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Lily Allen · S4 E5
Everyone's at It
Drug culture, hypocrisy, and the song that called everyone out
A house party in North London, 2008. Every single person in the room is on something, and Lily Allen is standing in the corner thinking: this would make a brilliant opening track.
"Everyone's at It" -- Lily Allen, live at Glastonbury (2014). Five years after the album, Allen brings the opening track to the biggest festival stage in Britain. The song was never released as a single, but the Glastonbury crowd knows every word. There's something fitting about performing a song about drug hypocrisy at a festival where half the audience is proving her point.
Everyone's at It -- Lily Allen (2009)
Kurstin opens the album with a driving synth riff and a pulsing electronic beat that feels deliberately claustrophobic, like being trapped at a party you can't leave. Allen's vocal is conversational, listing the drugs her friends take with the same tone you'd use to read a shopping list. The production builds toward the chorus where she finally drops the observation that makes the song sting: everyone's doing it, but nobody wants to talk about it. It's the most musically aggressive track on the album, and Kurstin puts it first for a reason.
The Elephant in the Room
By 2008, casual drug use in London's music and media circles was so normalised it barely registered as notable. Allen grew up around it, participated in it, and eventually stepped back far enough to see the contradiction. She wasn't preaching sobriety. She was pointing out that everyone was pretending they weren't doing exactly the same thing.
“There's a lot of hypocrisy attached to drug culture, especially from the journalists who write about it as they're all drug addicts and alcoholics. I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work every day, no problem at all. But we never hear that side of the story.”
— Lily Allen, interview with Word magazine, January 2009
TAP TO REVEAL: Why did Allen and Kurstin put this song first on the album?
Notting Hill, London
The neighborhood where Allen grew up and where much of the casual drug culture she describes played out among her circle of friends, musicians, and media figures.
Everyone's at It: Quick Hits
Friday Night -- Lily Allen
From Alright, Still (2006). Allen's debut album had its own take on party culture: lighter, funnier, scored to a ska rhythm that makes going out sound like the best idea in the world. Three years later, "Everyone's at It" looks at the same scene and sees what "Friday Night" was too young to notice. Hearing them back to back is like watching someone grow up in real time.
Friday Night -- Lily Allen (2006)
Read the lyrics while you listen. The optimism here is striking when you know what comes next. Allen's debut-era voice sounds like a completely different person from the one singing "Everyone's at It."
What is Lily Allen's main argument in 'Everyone's at It'?
Hypocrisy has been called out, but Allen has saved her biggest target for last. Next: "Fuck You," the sweetest-sounding protest song ever recorded, aimed at a world leader she'd very much like to tell off.
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