Four years after leaving fans waiting and wondering if she would make a return to her music career, Lily Allen returned to the world of pop music with a scathing new video for her single “Hard Out Here” on Tuesday. The song will be released as a single Nov. 17, and will also be featured on Allen’s as of yet unnamed album. After the release of her platinum selling album “It’s Not Me, It’s You” in 2009, Allen announced that she was not renewing her record contract with Regal Recordings and was not interested in making music anymore, much to the dismay of her fans.
Although she has not been making her own music in the past four years, Allen has been keeping busy. In 2011 she married Sam Cooper, and the couple has had two daughters within two years.
At the end of 2012 Allen tweeted that she was in the studio, and was featured on the song “True Love” by Pink. At the time, she was also working on music of her own. In August, Allen again tweeted that she would be releasing new music soon.
Her new video already had close to two million hits on Youtube within one day of its release, and the song follows in the footsteps of “It’s Not Me, It’s You,” with a synth-pop sound, as opposed to the ska and reggae influences she had on her first album, “Alright, Still.”
The British singer, who is no stranger to making huge statements within her music, tears into sexism and double standards within the music industry in “Hard Out Here.”
Allen was also unafraid to take on one of the most famous, and controversial, pop stars of the year, Miley Cyrus. In her new video, Allen satirizes the constant use of twerking done by Cyrus, and has a scene of her manager attempting to teach Allen how to twerk, with poor results. Robin Thicke was another target of the video, with a hilarious balloon display mocking the video for “Blurred Lines.”
Allen embraces girl power within the lyrics of her song and attacks the glass ceiling that keeps women down as she sings “There’s a glass ceiling to break/ There’s money to make/ It’s time to speed it up because I can’t move at this pace.”
She also criticizes the media for attacking women in regard to their weight. The video opens with Allen getting liposuction, and her manager making remarks about how she has let herself go, while Allen comments “I’ve had two babies.”
The video makes strong comments about the state of sexism in the music industry, and also mercilessly mocks Robin Thicke, who has been criticized for objectifying women, along with mocking other celebrities. It would be easy to say Allen has learned not to put up with sexism and others trying to bring her down while on her hiatus, but her music has always been adored by fans due to her truthful lyrics and tough attitude. Allen’s fans are ecstatic with her powerful return and can look forward to her album in 2014.