She Means It

Lily Allen runs through Paris in the "Fuck You" video—or something very much like Paris—making a mess of strangers’ days with the energy of someone who has genuinely stopped keeping score. The song had been everywhere for weeks, and the video is a good match for it: cheerful, deliberate, entirely sincere in its hostility.

I’m not going to pretend I’m neutral on Lily Allen. She’s funny, she’s foul-mouthed, she has an extraordinary arse, and she’ll apparently flash her tits at her gay hairdresser just because the moment feels right. She seems to operate at a level of sustained low-grade chaos that I find genuinely compelling, and the fact that she occasionally seems unhinged only improves the picture.

"Fuck You" is slight, but it’s perfectly aimed. There’s something still satisfying about a pop song that says the thing directly and doesn’t bother making it a metaphor. No symbols, no subtext. Just the words, in that order, with a smile to deliver them.