Music Theory Presents: "Alfie"

Photo courtesy by Wikipedia.com

Written by Lily Allen and Greg Kurstin, "Alfie" became Allen's fourth single off of her first solo album Alright, Still.



The song was moderately successful on the charts as it managed to peak on number 15 on the New Zealand Singles Chart and on the UK Singles Chart.

"Alfie" is basically about her brother Alfie who was wasting his life away smoking weed, watching television and playing computer games instead of doing something about his life.

"Ooh Alfie get up it's a brand new day/I just can't sit back and watch you waste your life away/you need to get a job because the bills need to get paid/get off your lazy arse Alfie please use your brain".

When it comes to the melodies of Lily Allen, she tends to let the music contradict her lyrics. With this poppish, happy perky beat, she's singing about how much of a screw up Alfie is. It's very ironic how the music's tone is happy were as with the lyrics to the beat, it's extremely the opposite. Of course that's Allen's best tactics to gain her listeners. Vocally it tends to be monotone at times but for this song in particular, it fits well.

Along with this children theme song like beat, Allen adds in rhymes within her stanzas to try and make it tastefully edgy. Her lyrics are also very tongue and cheek since she tends to be brutally honest with her message.

This song gets four out of five stars for an interesting choice of music, edgy lyrics and good vocals.