Lily Allen: ‘Record companies are terrified of taking risks at the moment’

Lily Allen has said she feels record companies are scared of taking risks on experimental artists.
Speaking to NME in this week’s issue, which is on newsstands or available digitallynow, the singer says record labels are veering towards picking safe, “watered-down” music when choosing singles to release.

“What pisses me off about music right now is the lack of support for being experimental and brave,” she said. “People just want to be formulaic and predictable. Record companies and A&R people are just absolutely terrified of taking risks at the moment – and that’s quite frustrating as an artist, when it comes to picking singles, because they only ever want to go for the watered-down stuff.”

This causes frustration for artists, she continues, when only more commercially-driven music is released. She added: “I’m not saying that those songs can’t have a good pop sensibility about them, but personally, I like to think of myself as being something a little bit more than that. It’s sad to watch the tracks that I think are stronger having to sit back on the album while the poppier, more commercial ones are driving it.”

Allen went to Number One in 2013 with a cover of Keane‘s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ and Number Nine with her comeback single proper ‘Hard Out Here’. She is yet to announce full details of her third album, which she previously told NME will be released in 2014
[NME]