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Lily Allen · S8 E1
The Book
Why she had to write it — and what it cost to be honest
September 20, 2018. Lily Allen publishes a book that names every person who hurt her, every system that failed her, and every lie she was told to keep quiet about.
"He Wasn't There" by Lily Allen (2009). Before the memoir existed, this track was already Lily's first attempt at saying out loud what My Thoughts Exactly would eventually say in 300 pages: I needed help, and nobody showed up. The anger is wrapped in a pretty melody, which is the Lily Allen trick. The book drops the melody and keeps the anger.
The Book
My Thoughts Exactly arrives in bookshops three months after No Shame and reads like its companion piece in prose. Where the album told the story through melody and metaphor, the memoir tells it in raw, unedited sentences: the stalker, the assault, the police failures, the industry cover-ups. Nothing is left out, and nobody is protected.
“I wrote this book because I was tired of other people telling my story. The tabloids had their version, the music industry had theirs, and none of them were true. This is mine.”
— Lily Allen, My Thoughts Exactly launch event (September 2018)
TAP TO REVEAL: What had to happen before My Thoughts Exactly could be published?
He Wasn't There, Lily Allen (2009)
'He Wasn't There' is built on a piano-led arrangement that starts gently and builds with orchestral strings, giving the song a cinematic sweep. Listen for how Lily's vocal shifts from conversational in the verses to something bigger and more accusatory in the chorus, as if she's moving from talking to herself to addressing a room full of people who owe her an explanation. The melody is deceptively pretty, disguising the anger underneath. In the context of the memoir, this song sounds like the first draft of every chapter.
My Thoughts Exactly: The Facts
The Timing
The memoir lands at exactly the right moment. The #MeToo movement has been building since October 2017, and by September 2018 the public is ready to hear women describe exactly what happened to them and name the people responsible. Lily Allen's book is not a celebrity tell-all. It's closer to a witness statement disguised as a memoir.
Shame for You, Lily Allen
'Shame for You' from Alright, Still was Lily Allen turning the tables on someone who deserved to feel embarrassed, back in 2006. Twelve years later, My Thoughts Exactly does the same thing on a vastly larger scale: naming the people who should feel shame and refusing to carry it for them anymore. The title is the entire thesis of the memoir in three words.
Shame for You, Lily Allen (2006)
Follow the words as the music plays. Lily was writing about holding people accountable from her very first album. The confidence in these lyrics is the same confidence that eventually allowed her to publish a memoir sparing nobody.
Which Lily Allen album was written simultaneously with the memoir My Thoughts Exactly?
Chapter by chapter, My Thoughts Exactly lays out the Alex Gray stalking case in forensic detail. Next episode: how the system failed Lily Allen, and why the police had her number but never picked up the phone.
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