You're listening to Love Stories with me, Dolly Alderton, a series in which I talked

to guests about their most defining relationships, the passion, heartbreak, longing, familiarity

and fondness that has formed who they are.

My guest this week is the singer-songwriter, Lily Allen.

She first rose to fame in the mid-naughties, with her first album, All Right Still, which

sold over two and a half million copies.

This was followed by her second album, It's Not Me It's You, which won her a Brit Award,

three Ivan Avelo Awards and went to number one in the album chart.

Helirics are often politicized, sometimes irreverent and always searingly truthful.

No more so than on her most recent and most stunning album, No Shame, which was released

last year and explores themes of marriage breakdown, public shaming, parenting and self-destruction.

A few months after the album was released, she extended that story telling more explicitly

in her critically acclaimed, raw moving, bunny, tell all memoirs, my thoughts exactly.

Documenting a life lived in extremes, absent parents, teenage heartbreak, a rapid rise

to stardom, substance abuse, self-esteem battles and grief.

The book is ultimately hopeful and tells the story of a woman confronting her demons

and confronting who she really is without shame.

I guess because I was writing my album at the time and I was starting the beginnings

of the official of getting divorced and it was just a real period of reflection and

trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life.

I don't know, it just felt like, well actually while I'm on picking a bunch of stuff, maybe

it would be a good time to sit down and write it all.

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