Lily Allen has been one of the year's big success stories, with her brand of effortlessly likeable pop. LDN is re-released in September with a cover of The Kooks' Naive as a B side - here's what we had to say about LDN first time round...
Trawling through cyberspace looking for new music can be a daunting prospect at times, which is why MySpace has become something of a phenomenon lately. A handy place for both major label artists and unsigned acts to stream their music, there's still an awful lot of dross there, but now and again you come across a genuine star.
Lily Allen is such a case, as the thousands of people who have already signed up to her MySpace page will testify. Rather lazily dubbed a "female Mike Skinner" by some, she crosses ska, reggae, funk with some good old-fashioned pop to create a marvellous summer anthem in LDN. The lyrics immediately grab the attention: she rhymes Tesco with 'al-fresco' which has to be a mark of genius, and can effortlessly come out with a line like "a fella looking dapper and he's sitting with a slapper, then I see it's a pimp with his crack-whore".
Knock 'Em Out is equally astounding, an infectious piano loop forming the backdrop of a witty tale of batting off admirers on a typical Friday night out. It's like the southern female counterpoint to Alex Turner's beautifully observed songs and if there's any justice then she will be as huge as those Arctic boys by the end of the year. Best of all, she has a seemingly endless collection of songs that are just as good, if not better, than these two. Most astonishingly of all, she's only 20 years old. All hail the most exciting new songwriter of the year.
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