I Am a Weapon of Massive Consumption

It is easy to tell that Lily Allen has a huge inferiority complex. She dropped a great Mark Ronson produced album but a month later it was his other album with Amy Winehouse that got all the awards. Then Katy Perry completely stole her style to the point where she should collect a royalty check, and then scored the biggest of the summer with a watered-down version of Lily’s much catchier music.

So for her sophomore album It's Not Me, It's You she tries to distance herself from her retreads. Gone is Ronson, instead replaced by Greg Kurstin (The Bird and the Bee), and gone are her attacks on ex-boyfriends (aside from Not Fair which might as well have been called Not Big part II). Instead she has bigger targets like George Bush on (Expletive Deleted) You which although catchy can get old considering the song was officially released after the dude left the album and all the attacks on 43 have been heard multiple times before (daddy issues, racist, intelligible, war mongering).

She also goes for bigger targets like God where she ponders if the Big Guy has ever done drugs, who he would vote for, or if his favorite band is Creedence Clearwater Revival on Him. Allen even gets on her social commentary hat on with the opener Everyone’s at It where she points out the hypocrisy of people who take prescription drugs criticizing those that take the illegal time. The Fear is a tongue in cheek look at today’s materialism and fame. But you have to wonder how tongue and cheek the song is with lines like “I’ll take my cloths off and it will be shameless but everyone know that’s how you get famous” considering she spent most of last summer getting her picture taken without a bikini top on.

The lack of Ronson, who may or may not be the subject of I Could Say (“Since you gone I’ve lost that chip on my shoulder, since you been gone it’s like the whole world is my stage”), is what really brings down the album. His retro horns and Motown hooks gelled really well with Allen’s snarkiness. Kurstin does bring some diversity mixing his danceable track with barroom pianos (22), techno (Back to the Start), piano balled (I Could Say), French cabaret (Never Gonna Happen), oldies folk (He Wasn’t Time) and even country (Not Fair). But not diverse enough to keep you from thinking how some of the song could have used the Ronson magic touch.

Song to Download - The Fear

It’s Not Me, it’s You gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.