Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the singer-songwriter Lily Allen. Less than a decade ago

she dipped her toe in musical waters by releasing her demos on social media.

This summer she's one of the headline acts at

Clastenberry. It's 29 years since she first appeared at the festival, back then

though she was a newborn, being carried through the crowd in swaddling. Indeed, she was as good as

baptized at the font of celebrity culture. Her dad Keith is an actor and writer, her

mom Allison an award-winning film producer, and for a time her stepdad was Harry Anfield so it seems

almost inevitable that she's ended up at the center of a media saturated life

except that in all likelihood she would have been propelled there entirely by her own endeavors.

Her lyrics are witty and wise ass and capture concisely what it is to be a savvy young woman now.

She says, the only thing I can do really is write lyrics and

the only way I know how to do that is by being honest and doing it with integrity

because otherwise there's no point. So Lily Allen, writing with integrity, a reading of your

lyrics would suggest that you really do put it all out there. You don't hold

back. Is that a policy of viewers or can you just not help it? I don't think it's the case of not wanting to hold back? Is that a policy of yours or can you just not help it? I don't think it's

the case of not wanting to hold back. I think I just sit down and start writing. I

don't censor myself, you know, I just can't. There's no point in doing it

unless it's real. Some people

wouldn't want to have their innermost thoughts out there that they might write

...