Lily Allen is a creative songwriter with one helluva voice, but she’s hardly the pop goddess her fans make her out to be. Photos by .
After seeing the Ting Tings on Wednesday (see the ), I wasn’t in the ideal mindset to review yet another smug British female pop star on Thursday. And while sold-out show on Thursday wasn’t mind-blowing, it did make for a solid night of music — and a potent showcase for an emerging songwriter, a funny woman and a stunning voice.
Early on in the set, Allen took on the French-inflected, accordion-enhanced pop of “Never Gonna Happen,” a song that shows off all of Allen’s most shining qualities. She’s smart, sassy, straightforward, standoffish and delightfully British. Of course Allen isn’t all those things all the time, and the next song – the generic “Oh My God” – proved that Allen has her missteps, too.
You wouldn’t know that Allen is a mere human by listening to her adoring fans, who cooed and applauded her ever whim. Allen would talk about her loose shoe buckle and the crowd would catcall and whistle. The singer would ask her stage manager for a drink, and the audience would scream as if she’d just done a back-flip from a standing position.
Artist worship is understandable when itap deserved, and while Allen’s tremendous pipes smoothed over some of the rougher songs in her show, she stumbled on occasion. Songs like “Him” and “He Wasn’t There” are stretches at being clever, and they don’t work – especially amid jams such as the Caribbean-aping “LDN” and the Western-inspired “Not Fair.”
Allen wasn’t touring with the right instrumentation, so “Not Fair” was more pop than pop-country. But it still made for a good time. She closed with the melodic, if stupid, “F**k You” to a sea of raised middle fingers. The hit “Smile” lead into a delightfully faithful “The Fear,” and then Allen said goodbye with a gaudy cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer.”
Ricardo Baca is the founder and co-editor of and an award-winning critic and journalist at The Denver Post. He is also the executive director of the , Colorado’s premier festival of local music. Follow his whimsies at , his live music habit at and his iTunes addictions at .
is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.
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