On Lily Allen’s fourth album “No Shame,” the English singer turns her attention inward, with many of its tracks focused on her recent divorce along with tangents into topics such as life as a single mother of two small girls and the feuds with the British tabloids that have pilloried her since she arrived on scene more than a decade ago.
And while that’s not necessarily a new approach, Allen having long been a bit of a confessional lyricist, she also says by phone from London recently that she’s never written songs from the kind of place that her life landed in the last few years.
“I’ve always just spoken about my experiences, you know, and in a pretty upfront way, even on my previous albums,” says Allen, who comes to the Observatory in Santa Ana for a show on Friday, Oct. 5, and the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday, Oct. 8.
“I just think the difference between those albums and this album is that I was really depressed,” she says, and then laughs, a sign that things aren’t so dark today as they were when the songs on “No Shame” first surfaced.
“It’s amazing when things like that happen,” Allen says, describing how her real life inspired such open and vulnerable new songs as “Family Man,” “Apples,” and “Three,” a mini-suite that serves as a centerpiece for “No Shame.”
“When life is hard and you’re trying to figure things out in your own head, to be able to have a vehicle to try and turn that into something, and it works, and it makes sense, it’s amazing.
“It’s like therapy,” Allen says, and laughs again. “Nothing difficult about it! It’s like, ‘Ah, yeah, that’s what this is about.’ It’s figuring (stuff) out but with music. And I’m not very good at figuring (stuff) out except with music.”
With “Alright, Still,” her 2006 debut, Allen arrived with a flourish of pop melodies, ska rhythms and hip-hop beats, her lyrics on songs such as “Smile” or “LDN” often funny and sunny takes on the then-21-year-old’s modern life in London. Her willingness to say what she thought — and unwillingness to suffer fools — made her tabloid fodder from the start, but with that particularly cruel edge that the worst of the British papers managed to muster.
She married in 2011 and had her first daughter, Ethel, that same year, with a second, Marnie, two years later, but by 2015 the marriage was irreparably broken.
“I think that all my albums, all my music, has always been the soundtrack for whatever is going on in my life,” Allen says. “When I was making ‘Sheezus’ ” — her third album, released in 2014 — “I’d just had two kids and was returning to the workplace and didn’t really know where I was for a minute.
“It was someone trying to figure out who the (heck) she was,” she says. “As a result of that rude awakening I guess I’ve had to confront things head on and figure out what I did want to do. And I guess ‘No Shame’ is the record that came out, and so is the book, ‘My Thoughts Exactly.’”
The book, a sort of memoir in essays, was published in the United Kingdom to strong reviews two weeks ago. It’s set for publication in the United States in December.
“It’s a bunch of essays on different subjects like motherhood, fame, money, sex, drugs, fathers — I mean the list goes on,” Allen says. “It is kind of memoir-ish, but it’s not chronological. But it all links together.”
As with “No Shame,” the autobiographical essays required her to examine her life, successes and failures alike, in great detail.
“It was very different but I felt like it was very necessary,” she says. “In America the tabloid culture’s nothing like what it is here. But in England I’m like vilified on a daily basis. And it felt like I just wanted to be very frank.
“It’s not like it’s really my side of the story because it’s not answering to anything anybody’s ever written about it,” Allen says. “It tells you what went on.”
Why, she’s asked, have the tabloids treated you so horribly, going so far as to exploit the stillbirth of her first child or scoff at her fears of a stalker who eventually was determined to have deadly intentions.
“I don’t know,” Allen says. “I guess because maybe truth is my currency and they have a monopoly on lies, that’s their thing. And they can’t buy me and I call them out.
“They know that I know what they’re up to,” she says. “And I write really great songs that people connect with and understand, and that’s a powerful medium, actually. I think they’re threatened by me, and so they attack.”
This week’s shows in Santa Ana and Los Angeles are part of a six-week U.S. tour, its relatively short length a trade off for the role of mother she occupies when at home and in her week for having the girls at her home.
“I’m limited in terms of what I can do promo-wise and touring if I want to be the mother that I want to be and be as present as I can be for my children,” she says. “It’s difficult but I would never use the word sacrifice because my kids are a blessing.”
Lily Allen
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5 and Monday, Oct. 8.
Where: The Friday show is at the Observatory, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. On Monday she’s at the Fonda Theatre, 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles
How much: $35 for the Observatory; $34.50-$39.50 for the Fonda
For more: Lilyallenmusic.com
