Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Lily Allen · S5 E6
The Industry
What she saw behind the curtain that nobody wanted to talk about
A New Statesman essay, May 2018. Lily Allen writes twelve words that explain why #MeToo has not reached the music industry: "There isn't an HR place to go to because everyone's self-employed."
"Hard Out Here" by Lily Allen, official music video (2013). Allen's comeback single is a direct assault on industry sexism, body standards, and the double standards women face in pop. The video generated its own controversy over racial dynamics, which Allen later acknowledged. The song itself remains one of the sharpest feminist statements in 2010s pop.
Hard Out Here -- Lily Allen (2013)
Greg Kurstin wraps the message in the brightest synth-pop he can build: handclaps, pulsing bass, a hook that stays in your head for days. Allen uses that sugar rush to smuggle in a hit list of every double standard she's experienced: the glass ceiling, the body pressure, the assumption that a woman's success must have a man behind it. The title is borrowed from Three 6 Mafia's Oscar-winning "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp," which tells you everything about whose company Allen sees herself in. It entered the UK chart at number nine, one week after "Somewhere Only We Know" hit number one, giving her two Top 10 entries simultaneously.
“Of those big, successful, female artists, there's always a man behind the woman-piece. Whether it's Beyonce, it's Jay Z. If it's Adele, it's Paul Epworth. With me it was Mark Ronson. You can't think of the man behind the man because it's never a conversation which is brought up.”
— Lily Allen, interview with HuffPost, March 2014
The Stalker
Between 2008 and 2016, a man named Alex Gray stalked Allen across multiple platforms, stole her mail, and appeared at her concerts. In October 2015, he broke into her home while her daughters slept in the next room. Allen spent approximately 40,000 pounds in legal fees to get the police to take it seriously. She told BBC Newsnight in April 2016: "The police made me feel like a nuisance rather than a victim."
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to Allen's career after she spoke out about sexual assault?
No HR Department
In her New Statesman essay, Allen explained the structural problem: artists are on long-term contracts with no labor protections, no ombudsman, and no recourse. She watched male colleagues do the same things she was criticized for and face zero consequences. "When it came to me behaving in the way that I did, I definitely wasn't given the leeway that Keith Richards would have been given," she wrote. The industry, she argued, is "run mainly by elder males" who "see women as weak."
The Industry: The Facts
Come On Then -- Lily Allen
From No Shame (2018). The opening track of the album where Allen finally told everything. After years of being told to stay quiet, to be grateful, to accept what the industry gave her, she starts the record with a challenge: come on then. It's the sound of someone who has nothing left to lose and knows it.
Come On Then -- Lily Allen (2018)
Read the lyrics while you listen. This is Allen at her most confrontational since "Fuck You." Except this time the target isn't a politician. It's everyone who ever told her to shut up.
What reason did Allen give for why #MeToo hasn't fully reached the music industry?
Allen has seen the worst the industry can do: the stalkers, the executives, the labels that punish you for speaking. But she's about to discover that she can't stay away from music no matter how much it costs her. Next: the pull that brings her back.
0 XP earned this session