Lily Allen, Me, Myself And I

by Bob Boilen

Okay, so I got a little obsessed, but I swear it could have happened to anyone. I was listening to the new Lily Allen CD, which I like -- at moments, it gave me a few good belly laughs, along with some insightful lyrics.

But I was completely struck with the number of times she says the word "I." It got to the point where I tried counting, got to over 60 and stopped. There's also a boatload of her singing about "you" on the record, too.

Allen certainly isn't the only self-absorbed artist in rock -- heaven knows the Morrissey record on the current All Songs Considered mines a lot of personal ground. But in terms of sheer numbers, Lily Allen hands-down sings and writes about herself more than anyone I know. (Unless you can think of someone else.)

Anyway, I went to Wordle and pasted in the lyrics to the entire Lily Allen CD, It's Not Me, It's You. (It's even in the title!) Wordle then constructed a word cloud with the most-often-said words big and bold. It's a funny way to look at a record. I'll try this with others in my free time, or you can try it and put a link in your blog post.

7:45 PM ET | 02-12-2009 | permalink

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