A LILY IN THE FIELD

I'm a big fan of Saturday Night Live and have been for years. But I hate to say that my love for SNL has diminished a good amount because let's face it, the writing just sucks. Tina Fey leaves and the writing goes to garbage.

I've therefore concetrated my viewership of each show to the musical guest. I've found that SNL's musical guests are mainly in sync with that of the British Music Scene and what you can hear on Virgin Radio UK - http://www.virginradio.co.uk.

Some bands that have been on both include Franz Ferdinand, The Scissor Sisters, Keane, and Snow Patrol. But the one act I recently caught on the episode with Drew Barrymore (which was hilarious by the way), was a very fresh and original sound by the name of Lily Allen. She performed her pop hit "Smile" and I did one of those "Oh that's who sings this?" when she started playing. How to characterize her?

Think Nora Jones meets Sid Vicious.

After seeing her, I went to ITunes the next day and sampled her music. I loved it so much that I downloaded the album. I look for original sounding stuff all the time and lemme tell you, if you're into off the wall and out of the ordinary, Lily Allen is a great alternative. Her voice is sweet but she herself is anything but. She's kind of strange looking and has that ska Sex Pistols underground Bri-ish way about her and also sings with a British accent. She doesn't hide it like many other rock stars. The beats are original and even though the songs are fun sounding, the words are completely depressing. NO WEDDING SONGS HERE!

The bottom line about Lily Allen is, she's found a way to take many approaches to music and create one sound. She's also probably very self accomplished, unlike the American Idolers who are told what to sing and when. If you listen to songs like LDN and Take What You Take, you'll know right off that these songs were not created by record execs.

I just hope she's not a one album wonder. I'd love to see her around for years to come.