What is happening and how have you been
Gotta go but I’ll see you again
And oh, the music is so loud
And then I fade into the…
Crowds of people standing everywhere
‘Cross the street I’m at this laugh affair
And here they always play my songs
And me, I wonder if it’s…
Wrong or right they come here just the same
Telling everyone about their games
And if you think it obsolete
Then you go back across the street
Yeah, street, hey hey
When I leave now don’t you weep for me
I’ll be back, just save a seat for me
But if you just can’t make the room
Look up and see me on the…
Moon’s a common scene around my town
Here where everyone is painted brown
And if we feel that’s not the way
Let’s go paint everybody gray
Yeah, gray, yeah
– Love
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I feel for you, you little horror
Safe at your mother’s breast
No lucky break for you around the corner
‘Cause your father is a bully
And he thinks that you’re a pest
And your sister she’s no better than a whore
Life seems so rosy in the cradle
But I’ll be a friend I’ll tell you what’s in store
There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow
There’s nothing to grow up for anymore
Tycoons and barrow boys will rob you
And throw you on the side
And all because they love themselves sincerely
And the man who holds a bread knife
Up to your throat is four feet wide
And he’s anxious just to show you what it’s for
Your mother works so hard to make you happy
But take a look outside the nursery door
There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow
There’s nothing to grow up for anymore
And all the sad and empty faces
That pass you on the street
All running in their sleep, all in a dream
Every loving handshake
Is just another man to beat
How your heart aches just to cut him to the core
Life seems so rosy in the cradle,
But I’ll be a friend I’ll tell you what’s in store
There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow
There’s nothing to grow up for anymore
– Richard Thompson, the End of the Rainbow
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I posted this little rant earlier this year on the excellent media-underground site’s forums, but as Allen is featuring rather heavily in all of the end of year Music polls I thought I’d repost it here (wiv some minor adjustments):
At the moment, in the UK, the latest and hottest young talent to be hyped up to high heaven is 20-year old chanteuse Lily Allen. Lauded by everyone from music journalists to middle-aged, middle class, cultural commentators writing for the broadsheets, the wayward (she’s especially forthcoming about her various cred-boosting drug exploits and likes to boast about having been expelled or suspended from school on several occasions), though not too wayward, sprog of loutish Welsh, England supporting, thespian and professional wanker, Keith Allen, is currently celebrating her second week at number one with a rather lovely little song called Smile. Having established her fan base through myspace (credit where it’s due she was one of the first to really exploit myspace in this way) Allen couldn’t be more sickeningly relevant, more contemporary, and so she’s found herself riding the crest of the zeitgeist just as The Streets and more recently the Arctic Monkeys have done.
In her publicity she likes to come across as smugly aloof, with the affected attitude of bemused detachment that’s so typical of self-absorbed teenagers nowadays. That is not entirely unsurprising: I mean it usually takes a few more years before the childhood conviction that the universe revolves around you and you alone begins to lose some of its grip and, of course for many people it never does. But amidst the predictable bombardment of Lily Allen hype and publicity from media sources eager to profit from Allen’s ascendancy, one thing that did genuinely shock and offend me was the promotional video she starred in for Smile.
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