Accessibility links
Image&1&of&2
Lily Allen in her new Sheezus video&Photo: You Tube
Image&1&of&2
Lily Allen is trying too hard to be a 'feminist popstar'&
Lily Allen is trying too hard to do feminist pop. I know she is probably trying to top her latest stunt where
– no easy feat – but her latest single Sheezus is just a bit, well, embarrassing.
It’s the title song of her album - also named Sheezus in a play on Kanye West’s Yeezus - so we all had high hopes for it. Especially because it follows her latest single Hard Out Here which was simultaneously the best feminist pop anthem I’ve heard in ages, and a direct rebuttal to sexist popstar Robin Thicke.
I was hoping the rest of Allen’s album would follow suit in showing her natural feminist attitude via some hilarious lyrics. But, in , Allen manages to make semi-offensive comments about her fellow female pop stars Rihanna, Lorde and Lady Gaga, and makes an extended joke about periods that comes across as patronising and slightly passé.
She sings: “I’m serious / But then again, I’m just about to get my period / Period, we all get periods / Every month, yo, that’s what the theory is / It’s human nature, another cycle.”
Now , but Allen’s verse just comes across as whiney. She sings it sarcastically, but it doesn’t hide the fact that she is singing the line: “every month, yo, that’s what the theory is.”
On Twitter, Allen has tweeted back at critics, clearly keen to carry on her #PERIODSPERIODSPERIODS mission:
&noframe&Twitter: Lily Allen - Too much LOL and a little bit SOB at the click baiting going on with &a href="/search?src=hash&q=%23SHEEZUS" target="_blank"&#SHEEZUS&/a& , proving my point somewhat. &a href="/search?src=hash&q=%23pERIODSPERIODSPERIODS" target="_blank"&#pERIODSPERIODSPERIODS&/a&&/noframe& She (and her people) declined to talk to me about the controversy she's received.
Apparently the period stuff is so controversial that it has even meant Allen couldn’t release Sheezus for the radio, because it talks about periods. In , she said: “I would have liked to see Sheezus as a single, but it's not up-tempo enough. It's also got the word "period" in it, which is really offensive to people, even though half the world has to deal with it once a month.”
She then went on to say it is “groundbreaking”. I hate to break it to her, but Allen isn’t the only person to ever sing about periods – Janet Jackson, Tacocat and PJ Harvey have all done it too, starting way back in the 90s. Besides, Azaelia Banks sings about oral sex (rather graphically) and I’ve heard 212 on the radio.
That aside, the verse doesn’t have the makings of a feminist anthem. It isn’t clever enough, and it sounds like Allen is trying too hard to deliberately stick in bits of ‘gender issues’ to her songs. Sheezus, as far as I can gather, is all about Allen wanting to be the queen of pop, and I have no idea what that has to do with her menstrual cycle. She spends most of the song singing about her contemporaries:
Ri-Ri isn’t scared of Katy Perry’s roaring
Queen B’s going back to the drawing
Lorde smells blood, yeah, she’s about to slay you
Kid ain’t one to f*** with when she’s only on her debut
We’re all watching Gaga, L-O-L-O, haha
Dying for the art, so really she’s a martyr
The second best will never cut it for the divas
Give me that crown, bitch, I wanna be Sheezus.
This isn’t exactly the epitome of the female sisterhood. Naturally, it has already sparked articles suggesting she is criticising her contemporaries, but that’s not Allen’s goal. She has : “I'm saying that I want all of them to be Sheezus, and I want to be Sheezus too.”
The problem is that her lyrics don’t say “give US that crown, bitch, WE wanna be Sheezus”; they use the singular pronoun ‘I’ instead. That bit of grammar makes a huge difference, in that suddenly it doesn’t seem as though Allen is singing about equality (just another word for feminism) but about her goal to get to the top and be Sheezus.
Besides, it is impossible to take any message of feminism from the song, when Allen sings the line: “Be nice to me, I’ll make you one of my disciples.” (This smacks a little of Beyonce's 'bow down bitch' anthem. Been there. Done that.) It doesn’t matter how tongue-in-cheek she’s trying to be because that jokiness doesn’t come across in her lyrics - instead it sounds like she wants to rule over everyone. Cue a very confused listener.
Does she really want to be Sheezus and reign over the pop scene? If she wants to reign with all the other women, where’s the evidence of that in the song? Or, wait, is this all a massive joke against Kanye West – in which case why has Allen already publicly stated that it’s meant to be a sign of respect to him? What's going on??
Ultimately, Allen’s message itself is confused. It seems like
to appeal to a larger audience. But it’s just a shame that she’s doing it so obviously we can recognise it.
My advice would be for her to stop trying so hard to fit into a movement, and just go back to being the singer who wore trainers and prom dressers that we all fell in love with on MySpace.
Update at 18:23: Lily Allen just re-tweeted this article, and then responded to my questions, as below.
&noframe&Twitter: Radhika Sanghani - &a href="/lilyallen" target="_blank"&@lilyallen&/a& Lily, would be great to hear your thoughts?! Was Sheezus meant to be a feminist tune?&/noframe& &noframe&Twitter: Lily Allen - &a href="/radhikasanghani" target="_blank"&@radhikasanghani&/a& the intention is not important,it is in the public domain.it is fascinating how peoples interpretations are so different.&/noframe& &noframe&Twitter: Radhika Sanghani - &a href="/lilyallen" target="_blank"&@lilyallen&/a& true, but what's with the period bit - just a joke? and what say you to ppl thinking you're slagging off your peers?&/noframe& She's yet to reply to the last one, so I'll assume she's just gone off to the pub. Jealous.
Advertisement
telegraphuk
Please enable JavaScript to view the
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement-what the hell are you doing right now ,jack?-I ( )a thriller movie named copycat.A.am watching B.was watchingC.am watched D.was watched我知道选A,关键是为什么!_百度作业帮
-what the hell are you doing right now ,jack?-I ( )a thriller movie named copycat.A.am watching B.was watchingC.am watched D.was watched我知道选A,关键是为什么!
right now 现在 前面的问句是进行时,后面回答也应该是进行时结构是be+V-ing选Awas watching 是过去进行时
A 因为问句是现在进行时，所以回答也要用相同的时态。
现在进行时啊are you doing 多明显啊，the hell 是插入语，到底的意思我正在看一部恐怖电影叫无厘头
确实是现在进行时，从are you doing 这就知道。所以在A中选择同样的be Ving
你看你的问题上面有right now，这个表示立刻，马上，代表的是正在进行时这样很明显可以排除C和D两个选项，在看A和B前面是I，第一人称，所以用am,所以答案是A希望这样解释你能满意
您可能关注的推广}