Word: ska
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...Lily Allen became the first breakout star on MySpace, and even nonadolescents could figure out the appeal. Her debut album, Alright, Still, had an irresistible single called "Smile," a follow-up about a dope-smoking little brother, and just enough ska and reggae samples to hint at the existence of a precocious streak. There was a minor controversy over Allen's fondness for obscenities and Mockney (the British term for the upper-class affectation of a lower-class Cockney accent, ŕ la Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins), but even that advanced her charm as a real girl sticking...
...You” is only her second full album, the encouraging success of her earlier work—earning her a BMI songwriting award and a double-platinum record—has given Allen enough confidence to explore and experiment here. It’s refreshing to hear ska, jazz, and techno influences slipping into her pop beats. In one track on the new album, “Never Gonna Happen,” Allen uses folksy strings and an accordion, along with a handclap slowly building in tempo, to drill her message of rejection into the clueless head...
...Colbert. Allen, for example, had written a burlesque on The Seventh Seal in The New Yorker. Sometimes whole movies were tongue-in-cheek tributes to Bergman: George Coe and Tony Lover's 1968 American short De Duva (where "water" is the subtitle for the mock-Swedish "aitch-two-oh-ska") and the 1975 Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The spin-offs might be serious, they might be farcical, but all paid tribute to Bergman's unignorable influence...
...Manager Garry Blackburn thinks it's a challenge the industry can't escape. There are rumors that one of the bands he works with, the veteran British ska group Madness, is considering a deal with another national newspaper to release their upcoming new studio album. Blackburn won't confirm or deny, but says he's a big fan of the freebie. "If everybody takes a deep breath and considers what's going on, this is a wonderful opportunity," he says. "Yes, it means the industry will be dramatically different in a few years, but I don't think screaming like...
...Throughout the film Meadows deals deftly with the cultural confusions of the skinhead movement, whose members' bedrooms - replete with vintage posters of blaxploitation flicks and ska-music icons - attest to the influence of foreigners, and of Jamaicans in particular...