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Lily Allen, No Shame


Having built her pop music career on rough-around-the-edges, streetsmart badassery, Lily Allen devotes her 4th album to reconciling that nature with life in her 30s: As an adult, wife, a mother and a public figure. This negotiation is not a linear approach — some songs welcome maturity, others question the trappings of such adulthood, others tease and dance playfully around her chosen themes. It’s a solid, dancehall-infused pop album without any real clunkers. Not all of it is exceptional but all of it is enjoyable, and three songs in paritcular lift it to higher gorund: The complex emotional shading of “Family Man,” the exquisitely crafted comedy of “My One,” and the heartstring-tugging beauty of “Three,” a song written from the perspective of Allen’s daughter.

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