“Want to hear the best in new music?” MTV.com asks. “MTV’s Discover & Download is the show where you can check out kick-ass new bands tearing up broadband.”
As of late, trusting MTV for quality music is like having sex with a prostitute—it’s much more likely that you’ll wind up with syphilis than a good time. With its line-up of shows such as The Road Rules, NEXT, My Super Sweet 16, and Parental Control, it’s hard to even find music on a network improperly titled music television. And their main source of music entertainment, TRL, does nothing to aid your newfound case of genital irritation with its minute-long music video clips of anorexic preteens, uninspiring VJs (save the beautiful and endowed Vanessa Minnillo), and lack of any musical diversity whatsoever. With Discover & Download, MTV is regaining the trust of music connoisseurs everywhere, promoting talents such as the soulful Robin Thicke and The Roots’ protégés Gym Class Heroes. Yet the artist MTV is choosing to advertise at the moment is none other than the cheeky British sensation Lily Allen.
Because of the firestorm her debut album Alright, Still caused overseas, plans were made to release the album in the U.S. and to have Allen headline her own tour on our side of the pond, representing MTV’s idea of an artist worth discovering. With her brief stint at Chicago’s Metro last Thursday, February 8, Allen more than confirmed her status as a gifted musician and assured fans that she will stick around the music business for a while.
Following a trio of screeching horns and an opulent pianist, Allen nonchalantly made her entrance in a simple blue knee-length dress, rocking some retro Jordans, and with a bit of bling garnishing her neck and ears. “LDN” opened this hour-long ’50s flashback with Allen flashing her roots and showing that they aren’t that far from Chicago. 50 Cent would have been “mad as fuck” if he had seen the audacity of this girl’s performance of his “Window Shopper.”
The piano animatedly led the way to the sassy “Knock ’Em Out,” as Allen sang about the best ways to tell a guy off, even sticking out her belly and stroking it as if she were expecting a baby to pop out any second. “Don’t take me on,” Lily finely repeats in “Shame For You,” while in “Littlest Things,” she stands on the tip of her toes passionately singing lines such as “It seems as if I can’t shake those memories/ I wonder if you have the same dreams too.”
Allen paid tribute to Keane and The Kooks by performing acoustic versions of their respective hits “Everybody’s Changing” and “Naïve,” the whole time two-stepping in her Jordans and indulging herself in her predecessors’ ingenuity.
Near the end of the concert, the tempo mellowed out. However, Allen still had a few last words. In “Not Big,” Allen explained that the track is about “guys with small dicks and how unpleasant they are” and then directed her attention to the men in the crowd for the rest of this degradation of the male gender. Both the B-side “Absolutely Fine” and hits “Everything’s Just Fine” and “Smile” featured Allen proclaiming that everything is not only Alright, Still, but also that “George W. Fucking Bush can lick my fucking pussy any day!” If that doesn’t make you want to discover and download Allen, I don’t know what will.
