2006; the full CD release followed in the UK and the rest of Europe on 17 July 2006. The album features between 11 and 14 tracks (depending on the edition), most of which were previewed on her MySpace page, including the singles "Smile" (the first song she wrote with Future Cut), "LDN", "Knock 'Em Out", and "Alfie". "Friday Night", co-written with Jonny Bull, was also included, alongside "Littlest Things" produced by Mark Ronson, help earn Ronson a "Producer of the Year - Non Classical" 2008 Grammy Award.

In September 2006, "Smile" was made available on the United States version of Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. By December 2006, her music video for Smile had been played on various music channels as well as the song getting a little airplay. Entertainment Weekly named Alright, Still as one of the top 10 albums of 2006 despite the fact that it had not yet been released in the U.S. Allen also did several promotional ads for MTV as their Discover and Download artist of the month for January 2007.

On the week ending on 28 January 2007, British artists made chart history taking all top 10 places in the Official UK Albums chart for the first time since the chart was established in 1956, according to British record labels trade association the BPI, the album Alright, Still was number nine that week.

The album was released in the United States on 30 January 2007, landing at 20 on the Billboard Album Charts. Allen won a 2008 BMI songwriting award for "Smile". "Smile" was the first single. The U.S. version contains three additional tracks: "Nan, You're A Window Shopper", "Blank Expression" (on the iTunes version) and a new remix of "Smile" by Mark Ronson.

On 5 March 2007, the single "Alfie" was released.

By January 2009 the album had sold 960,000 copies in the United Kingdom and 520,000 copies in the United States

Fashion Career

  • In May 2007, Allen launched a line of dresses, shoes, and accessories entitled Lily Loves.
  • Allen is reported to enjoy a "special relationship" with Chanel that is said to include borrowing clothes and jewellery and being flown in to sit in the front row of their shows. Karl Lagerfeld, the head designer for the company personally hired and photographed Allen for a campaign to promote a luxury line of handbags due to launch in September 2009.
  • Allen won the 2008 Glamour Woman of the Year Awards "Editors Special Award." Allen was nominated for a Highstreet Fashion Award in the category of "Best Dressed Celebrity." In a readers poll for the weekly British style magazine Look, Allen was named the ninth best style role model.
  • Allen has been described by the UK edition of Elle Magazine as a person who is not overly trendy in her fashion choices.
  • According to a newspaper report Allen told Capital Radio she has done modelling for a unnamed company.
  • Allen is scheduled to unveil a line of jewellery in September 2009. The line has nine ranges and is influenced by Chanel and Dinny Hall.

Quotes Lily Allen

"I sometimes feel like my life is a bit empty - as ridiculous as that sounds to some people, a bit vacuous."

"There was one group of girl fans who flew all the way over from Texas just
for one night to see me. I met them briefly. It was really flattering. I told my mother and she was like, 'Oh my God, that's so sweet, well you should let them stay here!' And I was like, 'You what? Are you f***ing mental?' I'm scared of home in case my mum meets random fans and brings them home for a cup of tea!"

“I’m just concentrating on making a good album and that’s the only thing I’m kind of concentraing on at the moment. I don’t really care what the press have to say.”

"Education is great for some people, but for me it just wasn't. "

"I'd like to say work and sex have replaced drugs but there's not been enough time off work for sex. This must change. "

"A lot of female artists, and male ones for that matter, are boring singers who don't say anything. Certainly not to my generation. With the kind of music I do you have to be direct and quite literal. I don't play an instrument, which really makes me focus on the vocal melody,
and the lyrics are incredibly important to me. I don't want to be part of a scene, the whole idea of that makes me feel sick, and most of the music I listen to is by outsider figures, which is where I feel happiest. "

"I was a drug dealer in Ibiza at 15. I did not excel in drug dealing - I was terrible at it. Golden rule with drug dealing - don't get too enthusiastic with your own merchandise."
- Lily Allen


claiming fame is ruining her sex life
I have had a couple of times when I've got to know someone over a few weeks and we've had a really great time at my London apartment, just watching TV and having sex. And then I get paranoid because I get like, 'I don't want to leave the house with you because I don't want us to be photographed together and for us to suddenly have to justify our relationship, when we don't know what it is yet.'

In May 2007, Lily scared fans by posting the following message on her website
I used to pride myself on being strong-minded and not being some stupid girl obsessed with the way I look. I felt like it didn't matter if I was a bit chubby 'cause I'm not a model, I'm a singer. I'm afraid I am not strong and have fallen victim to the evil machine. I write to you in a sea of tears from my hotel bed in Seattle. I have spent the past hour researching gastric bypass surgery and laser liposuction.

after discovering she had a heart murmur
I found out I had a heart murmur about three months ago. I had switched doctors and just went for a routine check up, which is when they discovered I had this irregular murmur. I have been asthmatic all my life, but this was really quite scary. When they asked me how much exercise I did, I had to be honest and say hardly any. I make sure I work out three times a week now, and I don't hold back.

Birthday: 5/2/1985
Birthname: Lily Rose Beatrice Allen
Hookups: Andy Samberg
Ed Simons
Hometown: London, England
Assets: voice
great tits which she doesn't mind showing
Vices: might give up music
Sign: Taurus
Height: 5'2
Occupations : Talk show host,
Singer–songwriter
Labels : Regal Capitol (US)
Hobbies: Reading
Ethnicity: White
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Website LilyAllenMusic.com