Lily Allen
Sheezus
(Parlophone)

Lily Allen took a five-year hiatus between her sophomore release, It’s Not Me, It’s You, and her latest album, Sheezus. A break that long means that her next release almost had to err on the side of a comeback; she needed to reestablish herself in the public eye and validate her relevance in pop music. Sheezus, however, is not quite powerful enough to accomplish this.

The title alone is brilliantly witty, and the title track bluntly addresses the current state of pop music and where Allen fits into the picture. She’s known for her snarky lyrics, and she throws a great deal of punches, but it’s difficult to tell if she’s praising or criticizing other female pop stars in the chorus, “Riri isn’t scared of Katy Perry’s Roaring/Queen Bey’s gone back to the drawing/Lorde smells blood, yeah she’s about to slay you.” The name dropping throughout the track is almost excessive. The music is undeniably catchy, but the lyrics don’t quite measure up.

The rest of the album follows this pattern while bouncing back and forth between blatant irony and introspection, resulting in a very uneven and incohesive record. Musically, the hip hop-inspired yet nearly bubblegum pop is incredibly polished and catchy. But for an artist so well known for her biting lyricism, Allen doesn’t seem to know what message she is sending throughout Sheezus.