Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 19/01/09
Label: Regal/EMI

For all the tabloid column inches and paparazzi pictures, it would be wrong to mistake Lily Allen for a product of the celebrity culture which so readily adopted her. She's much smarter than that, a point that comeback single, "The Fear" ably makes while neatly disembowelling the very notion of celebrity and all the meaningless trappings and skewed values that go with it. That she does it without sounding ungrateful or like a moaning pop star, only goes to prove just how smart she really is.

"I wanna be rich and I want loads of money / I don't care about clever, I don't care about funny," she assures with dead-eyed, mocking sincerity and quietly insistent synth-pop. "I'll take off my clothes, it will be shameless / Because everyone knows that's how you get famous." If the three years since her "Alright, Still" debut have been more about her wardrobe and private life than music, by the end of the opening verse she's redressed the balance and reminded us why we loved her in the first place.

    by Dan Gennoe