BBC - Music - Lily Allen

Lily Rose Beatrice Allen (born May 2, 1985) is an English recording artist, talk show host, and actress. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. She had a challenging childhood, without a stable residence and had been a pupil in 13 different school institutions until the age of 15. Her teenage years comprised her evolution in musical tastes, from glam rock to alternative. She ran away from home to attend the Glastonbury Festival at the age of fourteen. A year later, Allen abandoned school and concentrated on improving her performing and compositional skills. Afterwards, she created several demo songs, and near the end of 2005, she created a profile on MySpace. There she made some of her recordings public. A contract was signed with the label Regal Recordings, as the views on MySpace rose to tens of thousands. In 2006, she began to work on completing what would be her first studio album and its first mainstream single "Smile" earned the top position on the UK Singles Chart. Her debut record, Alright, Still, was well received on the international market, selling over 2.6 million copies and brought Allen a nomination at the Grammy Awards, BRIT Awards and MTV Video Music Awards. She then began hosting her own talk-show, Lily Allen and Friends, on BBC Three.

Her second major album release, It's Not Me, It's You, saw a genre shift for her, having more of an electropop feel, rather than the ska and reggae influences of the first one. The album debuted at #1 on the UK Albums Chart and the Australian ARIA Charts and was appreciated by the critics, noting the singer's musical evolution and maturity. It spawned the hit singles "The Fear" and "Fuck You", popular mostly in Europe. Allen and Amy Winehouse have been credited with starting a process that led to the media-proclaimed "year of the women" in 2009 that has seen five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" long nominated for the Mercury Prize..

In September 2009, Allen stated that she sees no way that she could ever make a profit making new records. She said that she has no plans to make another album and she is not renewing her record contract. She also announced she is considering a career in acting.