English songstress Lily Allen has notched her second U.K. number one single with “The Fear,” her first being her smash debut single “Smile” in the summer of 2006. Allen's sophomore album It's Not Me It's You will be released February 9 via Regal/EMI across the pond and Capitol in the States. The 23-year-old Allen, who is under near-constant tabloid speculation, recorded the 12-track album at Eagle Rock Studio in Los Angeles with producer/songwriter Greg Kurstin, who also helmed Allen's debut album. Among the dozen tracks on It's Not Me It's You are the country-tinged track “Not Fair,” “He Wasn't There” (“he” referring to her comedian father who was largely absent from her childhood) and “I Don't Know,” in which Allen tackles her tabloid persona.



The release date of Allen's sophomore album was pushed back, a fact that the songstress blamed on EMI's takeover by the private equity firm Terra Firma. Allen previously told http://Billboard.com that she wanted to “work with one person from start to finish and make it [the album] one body of work,” and she continued to say, “I wanted it to feel like it had some sort of integrity. I think I've grown up a bit as a person and I hope it reflects that.”

A true product of the technological era, Lily Allen launched her singing career on her MySpace page, which she let fly in 2005 and loaded with demo tapes that debuted her signature sound, which walks a fine line between bratty and sweet. The daughter of Welsh comedian Keith Allen and movie producer Alison Owen, Lily Allen first turned to music as a way to cope with her family's nomadic lifestyle when she was growing up—the English rose attended 13 different schools between the ages of five and 15! Allen was a rebellious teen with musical influences ranging from the Happy Mondays to T. Rex and when she was 14 she ran away from home in order to attend England's famed Glastonbury Music Festival. The following year, Allen dropped out of school to pursue a career in music and the rest is, as they say, history.

Lily Allen signed a record deal with Regal/Parlophone just one year after the cheeky singer launched her now-famous MySpace page and a talented production team consisting of Mark Ronson (with whom she had previously collaborated with for a cover of Kaiser Chief's “Oh My God” on her sophomore mixtape), Futurecoat and Greg Kurstin. A limited edition of Allen's infectious single “LDN” was released in the spring of 2006 followed by “Smile” and “LDN” later that summer. After her debut album Alright, Still was released abroad, Allen hit the road on a tour spanning the U.S., U.K., Japan and Australia around the same time that the album arrived in the States. Plans for another round of touring in support of It's Not Me It's You are in the works so check out http://www.stubhub.com/lily-allen-event-tickets for Lily Allen tickets.