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Lily Allen · S5 E4
Ethel & Marnie
Becoming a mother — and discovering what actually matters
A hospital in England, November 25, 2011. Lily Allen holds her newborn daughter Ethel, one year and one month after holding her stillborn son George, and for the first time in over a year she allows herself to believe that something might turn out alright.
"Air Balloon" by Lily Allen, official music video (2014). The second single from Sheezus captures the fantasy of simply floating away from everything. After two years of loss, surgery scares, and sleepless nights with a newborn, the daydream of drifting off in a balloon is the most honest thing on the album.
“My children ruined my career. I love them and they complete me, but in terms of pop stardom, they totally ruined it.”
— Lily Allen, Radio Times Podcast, March 2024
A Difficult Start
Ethel's first weeks were terrifying. She required two operations in her first two months of life and had to be tube-fed until she was seven months old. Allen, already carrying the trauma of the stillbirth, later told Stylist she was "so scared of losing her" that the anxiety never fully lifted. Marnie Rose followed on January 8, 2013, and Allen was now a mother of two in the Cotswolds, a long way from the girl who'd uploaded demos to MySpace.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which Lily Allen song is written from her daughter's point of view?
The Identity Crisis
After Marnie's birth, Allen experienced postnatal depression that went undiagnosed for months. She told Stereogum in 2018: "I was suffering from postnatal depression when I started writing Sheezus, and I was having an identity crisis, that I did not know I was a new mum." She later told Rolling Stone she "found myself at home with two human beings that couldn't talk or respond." The woman who'd always known exactly who she was had lost herself completely.
Ethel & Marnie: The Facts
As Long As I Got You -- Lily Allen
From Sheezus (2014). Written during the period covered in this episode, the title becomes something different when you know the context. Allen was clinging to her children while losing her sense of self, her marriage fraying, her mental health unravelling. "As long as I got you" is less a love song than a lifeline.
As Long As I Got You -- Lily Allen (2014)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Knowing what Allen was going through when she wrote this, every line about holding on becomes less romantic and more desperate.
What did Lily Allen say her children did to her career?
Allen is a mother of two in the Cotswolds, trying to disappear into domestic life. But the woman who built her career on being unapologetically herself is about to try being someone else entirely. Next: the name change that said more than any song.
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