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Lily Allen · S4 E3
Not Fair
Sex, humor, and a country-pop banger about bad lovers
A BBC Radio 1 studio, spring 2009. The presenter asks Lily Allen what her new single is about, and she answers with a straight face: "It's about a bloke who's really lovely in every way except the one way that actually matters."
"Not Fair" -- Lily Allen, official music video (2009). Allen goes full Dolly Parton in a western-themed barn dance, complete with line dancing, cowboy hats, and a painted sunset backdrop. The most wholesome visual style in music is soundtracking the least wholesome song on the album.
Not Fair -- Lily Allen (2009)
Greg Kurstin builds the track around banjo, pedal steel guitar, and a bouncing Nashville rhythm that sounds like it belongs on a country radio playlist. The production is a deliberate mismatch: the warmer and more innocent the music sounds, the more explicit Allen's lyrics become. She sings about her boyfriend's inadequacy in bed with the same casual tone she might use to describe a disappointing takeaway. The contrast is what makes the song funny rather than crude, and Kurstin calibrated every note of that arrangement to make it land.
TAP TO REVEAL: Is 'Not Fair' about a real person?
The Double Standard
In 2009, mainstream pop had plenty of songs by men complaining about women in the bedroom. The reverse barely existed. Allen wrote "Not Fair" as a direct challenge to that imbalance, wrapped in the friendliest musical packaging she could find: a country song. The sugar-coated production was strategic, making the message impossible to dismiss as shock value.
Not Fair: The Facts
So What, P!nk
P!nk's 'So What' is the other side of the 'Not Fair' coin: a woman who is done with a bad relationship and isn't even slightly sad about it. The attitude, the humour, the refusal to be devastated when devastation is what's expected. Same energy, different accent.
So What, P!nk (2008)
Breakup lyrics delivered with a grin. P!nk and Lily Allen share the same trick: making fury sound like fun.
Why did Kurstin choose a country arrangement for a song about bad sex?
The jokes are over. Next: "22," the song where Allen holds up a mirror to every woman who's ever been told she's running out of time, and the result is the most devastating track on the album.
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