CityLife

Lily Allen and Dizzee Rascal

Lily Allen

Lily Allen and Dizzee Rascal
MEN Arena
March 5, 2010

Lily Allen is battling illness. “I’ve got a bout of bronchitis so sorry if my singing’s a bit s***,” she apologies, before adding “Not that it’s any good to begin with.” Yet tonight, at a sold out MEN Arena, the bourgeoisie brat is facing a greater challenge than a larynx that’s waving a white flag – namely how to follow Dizzee Rascal. 

Britain’s biggest pop star of last year and a man who made grime so palatable that even Kim and Aggie wouldn’t wince, everybody knows the raps-to-riches story of Dylan Mills, the 24-year-old who fought his way out of the corner into the mainstream.

He racked up three Number One singles in 12 months; talked politics with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight; and in one cringe-inducing moment, what-ho!mmie Prince Harry even offered him a backstage 'street handshake'. That’s not a euphemism.

Not that Diz is resting on his laurels. A full live-band including a brass section, backing singers, and Spinal Tap-style guitarist flesh out a hit-laden set; providing something more tangibly exciting than anything he would have achieved with just a DJ as a back-up.

Indeed, perhaps the only reminder of the criminal past he tackled in songs such as Sirens is when a turned-up-11 version of Fix Up, Look Sharp has to be restarted due to a fight in the crowd. It’s a brief scuffle – you expect if anything’s going to quell testosterone, it’s the sight of hundreds of 10-year-old girls sporting flashing bunny ears.

Brilliantly, the machine-gun rap of Stand Up Tall is spliced with a blistering cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

He saves the home-run of Dance wiv Me (with Daniel Pearce of boyband One True Voice non-fame, standing in Calvin Harris) and Holiday until last. When he finishes by asking “Manchester, are you ready to go Bonkers?” before roaring through the rousing rave hit of the same name, the question is rhetorical.

Your heart goes out to Lily Allen: this may be one of her last performances before she supposedly quits pop to open a shop, but for the audience it feels as if the dessert has arrived before the main course. 

Dancing like a one-woman wedding reception, she’s nevertheless entertaining: dedicating the roof (and finger) raising F*** You to Liverpool footballer Steven Gerrard who was apparently in the audience (“Manchester on a Friday night – are you sure, bruv?” she laughs), and adding a full-tilt drum’n’bass breakdown to the lilting summery ska of Smile.

Patience is however, tested, with a dreary cover of the The Kooks’ Naive and when she disappears offstage to reappear smoking a cigarette, only a pearl-clutching maiden aunt would be shocked.