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Lily Allen has posted a blog in which she has compared herself to Amy Winehouse.

Writing on Myspace.com/lilymusic Allen wrote that she was contemplating surgery for weight loss.

The singer, who cancelled her US tour in April, is back in the the US to promote her debut 'Alright, Still', and she said she was: "on (her) own in America again".

She wrote she was: "Fat, ugly and shitter than Winehouse ".

"That is all I am, I'm on my own in America again. 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," she wrote.

"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."

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Lily Allen compares herself to Amy Winehouse

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Lily Allen has posted a blog in which she has compared herself to Amy Winehouse. Writing on Myspace.com/lilymusic Allen wrote that she was contemplating surgery for weight loss. The singer, who cancelled her US tour in April, is back in the the US to promote her debut 'Alright, Still', and she said she was: "on (her) own in America again".

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This article was written about Amy Winehouse who has often been compared to Lily Allen during her drunk party-girl phase. The article more generally looks at the way subversive female stars are more likely to receive hatred and their downfalls to be celebrated because of their rejection of social and gendered norms.

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This article links to the short life-span of female celebrities which could explain why Lily's singing career only remained successful for a short amount of time whilst she was young.

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This article touches upon the spectacle of the demise of a celebrity and how social media and gossip sites have led to the celebration of the public downfall of stars.

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Defile me

When we decided on the theme of Desecrating Celebrity for the Fourth Celebrity Studies International Conference at Sapienza University in Rome, 2018, none of the most powerful examples of contemporary desecration had yet occurred. We were still to see the allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse laid by over 80 women against Hollywood film producer, Harvey Weinstein. This, in turn, gave rise to the #metoo movement and the flood of male stars and celebrities who were accused of using their positions of power for their own ends, including Kevin Spacey. We were still to see: Bill Cosby's final metamorphosis from the beloved, cuddly patriarch of The Cosby Show, into an inveterate predator; the tax evasion scandal that engulfed Cristiano Ronaldo, and the subsequent rape allegations levelled against him; the ferocious divorce between cult and mainstream idol Johnny Deep and Amber Heard, including allegations of spousal abuse; the demise of Brangelina's marriage and the battle over alimony and who would be custodians over their children; and the airing of the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland which accuses Michael Jackson of paedophilia. There are numerous other examples, a veritable polluted sea of falls from grace and the perversion of star and celebrity images: it was if desecration was now the dominant, the central determinant of celebrity culture. Of course, many of the examples listed here are tied to sexual power and the ideologies that shape them.

Even if such determination can be questioned - stars and celebrities continue to provide cohering social myths to bind with - the issues of degradation, desecration and decelebrification are an integral part of the complex phenomenon of celebrity. Unsurprisingly the switch between steps related to consecration and degradation in celebrity life is a constant: the rise and fall narrative, a central component of star and fan identification streams, and media marketing. For some stars, such as Fatty Arbuckle and Paul Reubens, the desecrating moment marked the end of their career and the long-lasting revocation from the dominant culture's collective memory. That said, even when a star or celebrity falls from grace their decline becomes a media story in itself, and for some fans the trade and traffic in their perverse memorabilia produces new modes of affective engagement (Schickel ).

Nonetheless, the flows of consecration and desecration are marked by media fields and technologies and the conceptualisation of 'near' and far', whether it be the big screen, and the slow time of print and analogue technologies, or the liquid quick time of the digital age. The question of proximity and intimacy is often argued to increase with such formations as Reality TV, or the social media, opening up new 'authentic' frames with which to bind with figures of fame. But it is also enabling new discourses of trolling to take root and branch. For example, in Elizabeth Podniek's analysis of the perezhilton.com website, they find trolling to be: 'graphic, aural, oral, auto/biographical, collaborative, and collective, it is a postmodern celebration of and desecration of the life and times of fame today' (, p. 69).

The shift from a predominantly top-down, broadcast-driven media logic to one involving a dynamic content circulation paradigm, has challenged the way that celebrity culture is symbolically and materially produced, circulated and consumed. In these new circulation processes the celebrities 'digital life' is, in fact, produced from the contamination between top-down and bottom-up forces, and official and unofficial media streams. This friction results in the increasing visibility of celebrities as they move between media 'layers' and as 'control' over what and how they represent shift between producers and consumers, mediators and fans. Consecration and desecration flow from such newly open or porous digital formations, as the examples above suggest. The #MeTooMovement enabled female stars and celebrities to use Twitter to circumnavigate official discourses, bringing to light their own desecration as they rightfully desecrated those figures who had abused them.

One might argue that this increases the 'intensity' with which stars and celebrities are engaged with and in the way stars and celebrities 'speak' to culture (Jerslev ). This increasingly active and participatory role of the audience, then, also resonates in the celebrity-building process, as well as in the parallel and complementary degradation process. In comparison to the 'mediated quasi-interaction' described by Thompson (), in the case of electronic media, in the new digital media system, the affective participation of audiences in production, distribution and consumption of the celebrities becomes conclusive. Moreover, these processes succeed at an absolutely unpredictable speed compared to the traditional mass media system. For example, American actress Alyssa Milano began using the phrase 'Me Too' on Twitter in 2017. Milano encouraged victims of sexual harassment to tweet about it and 'give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem'. Within 1 year, the #MeToo hashtag had been used over 19 million times ( https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/11/how-social-media-users-have-discussed-sexual-harassment-since-metoo-went-viral/ft_18-10-11_metooanniversary_hashtag-used-19m_times/)

In this radically transformed scenario, digital media seem to do be able to two different things: it can give rise to instantaneous celebrities, consecrated without formal ordination; and, due to the possible shortening of the chronological interval between celebrification and desecration, it can quicken the processes of degradation. But not only this, this temporal instantaneity can quickly turn a fallen star or celebrity into a holy figure again, since the means of real-time reconsecrations are easily afforded. There is an amnesia that leaks into the flows of celebrity culture. In fact, within the new media ecosystem, the fallen celebrity may potentially reach an even higher level of elevation in the public sphere. We may consider in this sense the media storytelling of Asia Argento, the Italian actress who was among the first actresses to speak out about powerful producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assaults. Within a few months, she was the victim of a terrifying online ritual of degradation managed by Italian newspapers, politicians and audiences because of her role of victim and heroine; then she was celebrated for her renewed visibility and success on TV (she was hired by X-Factor); finally, when she was accused of sexual assault by Jimmy Bennet, she was condemned and again celebrated by the media as both oppressor and penitent victim.

Here the perceived truthfulness and authenticity of the celebrity confessional is seen to produce this constant flow of celebrity consecration and desecration. Celebrities can use the digital media as a set of stages to emotionalise themselves and to puncture the fakery of so-called parasocial interaction. Similarly, fans and consumers can mine these performances, stage their own performances, opening up celebrity culture to congregations which defile and sanctify the famous.

This re-staging of where, how and when celebrity culture is produced, may have two consequences. First, the process of cultural and collective, psychic and individual 'filtering' processes may be severely lessened and undermined. In the 'wild west' of the digital media and the social media in particular, there is the space for producers and consumers/fans to totally rewrite the rules of desecration, and more generally, the moral rules of interaction. This may lead to a downward spiral of decline: where contemporary online degradation 'ceremonies' result in a ferocious backlash, which in turn produce a viler set of engagements and so on, each spiral more contaminated than the last. When these stages create the hate speech that target race, gender and sexuality, real injury is imparted (Lumsden and Morgan ).

Second, the democracy it affords and the issues that it can deal with, open up the world to new forms of creative agency and political activism, of which the #Metoo movement is a powerful example. Here desecration is in the service of emancipatory politics. There is, of course, the folds and flows of pleasure: the unruly nature of desecration which allows those who play in that space a sense that there is life beyond the neoliberal marketplace.

An unholy special edition

Standing between consecration and desecration, this special issue is dedicated to the examination of the ongoing transformation of the social role and significance of celebrities in an age where the divide between good and evil has collapsed. As we demonstrate in this Introduction, the thematic issue of desecration, and more generally of celebrity consecration, is far from being exhaustively investigated. This special issue, then, does not and cannot offer a definitive overview of the area but rather seeks to open doorways and to raise important questions about the morality and immorality of fame.

Nonetheless, the articles selected have been drawn from the very best work presented at the 2018 conference. They take us from the holy chapels of religion to the 'nasty' politics of the age of Trump; from the starry screens of Hollywood cinema to the wasted vestiges of television personalities; and from the moralising speech of the social media to the sacrilege of David Bowie. Celebrity culture will never be this defiled again.

Feminism, religiosity and celebrity culture represent an ideal fil rouge in the opening essays by Misha Kavka and Lucy Bolton, both Keynote speakers at the conference. In Taking Down the Sacred: Fuck-me vs. Fuck-you Celebrity, Misha tracks and traces the power geometries found in celebrity culture's own appetite for profanities. Making a powerful distinction between fuck-me and fuck-you celebrity, with the former being seen to abide by standards of feminine beauty, and the latter as openly addressing the unequal forces of sex and power, the article sees a shift between the two. Drawing on post-Weinstein era examples, such as Caitlyn Jenner, Tess Holliday and Rose McGowan, the article suggests that the celebrity system, which has heavily favoured the fuck-me trope, is now beginning to enunciate an active 'fuck you' political sensibility.

In Lucy's article, Beautiful Penitent Whore: the Desecrated Celebrity of Mary Magdalene, she explores the way that Mary Magdalene as both celebrity and film star embodied the classic dichotomy of virgin and whore found in Western Judeo-Christian culture. Writing from an interdisciplinary perspective, and drawing upon theology, church and art history, feminist film and media studies, celebrity and popular culture, Lucy examines a number of seminal 'religious' films to 'unravel' the saintly and unsaintly representations found of Mary. In so-doing, the article shows us the benefit of interdisciplinary analysis, and the forms through which gendered religious representations flourish.

In Michael Williams's essay, A Venus in Marble and Bakelite: Ava Gardner and One Touch of Venus, 'divinisation' is explored through the promotion and reception of One Touch of Venus (1949), which drew up and extended Ava Gardner's then rising star profile. Michael discusses how Universal-International's marketing campaign drew upon patriarchal notions of female beauty where initiatives such as the Bakelite figurine of Gardner distributed to exhibitors, and beauty contest tie-ins where fans could measure themselves up against star and sculpture alike, reproduced a form of gendered and desecrating commodification that ultimately served repressive ends.

In White Trash Celebrity in the Age of Eugenics: Desecrating Clara Bow, Gaylyn Studlar also explores the gendered dimension of film star desecration but closely ties it to white trash sensibilities. Gaylyn suggests that Bow's symbolic and commodity value was synonymous with the erotic provocations of the stereotyped flapper, but her celebrity transgressed Hollywood's conventional discourses of white idealisation, instead infecting it with lower-class licentiousness. The article goes on to powerfully conclude that such representations lay the ideological groundwork for the class shaming that is directed at 'chav' female celebrities associated with British reality television today.

The perverse nature of the sex scandal is taken up in Caroline Bainbridge's analysis of Jimmy Savile and his status as a somehow 'untouchable' celebrity. In Who Will Fix it for Us? Toxic Celebrity and the Therapeutic Dynamics of Media Culture, Caroline explores the media processes and practices that helped both shape and respond to the desecration of Savile's celebrity, persuasively arguing that there is a therapeutic quality to the production and consumption of such scandalous events. The article goes on to argue that re-mediations of celebrity scandals provide important outlets for unconscious emotional experience, in turn creating an important psychological space for resisting dominant narratives that contrive to shape celebrity as somehow 'untouchable'.

Sex and power are also the keywords in two recent cases of decelebrification - Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey - discussed by Mette Mortensen and Nete Nørgaard Kristensen in their article, De-celebrification: Beyond the Scandalous. Mette and Nete propose a new term, de-celebrification, to designate a state in which celebrities lose their legitimacy and no longer possess the formal and symbolic power formerly attached to their celebrity status. Drawing upon empirical data to investigate the way audiences respond and contribute to fallen celebrities, the article shows how the agency can work in the contemporary digital age.

Sreya Mitra takes up the challenge of exploring the complex role that the social media has in desecrating the female star or celebrity through such acts as chastisement, ridicule and trolling. In Trolled, Body-Shamed and Slut-Shamed: The Desecration of the Contemporary Bollywood Female Star on Social Media, Sreya examines the way Bollywood female stars are often body-shamed and trolled on social media platforms such as Twitter. Drawing upon Priyanka Chopra as a case study, the article explores the way they attempted to navigate their role as a transmedia and transnational celebrity, against the public humiliation they faced online for not embodying traditional Indian 'feminine' qualities.

In his essay, Desecration and the Politics of 'Image Pollution': Ambedkar Statues and the 'Sculptural Encounter in India ', Pramod Nayar returns to the theme of sculptural desecration explored in Michael Williams' article. Pramod examines the desecration of public statues of B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), who drafted the constitution of India, suggesting that desecration speaks to complex ideas and tensions around nationhood and the national imaginary, and the binary caste and class system that he worked against. To desecrate or profane the Ambedkar statue is to question the pure/impure distinction that the figure represents.

The desecration of politics and public values is the focus of the article by Anita Biressi who critically Donald Trump's political persona. In President Trump: Celebrity-in-chief and the Desecration of Political Authority, Anita suggests that Donald Trump's perverse power lies in his self-ordained role as a celebrity-in-chief who desecrates politics, political authority and the political scene. This political sacrilege has consequences for political authority and the discourses that operate within the political arena since it lowers and stains the issues that politics explores.

Now moving to the journal's forum section, music celebrities are the very protagonists who are seen and heard to desecrate the arenas of fame.

In Ian Dixon's essay, Your Face is a Mess: Desecrating David Bowie's Face-as-Commodity in 'Diamond Dogs', the protagonist is the face of David Bowie, that is - like for many celebrities - the access point for fans to the star personality. In the Diamond Dogs album, Bowie plays with his face presenting himself as a half-man, half-dog freak, a cocaine addict and performer who is sexually promiscuous and non-heteronormative. As Ian suggests, Bowie's fascination with facial desecration may result in the annihilation of his own celebrity, while it challenges the role of iconic faces of singers as new saints, martyrs and religious figures.

The face, then, is considered by fans as an important tool to use in order to reach the real meaning of a celebrity and at the same time as a strategy managed by celebrities themselves to play with audiences in their symbolic appropriation. Within a celebrity landscape so drastically changed by social media, this kind of interaction among fans and celebrities needs to be further explored: in the essay From Awkward Teen Girl to Aryan Goddess Meme: Taylor Swift and the Hijacking of Star Texts, Annelot Prins reflects on the appropriations of Taylor Swift's persona as a symbol of white supremacism. According to the author, this might be interpreted both as one-sided fan practices from an undesired audience and as a potential hook, promised to her fans by her music. The appropriation of Swift, as analysed by Annelot, shows that the impact of social media on star texts can hardly be underestimated, and a polysemic star text that declines to explicitly claim political position may even provide opportunities for hijacking by audiences.

The complex and contradictory relationship among fans and celebrities is also investigated in the article, Jaak Joala - 'Kremlin nightingale' or Estonian Celebrity? In an attempt to explain the dynamic of Estonian singer Estrada Joala's fame, Heli Reiman reflects on the schizophrenic balance between the star's diverse self-presentations and the multiple audiences expectations and needs within different political and historical contexts. Joala's nationalist role in Estonian popular music history has been recently recognised and re-established through numerous commemorative acts produced for the narrative-building project of the Estonian cultural past. However, it was not always so: as a matter of fact, Joala's artistic image as a romantic, charismatic, talented, western-like singer, addressed the expectations of Soviet audiences, which was simultaneously rejected by Estonian audiences not surprisingly because of a lack of nationalism.

As these cases study make evident, the celebrity is clearly a matter of narratives. The role of media and social media storytelling is relevant also in the case of the celebrity trainwreck. In her article, Trainwreck Femininity and Whitney: Monstrous Feminine Redux, Susan Hopkins reflects on how the celebrity trainwreck invites fans into a modern 'passion play' of the sacred and profane, through patriarchal narratives that negate the agency of the female star. As Hopkins reports, Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse have been dehumanised and punished by mainstream and new media, represented as female pop stars known more for their drug use, troubled relationships, erratic or self-harming behaviour and emotional instability, than for being powerful and creative models of subversion.

Conclusion

In desecrating celebrity - in 'shitting on its shibboleths' as Sean put it when opening the conference - we have sought to do two things. First, to undermine, question and resist dominant and perceived ways of understanding celebrity culture. Second, to shine an unholy light on the way that desecration and consecration operate in the dark days of the contemporary political age. As we finish writing this Introduction, the news reminds us that the ugly, gendered signifiers of desecration is everywhere - it is in the reported endorsement by President Bolsonaro of Brazil, of a post on Facebook insulting the French first lady, Brigitte Macron; and it is in Melania Trump's smouldering exchange with Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau (August 2019). The former works off ageist and sexist stereotypes and the latter softens and romanticises the fakery that each represent. But, finally, the news or rather the 'new' news, or the informational flow which circulates in dynamic streams on the social media, also show us that resistant desecration is everywhere, shaped by a political agency and criticality that seeks to tear down the normative walls. As Prince Andrew continues to maintain his innocence with respect to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, prostitution and under-aged sex, the media trolls rise up, challenging his official narrative, offering a counter to this ascribed celebrity caught in a clear abuse of power. It our job to defaecate on and to desecrate celebrity culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Romana Andò, Ph.D. is Researcher at Sapienza University of Rome since 2001 where she currently is Head of the International Master of Science in Fashion Studies. She has taught classes on Audience Research, Fashion and Consumer Experience and Transmedia content production for undergraduate and graduate students. She combines empirical and theoretical research, within the frame of cultural studies and qualitative methodologies for field work. She is also the coordinator of the Social TV Observatory (together with Alberto Marinelli). She authored many articles on audience practices, fandom, TV consumption and fashion. Among the others: Andò R., Marinelli A., 2018, Television(s) Come cambia l'esperienza televisiva tra tecnologie convergenti e pratiche social (How TV experience is changing thanks to convergent technologies and social practices), Guerini, Milano; Andò, R., Marinelli A., 2016, Youtube Content Creators, Egea Milano.

Sean Redmond is Professor of Screen and Design at Deakin University. He is the co-editor of Celebrity Studies and the author of Celebrity (2018), and co-author of The Fandom of David Bowie: Everyone Says Hi (2019). He has research interests in stardom and celebrity, science fiction, the video essay, and eye tracking the moving image.

1. It should be noted that Reubens has continued to work, to take on film and television roles. However, these 'cameo' roles largely support the argument that he is carnivalesque figure - a hauntology of a star. Similarly, Pee-wee's Big Holiday (Lee 2016) seems to trade in this past-ness.

2. The term MeToo was coined by activist Tarana Burke as a way to connect survivors on a grass-roots level.

References

, 2016. Media times| in the time of the microcelebrity: celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella. International Journal of Communication, 10, 19.

and , 2012. 'Fraping', 'Sexting','Trolling' and 'Rinsing': social networking, feminist thought and the construction of young women as victims or villains. In: Proceedings of Forthcoming Feminisms: Gender activism, politics and theory (BSA Gender Study Group Conference) (2012), pp. 1-17Leeds, UK.

, 2009. Celebrity bio blogs: hagiography, pathography, and Perez Hilton. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 24, 69.

Thompson, J.B. , 1995. The media and modernity: a social theory of the media. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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When we decided on the theme of Desecrating Celebrity for the Fourth Celebrity Studies International Conference at Sapienza University in Rome, 2018, none of the most powerful examples of contemporary desecration had yet occurred. We were still to see the allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse laid by over 80 women against Hollywood film producer, Harvey Weinstein.

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Article which highlights negative cultures surrounding the genre of rap such as violence, drug use etc. which are themes linked with Lily's image.

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The controversial music that is the sound of global youth

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In the last decade, drill music has become ever more popular while inspiring debates over its links to violence. Now the rap sound is flourishing in many continents, writes Sam Davies.

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Lily Allen talks candidly about previous Twitter altercations as well as doing celebrity imitations whilst laughing along with host and rapper "Big Narstie".

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Lily Allen Does Celebrity Impressions and Discusses Twitter Feuds | The Big Narstie Show

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Lily speaks on her struggles with an eating disorder making herself vulnerable in telling the media.

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Lily Allen admits she battled eating disorder Bulimia

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The 25-year-old singer has said she "used to vomit after meals" in order to control her weight.

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Lily Allen posts a picture on her Instagram Story of her husband on a bill board for his upcoming film. The post is captioned, "Omg look at my gorgeous husband".

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Lily Allen posted this picture of vegetables to her story showing her healthy and nutritious diet.

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Lily posts on social media in bed stating her negative mental health that day. She is open and honest with fans which brings her closer to them.

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A photo posted on social media by the star with the caption "Channeling Chanel". She still sports her iconic black bangs that have been a part of her style for much of her career.

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Cynical song about the hidden negative aspects of London.

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Lily's earliest released songs introduce the singer as the rebellious and extremely honest as she criticises her brother as well as society and ex-boyfriends in her first album

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Lily was pictured smoking which she is criticised for because of being a mother.

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Lily sucked on a fag - right in her make-up artist's face. What a drag

She has been back on the party circuit so perhaps Lily Allen's resolve to stay off the smokes has been well and truly stubbed out.

Sheezus singer Lily was spotted smoking before a Cannes TV performance, pulling on a cigarette right in her make-up artist's face. Wearing a floor-length deep purple net finish William Vintage 70s Azzaro dress, the mum of two looked preoccupied as took a deep drag of her smoke before rushing onstage.

Earlier this month Lily confessed she had stopped smoking for her children's sake, saying "I don't to be a smoky cokey mum."

Nice.

Although her kids were nowhere to be seen when Lil had a sneaky smoke, we aren't sure that the make-up artist appreciated getting a face full of fag smoke.

She told BEAT magazine: "My godfather died three weeks ago, from liver cancer. I got a call from his son outside the hospital, saying, 'I think you should get here'. And I looked at my cigarette and thought, 'What am I doing?'

"It's the thing about having kids, you start thinking about what you're going to leave behind.

"And we all know how much our parents mould who we are. I want to do it as best I can. I don't want to be a smoky cokey mum.

Lily admitted she thought it would be hard for her to give up, adding: "I hope I can keep it up. I really do love smoking. I find it glamorous, I find it sexy, cool. It just kills you."

Admittedly, on holiday in such a glam location most ex-smokers would find it tough to resist a cheeky cigerette.

The Air Balloon singer has been partying and working hard in Cannes.

Keen to fill as much fun as she can into her days in France, Lily was spotted with Kylie Minogue on Tuesday and posted a snap of the pair to Instagram writing: "@kylieminogue et moi en Cannes."

Then she was spotted on a boat - with none other than legendary hunk Leo Dicaprio.

It's selfie mania. We aren't jealous - honest.
They both glammed up, with Lily in Chanel blue and Kylie the golden girl of the evening - who even knew they were so close?

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Fag ash Lil: Mum of two Lily Allen is back on the smokes after quitting for her kids

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Lily sucked on a fag - right in her make-up artist's face. What a drag She has been back on the party circuit so perhaps Lily Allen's resolve to stay off the smokes has been well and truly stubbed out.

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Lily will have a lead acting role in new Sky Original Comedy.

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Lily Allen and Freema Agyeman to star in new Sky Original comedy ‘Dreamland’

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With the summer sun paying us a very welcome visit it’s high time for a trip to the beach. Filming
has begun in the seaside town of Margate for Dreamland; a brand-new Sky Original comedy
starring Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who) and Lily Allen (How to Build a Girl) in her debut TV role. Based on Sk…

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Lily accredits her career change to her change in lifestyle

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'I've spent the past 15 to 20 years self-medicating and being quite numb': Lily Allen admits becoming sober has helped her new acting career path because she can 'behave like an adult'

Lily Allen has credited her sobriety with helping her new acting career path, after quitting drugs and alcohol two years ago.

In a candid new interview, the singer, 36, admitted she feels 'more capable of behaving like a connected adult' and 'ready to open up about feeling things' since giving up booze.

Lily who celebrated two years of sobriety earlier this week, is set to make her West End debut in the show 2:22: A Ghost Story next month, and the star added that she can related to her character Jenny who feels 'misunderstood.'

Speaking to The Telegraph, Lily said: 'I was living life in a bubble for a long time, which was about me, me, me. I think I'm ready to open myself up to feeling things, which I haven't been in the past.

'I've spent the past 15 to 20 years self-medicating and being quite numb about feelings... I feel I'm capable of behaving like a connected adult in a way I haven't for a long time.'

Lily, who stars in 2:22: A Ghost Story alongside EastEnders actor Jake Wood, added that she was offered a script for the role just days after breaking down in tears to husband David Harbour about reaching a crossroads in her life.

The play sees her play Jenny, a teacher convinced her new home is haunted, but as her husband refuses to believe her she becomes more and more isolated.

Discussing the role, Lily added: 'I've never really wanted to do acting. I'm terrified of failure. What I do in my primary profession is just an extension of me - no one can mark you down for being yourself. I'm in awe of actors - you're being judged on how well you can portray somebody else. I find that scary.'

Earlier this week Lily celebrated two years of sobriety by taking to Instagram to share a snap posing in a slinky black minidress.

She told fans: '2 years drug and alcohol free today! Getting clean is the BEST thing I ever did, and I've done a lot of cool s**t.'

Sporting her iconic blunt fringe and with her raven tresses cascading in loose waves past her shoulders, the star put on a leggy display for her social media followers as she celebrated the impressive milestone.

Doting mother Lily also posted a screengrab of the app she uses to keep track of her sobriety timeline, which confirmed it's been two years since the songstress turned her back on drugs and alcohol.

It showed that that last time Lily consumed alcohol was July 28 2019.

Lily also revealed that Isabel Marr - who is directing the upcoming play Lily stars in, 2:22 A Ghost Story - presented her with a tasty-looking cake stamped with the number 'two' written in icing to celebrate.

In 2018, she came under fire for glamourising drug-taking after admitting she snorted a line of ketamine at the Glamour Woman Of The Year Awards in 2008.

Describing what happened, Allen said: 'Someone gave me a line of what I assumed to be cocaine at the Glamour awards once, but it turned out to be Ketamine. I was thrown out (passed over some railings) of the Glamour awards for being in a k hole.'

She added: 'Obviously I couldn't talk, or direct the driver so my assistant instructed the occupant of the car behind to 'follow that cab' I believe the occupant was @chattyman I have no idea what happened next.'

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Lily Allen admits becoming sober has helped her acting career

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Lily Allen has credited her sobriety with helping her new acting career path, after quitting drugs and alcohol two years ago. In a candid new interview, the singer, 36, admitted she feels 'more capable of behaving like a connected adult' and 'ready to open up about feeling things' since giving up booze.

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Lily Allen fans uproar because Lily Allen was referred to as David Harbour's wife instead of being accredited for her own fame because of stepping back from her music career.

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'Put some respect on her name!' Lily Allen's fans are unimpressed after the singer was referred to as 'David Harbour's wife' in viral clip

Lily Allen fans have been left unimpressed after she was referred to as 'David Harbour's wife' in a viral TikTok clip.

The couple have both carved out successful careers for themselves but it appears some younger social media users have not heard of Lily, 37.

A TikTok user shared a clip of Lily Allen's debut single Smile along with text reading: 'Y'all I just found out that David Harbour's wife sings this song'.

Many fans were not happy with Lily - who has sold millions of records worldwide - only being referred to as her husband's wife.

In response to the clip, one Twitter user wrote: 'How dare people refer to Lily Allen as "David Harbour's wife"'.

Another said: 'Lily Allen literally raised an entire generation and now she's being demoted to just David Harbour's wife?! Put some respect on her name.'

Another fan added: 'Lily Allen didn't rhyme Tesco with Alfresco just for you people to refer to her as "David Harbour's wife". It's blasphemy'.

Others joked about referring to Stranger Things star David in the same way, with one sharing a photo of him and writing: 'He knows his name is Mr Lily Allen'.

Another shared a photo of Lily posing with David and her younger brother Alfie and wrote: 'I know them as Lily Allen's brother and Lily Allen's husband'.

David and Lily married in Las Vegas in September 2020, with the ceremony officiated by an Elvis Presley impersonator.

The Stranger Things actor is now stepfather to Lily's daughters Ethel, 10, and Marnie, nine, who she shares with her ex Sam Cooper.

David recently revealed that he and Lily met on celebrity dating app Raya and and he fell in love with her on their third date.

Speaking to QG Hype, he said: 'She claims to have fallen in love at first sight with me - I mean, who wouldn't? I remember the exact moment. It was our third date.

'I was just in this phase, where I was like, I'm just going to be brutally honest about everything, because why lie? And I told her something about my life, about my beliefs.

'It would take a really extraordinary person to be accepting of the things that I said. And I remember thinking: Wow, that's somebody I want to be around.'

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Lily Allen fans unhappy she was referred to as 'David Harbour's wife'

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Lily Allen fans have been left unimpressed after she was referred to as 'David Harbour's wife' in a viral TikTok clip. The couple have both carved out successful careers for themselves but it appears some younger social media users have not heard of Lily, 37.

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Lily's relationship has coincided with her reformed star image as is now positioned in a seemingly healthy relationship with a well-established American actor who she supports in his career as well as moving into the acting world with him.

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T-Pain - 5 O'Clock (Audio) ft. Lily Allen, Wiz Khalifa

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Lily's sense of fashion has always been a quirky 70s inspired look that she still carries her image now.

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Professor Green Feat. Lily Allen - Just Be Good To Green

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Lily is often associated with rappers and collaborates with them. This supports her rebel image as this genre is often linked with such topics as drug use, disregard for authority etc. which Lily does also.

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Article adresses the singer's strong opinions and that she feels she must share them no matter the hate she gets in return.

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Two years ago, when askedwhat she wished she was better at, Lily Allen offered a concise reply. "Press. Shutting up. Self-censorship," she told me, nonetheless proceeding to say many entertaining things that could have got her into trouble. The singer seems constitutionally incapable of taking the easy route.

Last Wednesday Allen posted a video about her visit to the Calais refugee camp, in which she told a 13-year-old Afghan: "I apologise on behalf of my country. I'm sorry for what we have put you through." The social media backlash was fierce and predictable, as was the response from rightwing tabloids. The Daily Mail 's Jan Moir dismissed Allen's tears in the video as "patronising and self-indulgent", although some might prefer to interpret her distress as something called empathy. Allen stood her ground.

The 31-year-old singer, who has described herself as "an argumentative little shit", has been both loved and hated by the press and public for a decade now, as is the fate of pop stars with opinions. Nothing she's experienced has had the effect of muting her voice. She remains bracingly fearless - an incorrigible fly in the ointment.

She was instantly captivating because there seemed to be no distance between her music and her personality

In July she tweeted a photograph that summed up her unusual position in British life. It was a surreptitious snap of Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage and Evgeny Lebedev at a garden party, with the caption: "Hope I'm not sitting next to Voldemort or Fromage. I might be sick." The tweet revealed that Allen is enough of an insider to get invited to a party like that and enough of an outsider to not care about being invited back. After 10 years of fame, she still feels like an interloper, making fun of the celebrity circus from the inside.

Allen knew a fair bit about showbusiness long before she recorded her first single. Her father, who left when she was four, is actor and hellraiser Keith Allen, her mother is film producer Alison Owen, and for three years her stepfather was Harry Enfield. Family friends included Joe Strummer and Damien Hirst. It was a privileged childhood in some ways but a complicated one. "I had quite a turbulent upbringing," she told the Observer in her first major interview. "It was middle class and everything was quite comfortable, but everyone was mental."

She was a lonely, introverted child and a wild teenager who attended 13 schools before dropping out altogether at the age of 15. She did everything young, from drugs to therapy, and couldn't wait to be an adult. She set her sights on fame, believing it the fastest route to independence and self-worth. (Her younger brother Alfie became an actor, best known as Theon Greyjoy in Game of Thrones.)

Allen's first record deal, with London Records when she was 16, was facilitated by family connections but nothing came of it. As the offspring of celebrities far more famous than Keith Allen will tell you, a foot in the door is not enough. When she signed to EMI for a modest sum in 2005, she was a low priority and the label only really paid attention once she had built up a following herself by posting demos and mixtapes on MySpace.

She was instantly captivating because there seemed to be no distance between her music and her personality. On her 2006 debut album Alright, Still, Allen sang about her ex-boyfriend (Smile), her family (Alfie) and everyday life (LDN) with charming directness and caustic wit. Admiring critics compared her with the Specials and the Streets while fans embraced her as One of Us. The album sold 2.5 million copies and BBC3 offered her a short-lived chat show, Lily Allen and Friends. The scale of her success took her by surprise and she often talked about her pop career as a temporary phase rather than a dream fulfilled. This nonchalance enabled her to play less safe than more conventionally ambitious singers.

Lily Allen at a concert in London in June to celebrate the life of murdered MP Jo Cox. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP

In an era of media-trained pop stars, Allen was as refreshingly unvarnished as her contemporary Amy Winehouse, albeit more robust. She was funny and opinionated, speaking freely about body image, insecurity and misogyny. She was also easily riled, calling Bob Geldof "a sanctimonious prat" and waging a nasty feud with Cheryl Cole that she later regretted.

To her discomfort, the tabloids couldn't get enough of her. "If you ask most people, Who's Lily Allen?, they'll say, That girl who's in the papers all the time. Not that girl who wrote songs," she said. In fact, she's an astute lyricist who accurately describes her forte as "wry social observations and intimate details of relationships", and her voice, especially on ballads, has a winning clarity and vulnerability.

Her relationship with the tabloids was tense. In 2007 she was arrested for allegedly assaulting a paparazzo. A few months later the Sun published news of her first pregnancy before her three-month scan; she later miscarried.

Routinely besieged by the paparazzi, she summed up her ambivalence about celebrity in her Ivor Novello award-winning 2009 single The Fear, which is still her best song: "I am a weapon of massive consumption / And it's not my fault, it's how I'm programmed to function." The song works so well because she implicates herself in the worst aspects of the fame industry. Indeed, her behaviour at the time was "self-destructive" and out of control. "I'm such a hypocrite," she said. "But that's why I love that song so much, because it's so ironic and contradictory."

In 2010 Allen quit music - for good, she thought - in order to move to Gloucestershire and start a family with Sam Cooper, an old friend whom she married the following year. The couple, who separated recently, have two daughters. On Twitter, she renamed herself Lily Rose Cooper, as if to say that Lily Allen, pop star, was history. Allen had been talking about leaving the music industry as far back as her first album, but the quiet life left her unfulfilled, and the Bridget Jones musical she was co-writing fell through. In 2012 she began writing songs again with producer Greg Kurstin.

Her 2013 comeback sent mixed messages. A delicate cover of Keane's Somewhere Only We Know for John Lewis's Christmas ad campaign was followed by the boisterous satire of Hard Out Here. The song itself was a feminist statement about the treatment of women in the music industry but the video, which parodied clips such as Robin Thicke's notorious Blurred Lines, botched the message by seeming to reinforce the stereotypes she was trying to critique. She received a shellacking online.

Attacking her use of women of colour in the video, the critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd accused Allen of "using racism to skewer sexism". Even without that controversy, Allen seemed conflicted about returning to the pop fray. Among the songs about marriage and womanhood on her patchy third album, Sheezus, (a pun on Kanye West's Yeezus) were angry sideswipes at celebrity culture and internet trolls. She described it as "a vomit of stuff that's happened to me over the last few years". Reviews were mixed and sales disappointing.

A fourth album, which will reunite her with producer Mark Ronson, is yet to arrive but Allen's fame rolls on regardless.

Having previously joined campaigns relating to climate change and internet piracy, she has become increasingly politically outspoken on Twitter. She's a staunch supporter of Jeremy Corbyn (she called Tom Watson "a snake" last month for appearing to undermine the Labour leader), a backer of the Women's Equality party, and an opponent of Brexit.

In April she spoke openly about the man who had stalked her for the last seven years, in order to highlight harassment of women and the inadequate police response. The visit to Calais is further evidence of her desire to use her profile productively, regardless of the consequences.

Unlike some celebrity activists, Allen is not sanctimonious. "I'm not a prophet, I'm not a politician, I'm not a game-changer," she told me. She has always been open about her contradictions and shortcomings, in both her interviews and songs, and this openness is her most likable quality.

Most famous people understandably erect walls to protect themselves, absenting themselves from social media and avoiding tricky subjects in interviews. In order to make themselves less vulnerable, they make themselves less interesting.

Allen may be happier than 10 years ago but she is scarcely less forceful, as if any serious concession to diplomacy would be an admission of defeat. She has said that women in the music industry have often been told: "Keep your mouth shut or people will laugh at you," so she speaks her mind out of defiance rather than arrogance. Also, perhaps, because she just can't help herself. Allen once said her ambition, as a teenager, was to "make a lot of noise". In that respect, she has succeeded in spades.

THE ALLEN FILE

Born Lily Rose Beatrice Allen, on 2 May, 1985 in London.

Best of times Winning three Ivor Novello songwriting awards for her 2009 album It's Not You, It's Me and her single The Fear.

Worst of times Her second miscarriage in 2011, which led to life-threatening septicaemia. "It's not something that you get over," she said.

What she says "The world is run on fear and shame. And I don't feel like we can begin to overcome these things until we speak about them openly and stop being scared of what happens as a result."

"I don't like being put in the same category as people because we have the same genitals and boobs. Nobody is going to write 'Lily Allen v Ed Sheeran.' It just doesn't happen."

What they say "She's a needed performer. There's nobody really doing shit like that - really honest." - producer Mark Ronson

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Lily Allen: the pop singer who refuses to stay silent | Observer profile

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Last week she was widely attacked for apologising to refugees on the UK's behalf. But, just as her candour and directness mark her music, she has never been afraid to speak her mind

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Lily Allen wins 'Best Female Solo Artist Brit Award' in 2010. She had previously "slagged off" the Brits but now appeared in an "out there" orange wig and slurred profanities when told she needed to wrap up her speech. "F*ck off, I'm not leaving". Even in her height of fame when she appears tp have changed her opinions on the Brits, she still is outspoken and unapologetic in the way she acts.

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Lily Allen wins British Female presented by Dame Shirley Bassey | BRIT Awards 2010

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Lily's Instagram post shows her athletic body and her doing yoga showing her healthy lifestyle.

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Lily Allen's first mainstream single was 'Smile' a very harsh song about getting over a break up and then it making her happy to see her ex sad. It is a very strong and honest way of looking at the break up, already making her a polarising figure.

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Lily speaks on the trauma of her still birth

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Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images

Lily Allen is opening up for the first time about her tragic still birth-and the depression that followed.

The 28-year-old singer was six months pregnant when she lost her baby boy in November 2010, with husband Sam Cooper by her side. In a new interview with The Sun, the brunette beauty admits the devastating death is something from which she'll never truly recover.

"It was horrendous and something I would not wish on my worst enemy," Allen says of the still birth. "It's something that I still haven't dealt with. I never will get over it. I have dealt with it, you know, as being at one with it."

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Lily Allen Talks Devastating Still Birth: "I Nearly Died...And I Didn't Care" - E! Online

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Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images Lily Allen is opening up for the first time about her tragic still birth-and the depression that followed. The 28-year-old singer was six months pregnant when she lost her baby boy in November 2010, with husband Sam Cooper by her side.

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A song written criticising her brothers laziness and excessive marijuana use.

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Lily Allen | Alfie (Official Video - Clean Version)

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Lily jokes in interview, laughing with the camera man and appearing extremely candid as she sits back stage.

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Lily Allen in a laughing compilation :-)

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The continuity of certain aspects of Lily's personality mean she comes across as an authentic and genuine person

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An online argument where Lily harshly speaks on Katie Hopkin's brain surgery and asks if they could have "taken the massive twat part out when they were in there"

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Lily Allen publicly accuses Piers Morgan of touching her inappropriately on Twitter as the pair go back and forth in a string of Tweets.

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Lily has always had a certain individuality in her style and humour. She has never been afraid to damage a pristine image through doing humorous acts.

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She is quirky and not afraid to post silly things where she is not looking her best

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Lily Allen looks terrified whilst on the back of a motorbike... might we suggest NOT taking a selfie on the back of a fast moving vehicle Lily?! Picture: Twitter

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A compilation of Lily in candid moments such as live shows, interviews where she comes across unmediated and has a laugh with interviewers and fans.

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Lily Allen wrote an extremely honest autobiography where she discussed her troubled childhood, struggles with relationships and motherhood. The book was a number 1 best seller showing the publics interest in the star's struggles and personal life. The spectacle becomes her life rather than her music

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Summary

"So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a woman. I am a mother. I was a wife. I drink. I have taken drugs. I have loved and been let down. I am a success and a failure. I am a songwriter. I am a singer. I am all these things and more. When women share their stories, loudly and clearly and honestly, things begin to change - for the better. This is my story."-- Back cover.

My Thoughts Exactly Summary

My Thoughts Exactly: The No.1 Bestseller by Lily Allen

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 2018 'Unflinching, unputdownable' Guardian 'Witty, dark, devastating' Caitlin Moran 'An amazing read. Brutally honest' Matt Haig 'I love it' Jon Ronson ********************************************************** So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a woman. I am a mother. I was a wife. I drink. I have taken drugs. I have loved and been let down. I am a success and a failure. I am a songwriter. I am a singer. I am all these things and more. When women share their stories, loudly and clearly and honestly, things begin to change - for the better. This is my story.

My Thoughts Exactly Reviews

An unflinching, unputdownable book * Guardian *
A fascinating and very honest read * Stylist *
Blunt, brave and honest * The Pool *
She doesn't hold back * Irish Times *
Shockingly frank * Metro *
Candid and amusing * Observer *
Her book might be the most explosive celebrity memoir ever * Heat *
A fresh, direct voice, used bravely, with nuance and style... Uniquely candid * New Statesman *
[Lily] writes with a rawness that leaves you breathless. An emotionally hefty read, it's hard not to be hooked * The Herald *
Allen has a flair for storytelling... [My Thoughts Exactly] should be required reading for anyone who dreams of fame * Daily Telegraph *

About Lily Allen

Lily Allen is a singer, songwriter, presenter and mother. You can find Lily at /lilyallen on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. www.lilyallenmusic.com

Additional information

My Thoughts Exactly: The No.1 Bestseller by Lily Allen

Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.

This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - My Thoughts Exactly

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"So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a woman. I am a mother. I was a wife. I drink. I have taken drugs. I have loved and been let down. I am a success and a failure. I am a songwriter. I am a singer. I am all these things and more.

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David Harbour talks on how he met Lily Allen on a dating App and how they fell in love.

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David Harbour & Lily Allen Fell In Love Easy - #LateLateLondon

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Lily Allen and her husband got married in Vegas and had the reception at In n Out a fast food burger place in America showing although she likely has enough money to throw a large extravagant wedding. She and her husband were impulsive and got married just the two of them

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Did Lily Allen Meet Husband David Harbour Because of Mo Gilligan? | The Lateish Show

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David Harbour speaks on his happy marriage to Lily Allen and what it is like to be a step-dad to her children

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Lily is said to blame ex husband for not being able to take her children on tour with her as he believed it was an unstable environment for them.

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Lily Allen resents ex-husband Sam Cooper for forcing her to miss out on quality time with their children when she was a touring musician.

The My Thoughts Exactly author, 33, spoke candidly about their tumultuous relationship in the November 2018 issue of Cosmopolitan UK. "I had always assumed I'd chuck my kid over my shoulder and take them around the world," she began. "But Sam didn't want that. He didn't think it was a stable environment for them."

"I think it was quite selfish. He got to stay at home and have the family that I'd just spent three years making inside me," she continued. "I had to go out and earn money and leave that family behind."

Allen and Cooper - who got engaged in Bali in 2010 - were married for five years before filing for divorce. The former couple share Ethel, 6, and Marnie, 5. Allen has since moved on and is in a relationship with DJ Meridian Dan.

The Lily Allen and Friends host - who revealed on September 1 that she had slept with female escorts while on tour during her marriage to Cooper - also confessed she was nearly sedated by medical staff after finding out the designer was in a new relationship. "It was a build-up of everything and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. When I feel that the people I trust most have betrayed that, my whole world falls out from underneath me. [The staff] had me pinned down on the floor. I picked up a water cooler and threw it through the window," she continued. "[Dan] said six nurses tackled me to the floor and they had the needle out and were about to knock me out and sedate me. Once the needle goes in, you're sectioned. [Dan] had to really fight with them not to do it."

With the release of her new memoir, the "Smile" singer has been very open about overcoming tough times. During an interview with BBC Radio's "4 Woman's Hour" podcast, she spoke about delivering a stillborn - a baby boy named George - while still married to her ex. "He was so small that he actually got stuck halfway in and halfway out. And because his skin wasn't fully formed they couldn't use forceps to pull him out," she said. "So there was a period of about 12 hours of him lying there deceased in between my legs. Which was incredibly traumatic."

"I went into trauma," she added. "And I don't think I will ever recover from that."

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Lily Allen Slams 'Selfish' Ex-Husband Sam Cooper

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Lily Allen resents ex-husband Sam Cooper for forcing her to miss out on quality time with their children when she was a touring musician. The My Thoughts Exactly author, 33, spoke candidly about their tumultuous relationship in the November 2018 issue of Cosmopolitan UK.

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Watch out, NYC: Lily Allen is in town, playing Terminal 5 tonight and tomorrow. Love her or hate her, you can't argue that the cheeky Londoner is a pro at stirring up controversy. Whether it's a self-aware strategy for press attention or she's just naturally addicted to drama, the girl is always up for a fight. Here's a look back at Allen's top "No, she didn't" moments.

1. That time she chose the wrong woman to fight...
How to upset a fellow female star? Tweet an unflattering photo of her. In 2010, the mouthy singer posted a less-than-glamorous photo of Courtney Love, sending the former Mrs. Cobain on a social-media rampage. Courtney might have won this one with a barrage of insults including "like a feral woofy dog whose not gettiong [sic] enough attention hissing as me and the boys walked by." Lily finally admitted defeat, Tweeting "sorry, that was mean. enuff of these juvenile musings , i should never have risen to the bait. silly lily."

2. That time she was accused of being racist...
Lily refused to apologize for her 2013 "Hard Out Here" video after naysayers pegged her as racist for featuring only black back-up dancers twerking behind her. Oh, and she also offended Beyoncé's millions of fans by doing a Bey impression in the video. Eek!

3. That time Azealia Banks got personal...
She's not always the one to start the controversy. In 2011, Azealia Banks called Lily's husband and kids "ugly," so Lily celled her a "one-hit wonder." Azealia's response: "go suck on your mans [sic] thimble dick and put thumbalina to bed. Goodnight." Then, she posted a topless photo of Lily. Who knew anyone could out-crass Lily Allen?!

4. That time she fought, well... everyone...
Scared of more-successful rivals? Not Lily. Earlier this year, she set off an international catfight by calling out Rihanna, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Lorde, and Lady Gaga in her song "Sheezus". "RiRi isn't scared of Katy Perry's roaring / Queen B's gone back to the drawing / Lorde smells blood / Yeah, she's about to slay you / Kid ain't one to fuck with when she's only on her debut / We're all watching Gaga / LOL, haha / Dying for the art so really she's a martyr."

5. That time she had a street brawl...
In 2008, Lily had to be restrained after throwing a punch at a passer-by who had apparently been heckling her outside a jazz club in London's Soho. This wasn't an isolated incident: The year before, the "Smile" singer was arrested and cautioned for assault after kicking a photographer during a night out.

6. That time she took on a whole political party...
Not all of Lily's fights are necessarily for personal gain. The singer lashed out at the far-right British National Party, calling them "racist, homophobic Nazis," before singing her subtly titled song "Fuck You" at a gig in Australia. At least the stunt got her in the headlines again....

- written by Dan Wakeford

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Lily Allen's here for two nights-relive her six most controversial moments

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Watch out, NYC: Lily Allen is in town, playing Terminal 5 tonight and tomorrow. Love her or hate her, you can't argue that the cheeky Londoner is a pro at stirring up controversy. Whether it's a self-aware strategy for press attention or she's just naturally addicted to drama, the girl is always up for a fight.

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A review of Lily Allens 2018 Album 'No Shame' which criticises the beats and marks it as an honest but not very good album.

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Pilloried in the press for her every misfortune, Lily Allen scrutinizes her public persona on an album that dilutes staggering sincerity with uninspired beats.

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The song is more of her recent work and talks about her growing up and realising that she can no longer hang around with people who are bad influences

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Lily Allen - Trigger Bang (feat. Giggs) [Official Video]

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Referred to as "gobby"

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Lily Allen’s Sheezus: Sweetness and bite from pop’s gloriously gobby princess

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She’s back - in case you hadn’t noticed...

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A catalogue of Lily Allen's fashion through the years which highlights her individuality and 70s inspired style.

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From ballgowns and trainers to Chanel-toting new mum, we track Miss Allen's rise (and rise) through the fashion ranks

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Lily Allen: 'No Shame' and Motherhood | Apple Music

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Lily appeared in a ghost story on stage in West End called 2:22 and she plays a woman who's house is being haunted.

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Singer Lily Allen makes her theater debut

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Lily is honest about not being able to always be there for her children because of her career and sheds light on the struggles mothers face when not wanting to give up their career

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Lily Allen says she’s too ‘impatient and busy’ to stay at home all day with her babies | MadeForMums

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Singer says she’s returned to work in the music industry because being a mum didn’t give her anywhere to put her creativity

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Speaks out on the idea that she must give up her career now she is a mother.

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"As a woman and as a mother, as a young mother, I felt guilty about being successful." - Lily Allen

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A song criticising capitalist society and fame.

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Lily Allen | The Fear (Official Video - Explicit Version)

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Lily promotes her sex toy brand and explains how it helps her marriage.

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Singer Lily Allen has discussed on how understanding her own sexual desires - with the help of sex toys - means that she and her partner have a great marriage

Lily Allen has opened up on the steamy secret behind her happy marriage to David Harbour, a month after the pair tied the knot.

The Smile hitmaker - who was previously married to Sam Cooper - revealed she has learned how to have a happy and harmonious partnership after revamping her sex life.

Speaking candidly with Miquita Oliver for the release of her Liberty partnership with sex toy brand Womanizer, Lily, 35, told how a "sexual awakening" led to her being confident in communicating with her Stranger Things actor partner on what she needs.

She also revealed that she became more in tune with her feminine sexual energy in her late 20s when she began experimenting with sex toys as her first marriage collapsed.

"A lot of this journey was not unrelated to the deterioration of my last marriage," she shared.

Lily, who split from first husband Sam in 2016 and divorced him 2018, added: "I definitely had a sort of sexual awakening in my late 20s. And by the way, I'm not blaming this on my ex-husband; it absolutely wasn't his fault."

"It was my fault because I wasn't feeling empowered and I wasn't able at that point to communicate my wants and needs and so things broke down. I definitely don't want that to happen again."

Gushing over her new husband David, she continued: "I'm very much in love and happy in this relationship and communication in all areas is important."

Lily also dished on what she likes to get up to in the bedroom with her actor husband, as she revealed that she loves to use sex toys.

"It's not something that we're necessarily used to and, you know, men might feel emasculated or something if you pull out a sex toy," she added.

"I think that's the empowerment thing and I think if you're able to talk about it in a way that's not like 'this is a replacement for you and what you're not able to do,' as more like, 'let's have as much fun as possible.'"

Lily secretly married her love David in Las Vegas with the fun pair tying during a ceremony conducted by an Elvis impersonator.

They were married in the Graceland Wedding Chapel and joined by daughters Ethel and Marnie - who she shares with ex Sam.

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Lily Allen shares the steamy secret behind her happy marriage with David Harbour

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Singer Lily Allen has discussed on how understanding her own sexual desires - with the help of sex toys - means that she and her partner have a great marriage Lily Allen has opened up on the steamy secret behind her happy marriage to David Harbour, a month after the pair tied the knot.

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Lily Allen has her own sex you brand and advocates for more open discussion about sex

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The singer, 35, has been working on her device, which will be called Liberty, with German adult toy manufacturer Womanizer.

The mother-of-two, who recently married Stranger Things star David Harbour, 45, in a Las Vegas ceremony, said she started working with the brand as she wanted to "create a more open, sex positive society."

The singer said: "Sex toys are still seen as a taboo. Female pleasure in itself is a taboo subject. The only way to make subjects no longer taboo is to speak about them openly, frequently and without shame or guilt."

Allen has been named Chief Liberation Officer of the company and will lead the company's publicity campaign, encouraging women to talk more openly about self-pleasure.

Posting on Instagram this morning, Allen wrote: "I'm really excited to reveal something I've been working on with one of my favourite brands @womanizerglobal... My very own sex toy! The Liberty is available everywhere now.

"Womanizer changed my life, and I wanted to share my experience. Women shouldn't be ashamed of their sexuality, and we all deserve to own our pleasure. Hopefully this little toy will help you do that."

Allen teased her partnership with the brand on social media last night.

She told her 1.4million Instagram followers: "I've got a big announcement tomorrow... I can't tell you what yet, but if you want to feel empowered and give yourself a little self love, stay tuned."

The singer, who is the daughter of actor Keith Allen, was approached by Womanizer after she mentioned using their products in her Sunday Times bestselling memoir My Thoughts Exactly.

Speaking about having some alone time while on her Sheezus tour, she wrote: "And since you ask if I had to pick one vibrator above all the others, I recommend the Womanizer."

Allen has been busy in recent weeks. She has also been working on funding an independent comeback album. For £83-a-pop, she will create personalised messages for fans via the Cameo App. She said "send messages, birthday wishes... I'll 'do whatever it is that you want me to do."

Allen married Harbour in Vegas last month. It was attended by her two daughters - Ethel and Marnie - who she shares with ex-husband Sam Cooper. The bride wore Dior.

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Lily Allen launches new sex toy as she calls for 'more open society'

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The singer, 35, has been working on her device, which will be called Liberty, with German adult toy manufacturer Womanizer. The mother-of-two, who recently married Stranger Things star David Harbour, 45, in a Las Vegas ceremony, said she started working with the brand as she wanted to "create a more open, sex positive society."

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Lily has admitted to having sex with iconic rockstar Liam Gallagher when he was in a relationship - one of many of her public sexual exploits

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LILY ALLEN has finally come clean about her fling with Liam Gallagher - when he was still married to Nicole Appleton.

In her explosive autobiography, Lily admits she did romp with the Oasis star on a flight to Japan in July 2009.

She also teases that it happened again after they arrived, and claims Liam later got her to lie to the All Saints singer telling her it had never happened at all.

In her book My Thoughts Exactly, Lily recalls that eventful journey to the Fuji Rock Festival.

She writes: "We got hammered on the plane. At some point Liam and I found ourselves together in the toilet doing something that he shouldn't have been doing, and it wasn't drugs. Then we were in a lie-down bed together.

"When we landed in Tokyo, Liam said, in his distinctive nasal twang, 'What you doing now? Why don't you come back to our hotel . . . I was like, 'Yeah, OK.'

"It wasn't until the next day when he said something like, 'No one can hear about this because of Nic,' that I clocked he was married. I knew Noel was married and I knew Liam had been married to Patsy Kensit. That was partly why I fancied him. I'd grown up an Oasis fan. I was 12 when he and
Patsy Kensit were on the cover of Vanity Fair as the coolest couple."

But Nicole got wind of what had gone on. Lily adds: "Six months later I was in my car with my driver when the phone rang. . . It was Liam.
He sounded awful, like he'd been up all night. 'Lil,' he said. 'I just need you to get on the phone. I've got Nic here,. One of your mates is, like, trying to do a wind-up or something and saying that you and me had it off or whatever, and I need you to speak to Nic and say that it's all b*****ks.'

"Oh, Liam, yes sure, it's all b*****ks. Let's say it's all b*****ks - of course I'll tell Nicole that it's all b*****ks if that's what you want - and not think about it too much or even at all, and then maybe it will go away and not disrupt what really matters: The people we love and rely on."

The Sun on Sunday told how Lily was poised to reveal their affair in April when she touted her book to publishers.

Nicole, who divorced Liam, left, in 2014, warned: "One day our paths will cross @lilyallen!"

Lily writes: "Surely part of the point of shagging Liam Gallagher is being able to tell your friends about it . . . It's so depressing, isn't it?

Why do we validate ourselves with our sexual conquests? But actually we are just as bad."

At least Lily can bring out her poison pen for a quick quid.

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Lily Allen admits having sex with Liam Gallagher on Japan flight in 2009

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IN her explosive autobiography Lily reveals she did had sex with then-married Oasis star and even teases that it happened again after they landed in Japan. She says they were in the toilets and then said: 'We were in a lie-down bed together'.

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The pair were together a year before having a Vegas wedding in Summer 2020

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Lily Allen's 22 is a song that is critical of society and how female stars have such a short life-span of relevancy before they get too old to be attractive and liked -

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Hard Out Here is a female empowering song, criticising society and highlighting issues that women face day to day. The words "Its hard out here for a bitch" using the gendered slur in order.....

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Lily Allen | Hard Out Here (Official Video - Explicit Version)

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Not Fair is a song surrounding female sexual pleasure.

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Singer Lily Allen, 35, opened up about her addictions on The Recovery podcast with DJ Fat Tony.

She revealed that performing as an opening act on Miley Cyrus' Bangerz tour in 2014 negatively affected her mental health.

Allen described being addicted to Adderall, and said she considered taking heroin at one point.

She also said she began drinking at a young age and became "co-dependent."

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Lily Allen decided to get sober after she considered taking heroin while performing on Miley Cyrus' Bangerz tour in 2014.

While speaking with DJ Fat Tony on The Recovery podcast, Allen opened up about her journey to sobriety and the obstacles she overcame along the way.

Allen, 35, recalled her time as an opening act on the Bangerz tour as particularly difficult, saying she didn't "feel like a pop star at all.

"I felt really worthless, and drugs and alcohol made me feel the opposite," the "Smile" singer said.

Allen said that about six months after the birth of her second child with her former husband, Sam Cooper, she was forced to go on tour when the family was strapped for cash. The couple married when Allen was 24 and went on to have two daughters: 9-year-old Ethel and 8-year-old Marnie.

"We sort of ran out of money and I had to go out on the road again, but I was 14-stone [196 lbs] and just did not feel like a pop star at all," said Allen, who is currently married to actor David Harbour.

"So, I started taking this drug called Adderall, which is like speed, to lose the weight. And then I got addicted to this drug because it made me invincible and I could work really long hours and be all the different people that I was required to be at the time," she added.

Allen's addictions worsened while on the American leg of the Bangerz tour in 2014.

"It was a very highly sexualized tour and I had just spent the last three years pushing babies out. It couldn't have been less what I felt like," Allen said.

"And also, I'd never ever supported someone. So, I was sort of like re-entering this phase of being a pop star again but not doing it on my terms anymore. I was supporting this girl who was much younger and more attractive than I felt and I just started out in all manner of ways," she added.

According to Allen, this included cheating on Cooper and falling further into alcoholism.

Allen said that she previously drank alcohol to "take the edge off" of drugs, but realized during this time that she "was getting up in the morning, going straight to the mini bar, and downing those little vodka bottles...without the drugs."

"I remember being in LA and thinking like, 'None of this acting out is working anymore. Maybe I should try heroin," said Allen.

She continued, "I'd been in a scene, you know, where I had seen what happens to people who use heroin and knew when that thought popped into my head it was time to - you know - confront my demons. And that was about five years ago. And I started recovery."

But Allen said she wasn't fully committed to recovery at the time, and fell back into drinking alcohol about six months after getting clean.

"Almost instantly, I lost everything," Allen said.

"I lost my marriage. I lost my house I worked for 10 years to buy. My career started sinking. I lost all my friends - I didn't have any of my friendships any more. I was so resentful and so angry all the time. Really felt like the world owed me stuff" she said, adding "that went on for another four years."

Allen revealed that her addiction began at a young age

Allen, who Zoe Kravitz said gave her a nonconsensual kiss in 2014, said her addiction began when she became "co-dependent" on alcohol while in school.

"I started getting my value from attention of others and that is something that has played out until relatively recently really," said Allen.

"All I wanted was affirmation and praise and I didn't even really get it then. I got it from strangers, but I didn't really get it from the people I wanted it from," she added.

Allen admitted that she "definitely buried my head in drugs and alcohol, but I was really sad."

Allen wants to break the cycle for her two daughters

In July 2020, Allen shared a bikini photo to her Instagram account to celebrate one year sober.

"So grateful for my health and happiness," she wrote in the caption.

Allen told DJ Fat Tony that she's currently focused on her sobriety and building a healthy relationship with her daughters.

"I'm in the process of breaking that cycle. I felt so guilty about neglecting my kids in those early years of their life and having to go off on tour and misbehave in the way that I was. I really have a great relationship with my kids now," Allen said.

"They're confident little girls. They're not going to turn into drug addicts like I did. They're on a good path," she added.

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Lily Allen says she decided to get sober after she considered taking heroin while on tour with Miley Cyrus

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Singer Lily Allen, 35, opened up about her addictions on The Recovery podcast with DJ Fat Tony. She revealed that performing as an opening act on Miley Cyrus' Bangerz tour in 2014 negatively affected her mental health. Allen described being addicted to Adderall, and said she considered taking heroin at one point.

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Lily shares her journey of sobriety with fans on social media.

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ily Allen has marked nine months sober by sharing news of her feat on social media.

The 34-year-old, who admitted she drank "a bottle of Grey Goose a day" when her dependency on booze was at its highest, posed in a sports bra and leggings on Instagram as she celebrated her achievements.

She captioned the snap: "Nine months sober today. And the beginning of an ab is appearing.

"Very pleased. Still can't make my bed though."

Allen has never shied away from speaking about using drink and drugs during difficult periods, most recently documenting her struggles on her fourth studio album No Shame and in her frank autobiography My Thoughts Exactly - both released in 2018.

She said one of her lowest points came during her Sheezus tour in 2014, where she would drink vodka with only a splash of tonic so often that she couldn't taste the difference between her own beverage and her drummer's glass of water.

Speaking to GQ in 2018, she explained: "I never really had been a drinker before. I always had been a drug taker, and the drinking was an accessory to doing drugs.

Allen has always been frank about her drink and drug use / ISM/Capital Pictures

"I realised, 'Oh, f**k, I haven't taken any drugs for ages, but I'm drinking a lot.' It had become that bad."

"I was drinking a bottle of Grey Goose a day. It was really bad."

It was only when her life started to fall apart, and her four year marriage to Sam Cooper disintegrated, that she cut back on the booze - forcing herself to go 90 days sober.

"I started to just lose everything that was valuable to me in my life," she explained.

"I lost my house and my kids started to feel really distant and I broke up with my husband and started to realise [drinking like I was] probably wasn't working."

Allen is now isolating with her two daughters, Ethel and Marnie, sharing a rare snap of them together on her Instagram page recently.

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Lily Allen celebrates nine months of sobriety with Insta post

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ily Allen has marked nine months sober by sharing news of her feat on social media. The 34-year-old, who admitted she drank "a bottle of Grey Goose a day" when her dependency on booze was at its highest, posed in a sports bra and leggings on Instagram as she celebrated her achievements.

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Lily was slammed by press for choosing to tour when she had young children and not following the traditional routes of staying at home with her children. Lily speaks openly and honestly about the struggles of being a mother.

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Lily has often been reported to have substance and alcohol abuse problems

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***image_caption***

Lily Allen was once "drunk for three weeks straight".

The 33-year-old singer rocketed to fame with the release of her debut record 'Alright, Still' in 2006, and has revealed the fame brought with it a string of raucous partying that saw her stay drunk for almost a month, as well as develop "bratty pop star behaviour".

She said: "I don't know how I got through those Big Day Out shows in Australia and New Zealand because I was drunk for three weeks straight.

"One year, the last one that I did, there was a massive heatwave in Melbourne because those forest fires had just happened. It was excruciatingly hot.

"This was at the height of my bratty pop star behaviour. I demanded to have a miniature beach built outside my dressing room, with a paddling pool filled with ice and actual sand all around it."

But now that she's older and wiser, Lily admits her new album 'No Shame' has been the first material she's truly been proud of in over a decade, as she's shifted her focus onto making music she likes.

She added: "I made a conscious decision at the beginning of this record to really focus on my own creative output.

"I have worked harder on this record than any other in my career - it couldn't be more honest and more me. Not in a profoundly earnest way, but I think I questioned what I'm making and why I'm making it.

"It took me a while to come to terms with what now seems so obvious - I make music I like that I hope other people are going to like as well."

The 'Trigger Bang' hitmaker admits that now, the things that "matter" to her are her music career and her two children.

Speaking to Remix magazine, she said: "That's it. I make the shows as good as they can be and I'm as good a mum as I can be. Those are the things that matter, the music and my children."

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Lily Allen: I was drunk for three weeks straight

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image_caption*** Lily Allen was once "drunk for three weeks straight". The 33-year-old singer rocketed to fame with the release of her debut record 'Alright, Still' in 2006, and has revealed the fame brought with it a string of raucous partying that saw her stay drunk for almost a month, as well as develop "bratty pop star behaviour".

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Lily pictured getting carried away and intoxicated at Notting Hill Carnival

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LILY Allen dramatically collapsed after a public drinking and smoking binge - raising fresh fears over her health.

In disturbing scenes, the 31-year-old Smile singer vomited and had to be carried off unconscious after slumping to the ground.

Mum-of-two Lily had embarked on a marathon booze session at London's Notting Hill Carnival before rolling a suspicious-looking cigarette.

An onlooker said: "It was horrifying to see her so out of control. She was like a sack of spuds on her lover's shoulder. This is a new low for her."

The drama unfolded on stage in front of Lily's new grime rapper lover MC Meridian Dan and her previous boyfriend Seb Chew, who were performing a hectic set.

Soon Lily - dancing with a whistle hanging round her neck - took off her tracksuit top and began supping from a can of Strongbow cider.

Moments later she was downing a home-made cocktail resembling potent rum punch from a milk bottle.

And soon she was holding the cocktail in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey in the other.

Sipping from each drink in turn, the star was seen gurning towards revellers as Seb cheered at her side.

Clearly the worse for wear, she next began drinking Red Stripe lager before wandering unsteadily over the stage, pausing to hug pals, then gripping a can of Carlsberg lager.

Then, crouching behind performers, she rolled the cigarette - appearing to sprinkle another substance on top of the tobacco before taking a series of deep tugs.

The singer then sat cross-legged on the floor for five minutes, her face turning green, as she gently swayed backwards and forwards.

Then, alarmingly, she slouched forwards and passed out, lying prostrate on the stage as oblivious carnival fans partied around her.

Seb and Dan - real name Daniel London - dragged her behind speakers before continuing their set, only for her to vomit off the stage.

The two men were seen laughing as Lily lay seemingly unconscious between them.

Only later was she dragged from the stage, with her pals putting her hoodie back on in a bid to conceal her identity.

With the singer unresponsive, Dan was forced to toss her over his shoulder.

He gave her a "fireman's lift' through the crowds and past a series of uniformed policemen.

Away from the partygoers, Dan let Lily slump on some steps to check how she was.

Lifted to her feet, she then vomited again in a busy street.

After a brief rest, Dan carried her away in the direction of Notting Hill Gate underground station.

An onlooker said: "Lily had a proper 'whitey' - she blanked out.

"She's tried hard to portray herself as a serious musician and social media commentator. This was not a good look."

Lily took to Twitter after being approached by The Sun.

She told her 5.86million followers: "Truth is I'm just a lightweight, I had 2 cans of strongbow on an empty stomach. I'm here now and I'm absolutely fine."

Police arrested 141 people at the Bank Holiday weekend carnival, where five people were stabbed.

Sixty-one were held for drug offences and 43 for having an offensive weapon.

Officers also seized a large canister of compressed nitrous oxide gas valued at £150,000.

More than 500,000 people attended the event.

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Lily Allen collapses at Notting Hill Carnival after drinking binge - and a suspicious-looking cigarette

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LILY Allen dramatically collapsed after a public drinking and smoking binge - raising fresh fears over her health. In disturbing scenes, the 31-year-old Smile singer vomited and had to be carried off unconscious after slumping to the ground. Mum-of-two Lily had embarked on a marathon booze session at London's Notting Hill Carnival before rolling a suspicious-looking cigarette.

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The reformed star was worried about returning to Glastonbury as she has always been drunk there and now she would have to face it without the drugs and alcohol

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Lily Allen has opened up about her Glastonbury performance and how she had doubts whether she'd be able to get on stage sober again. Catch the performance here:

Allen joined Olivia Rodrigo on stage at the Somerset festival on Saturday, 25 June.

Allen joined Olivia Rodrigo on stage to sing 'F**k You'. Credit: @liamjamesward/Twitter

Allen was joined by her two children at the summer festival.

In a recent Instagram post she reflected: "Quite emosh. Things are truly messed up, but at least my babies got to see their mamma play and slay Glastonbury with their favourite pop star.

"They were very proud and so was I."

Allen continued by noting how she wasn't sure whether she'd ever be able to 'get up on a stage like that sober again'.

"If i'm honest, a part of me thought it was all in the past. I had the most amazing day. Thanks @oliviarodrigo for having us. You smashed your first Glastonbury.

"Who knows, maybe i won't hang up my [microphone] just yet," the post teased.

Allen has previously performed at Glastonbury, having taken to the stage in 2007, 2009 and 2014.

However, in a since-deleted Instagram post from 2020, she reflected on a picture of her at the festival in 2014 having been taken 'before things really started to fall apart'.

"It's hard for me to look at these but I feel like I've come so far since then and I am so much happier and healthier," she said.

Allen is now approaching three years sobriety.

In a since-deleted post last year, the star spoke out in celebration of her two year anniversary of being sober.

"2 years drug and alcohol free today! Getting clean is the BEST thing I ever did, and I've done a lot of cool s**t," she said.

As well as taking to the stage with Rodrigo, Allen has being doing a whole lot of other 'cool s**t' such as getting married to Stranger Things star David Harbour who has become stepfather to her two children.

Allen celebrated two years of sobriety in an Instagram post in July 2021. Credit: Alamy

Allen also took to the stage in the West End last year in 2:22 A Ghost Story.

The debut saw her receive a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress.
If you want to discuss any issues relating to alcohol in confidence, contact Drinkline on 0300 123 1110, 9am-8pm weekdays and 11am-4pm weekends for advice and support If you want friendly, confidential advice about drugs, you can talk to FRANK. You can call 0300 123 6600, text 82111 or contact through their 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or from 2pm-6pm any day of the week

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Lily Allen Says She Wasn't Sure If She Could Stay Sober For Glastonbury Performance

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Lily Allen has opened up about her Glastonbury performance and how she had doubts whether she'd be able to get on stage sober again. Catch the performance here: Allen joined Olivia Rodrigo on stage at the Somerset festival on Saturday, 25 June. Allen was joined by her two children at the summer festival.

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Lily speaks in depth about her experience with her stalker and how she felt she was blamed and not taken seriously.

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Lily Allen Extended Interview - Stalker's Death Threats

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Lily appears barefaced alone in normal clothes in order to talk to those affected by this disaster. She comes across as normal and gets upset by what she finds out. Really puts across her normalises and empathy for those suffering.

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Lily Allen in Calais: 'I apologise on behalf of my country'- BBC News

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Lily is not afraid to speak out for what she believes in and this is an example when she joined Olivia Rodrigo in singing her song as a reaction to US abortion laws being changed.

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Olivia Rodrigo - F*** You (feat. Lily Allen) (Glastonbury 2022)

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Lily Allen appears drunk on stage with manager Elton John as they argue. This shows Lily's lack of social conduct and mediation as she does not care that she is on stage and television, she acts the same way she would in private.

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Lily Allen vs. Elton John. Stars fall out on stage

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Lily appears visibly drunk at an interview at Tea in The Park Festival along side rock band Artic Monkeys. She slurs her words and acts inappropriately.

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Lily does not have the pristine image that some female celebrities have of always looking and acting their best. On multiple occasions Lily has been recorded drunk and disorderly. In this video she tries to fight a woman who has shouted something at her and has to be stopped by friends.

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO - Lily 'Im gonna f***ing batter her' Allen out fighting!

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Lily Allen defends Mikey Cyrus to Loose Women who argue Miley is too overtly sexual in her performances

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Lily Allen Miley Cyrus Loose Women Interview 2014

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Lily talks on the way the press alter stories to show her as something she is not and the fall out of her extremely honest book. She says this book can be an explanation to her kids of why she was not as present in their early life.

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Lily Allen Talks About Her Explosive Autobiography | Loose Women

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Lily Allen Blames Feeling Like a Bad Mother on Her Rock and Roll

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Lily appears on Lorraine and is very honest surrounding being a bad mother, her eating disorder, twitter spats she has been involved in, her divorce

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Lily Allen Blames Feeling Like a Bad Mother on Her Rock and Roll Lifestyle | Lorraine