When Lily Allen and Damon Albarn’s writing session ended in a wardrobe malfunction
Lily Allen and Damon Albarn have found tremendous individual success in the music business, yet they failed to create the same magic together.
Going from a point in time when Allen was among Britain’s biggest artists and was practically impossible to miss for those tuned into the music space, it’s been a while since the West London native has been active as a recording artist, which is why the news of her first album in seven years is so exciting. While her immense popularity back then resulted in her working with some of the industry’s most beloved names, such as Robbie Williams, Stormzy and Mark Ronson, not every collaboration worked out as she had hoped.
Prior to the release of her widely successful 2009 sophomore effort, It’s Not Me, It’s You, Allen joined The Guardian to discuss her ascension to stardom and the direction she hoped to take her artistry in. During the chat, she also briefly touched on trying to work with Albarn, as well as the hilarious outcome of their time together. Aside from having vastly different styles, both artists also learnt the hard way that their approach to writing and recording music was more or less incompatible.
While Allen preferred to immerse herself in loops and samples until something spoke to her, the Britpop icon would just keep hacking away at a piano while the two sat together in the studio, repeatedly asking her, “Got anything yet?” The experience sounds equal parts intimidating and annoying, especially for someone with an entirely different work ethic, and sure enough, the two were unable to cook up anything substantial.
The second and more interesting part of the story is what happened after they both admitted defeat. As Allen was getting up to leave the writing session, the two buttons holding her top together popped off and exposed her braless assets; embarrassed yet amused by the disastrous situation, she offhandedly said of the incident, “I am sooo coool.”
Mind you, this was around 2008, when Albarn still had a snobbier reputation than he does now. While he had expanded his scope an awful lot in pivoting from Blur to Gorillaz, his joint efforts with hip-hop artists and the then-recent debut album as part of The Good, the Bad & the Queen collective kept people from classifying him as an out-and-out pop artist; Allen, on the other hand, was exactly that. Hence, it is possible that the two just had different expectations from each other given what they were trying to accomplish in their own worlds, resulting in their plans for a collaboration falling through.
In the years since, Albarn has become a lot more open and flexible in terms of embracing a glossier sound, with Gorillaz’s Cracker Island standing as evidence of a pretty straightforward pop effort that expands the genre through the contributing voices of Thundercat, Stevie Nicks, Bad Bunny and others. Meanwhile, Allen has consistently offered novel work, enmeshing electronic elements into her pop and R&B roots in thematic depth. Now that they’re more on the same page and have matured enough to look past the nip slip and nagging, perhaps it may be a good time for the two to give it another go.
