The XX Factor: What women really think.

Girl Just Wants To Have Fun

Speaking of women who overshare and occasionally commit crimes against fashion, British pixie and MySpace star Lily Allen's got a very charming album, It's Not Me, It's You, out today. Unlike most musicians, funny is one of Allen's priorities, and she's good at it. Listening to the album is like having a chat about the tabloids and relationships with a very clever, saucy friend who speaks only in rhyme: enjoyable and not particularly taxing.

The album's got three types of songs on it, more or less: 1) Make-up and break-up songs. 2) Jingle-based op-eds about various of-the-moment topics, including drug use ("So you've got a prescription/ And that makes it legal/ I find the excuses/ Overwhelmingly feeble") and celebrity culture ("I want to be rich and I want lots of money/ I don't care about clever I don't care about funny/ Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner/ And everything is cool as long as I'm getting thinner") 3) Musical interpretations of various Sex and the City episodes.

This last category is where Allen runs into some trouble. She's fine when sticking to Charlotte-esque sexcapades, as in "Not Fair:"

"There's just one thing
That's getting in the way
When we go up to bed
you're just no good
It's such a shame
I look into your eyes
I want to get to know you
And then you make this noise
and its apparent it's all over."  

But she gets tripped up by lame accepted wisdom on "22," a song about an unhappily single 30-year old. Allen sings, "It's sad but it's true how society says/ Her life is already over/ There's nothing to do and there's nothing to say/ Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up and puts her over his shoulder." Allen, who is only 23, might be trying to sympathize with this unattached woman, but with sympathy like that she might as well have told her to give up on life and start hording the cats. It's one of the album's few tone-deaf moments.