Lily now believes this decision was an act of “self-sabotage” because she “may not have survived” if she achieved stateside superstardom.
By
This article mentions drug use and substance abuse.
British singer Lily Allen has never shied away from the fact that she has experimented with drugs in the past.
Dave Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images for Burberry
Just last year, the now-39-year-old star told the New York Times: “From 18 to about four or five years ago just feels like a bit of a haze, because I was literally just off my face the whole time.”
And in a subsequent interview with Glamour, Lily admitted that her decision to get sober in 2019 may have saved her life.
“I actually don’t even know if I’d be alive, if I’m honest, if I hadn’t got sober,” she shared. “Sobriety has just changed my life immeasurably.”
Lily, who married Stranger Things actor David Harbour in 2020, added at the time: “I don’t think I’d be married to my husband. I don’t think that my kids would be thriving in the way that they are. I don’t think that I’d have gone into finding acting and how much I enjoy that. I definitely wouldn’t be getting as much sleep.”
“At the top of my gratitude list when I go to bed every night is my sobriety,” she concluded.
And in Monday’s episode of her BBC podcast Miss Me?, Lily revealed that her honesty about her drug use had a huge impact on her music career after she opted to tell the truth when quizzed by immigration officers in America.
Justin Tallis / AFP via Getty Images
Lily released her debut album, Alright, Still, in her home country of the UK in 2006, and there was so much buzz around her that US publication Entertainment Weekly ended up naming it as one of the top 10 albums of the year even though it hadn’t been released in America by this point.
C. Uncle / FilmMagic
And Lily’s US profile continued to skyrocket ahead of the release of her second album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, in 2009, which ultimately debuted at number 5 in America.
Antony Jones / UK Press via Getty Images
Speaking on the podcast, Lily explained that the record label was impressed with her stateside success and channeled money into promoting her as a priority act by planning a tour across the country and several high-profile appearances, including a performance at an MTV awards show.
But all of this unceremoniously came to a halt following her border control confession.
She explained: “When my second album came out, which was very successful, it’s called It’s Not Me, It’s You, and I was going into America to shoot the music video.”
“It was about a couple of months before I was about to start touring the album in America, and the tour sales had been really good, and everything was going according to the record company’s plan, and things were looking really, really good and very strong,” Lily continued.
“And I got to immigration in LA, and an immigration officer asked me had I ever taken drugs before, and I said: ‘Yeah,’” she went on. “And they paroled me in, but they basically, you know, put a ‘void’ stamp in my visa.”
Morena Brengola / Getty Images
Lily then explained: “I had never been arrested for anything to do with drugs, and I didn’t have anything on my criminal record, I answered this question honestly when I could have not answered it honestly, and I would have been able to have gone right through, plain sailing. It meant I had to cancel my tour, and the record company pulled out all the funding from all of that album promotional schedule, and things stopped going as well as they should have and would have gone.”
When Lily’s cohost and best friend, Miquita Oliver, asked if her decision to be honest with customs “changed things,” Lily said: “Absolutely. It completely changed things; I was a priority act in America. The album was heading up the charts and was going to really exciting places, and then it wasn’t because I couldn’t get in the country anymore.”
“I was meant to perform at the MTV Awards, and it got canceled,” she continued. “The whole tour was canceled; everything got canceled.”
With hindsight, Lily — who now lives in America — thinks that the entire situation may have been “subconscious self-sabotage,” as she was already struggling with the level of fame she was experiencing at the time.
Neil Mockford / FilmMagic
She explained: “I do wonder sometimes if that was the universe’s plan for me and that I did it sort of intentionally because I was pretty strung out without mainstream success in America, and if things had gone really well, I may not have survived, actually.”
“I feel like it might have completely worn me out,” Lily clarified. “I feel like all of the consumption of things that do me no good, alcohol and other extracurricular activities, would have got out of hand, and I might not have made it out the other side.”
“So I think maybe I sabotaged that opportunity for myself in a way — at least, I like to think that to square it off in my mind,” she concluded. “I mean, I only just survived the level of fame that I did attain, so anything more than that could have been disastrous.”
Just seven months after the release of It’s Not Me, It’s You, Lily announced that she had “no plans” to make another album and would not be renewing her record contract.
Jacopo Raule / Getty Images
She ended up taking a four-year hiatus from the music industry, returning in 2013 with a cover of Keane’s hit song “Somewhere Only We Know,” followed by the lead single of her third studio album, Sheezus, which was released in 2014.
Since then, Lily has released another album, No Shame, and found success in theater acting — even earning a prestigious Olivier award nomination for her performance in the West End show 2:22 A Ghost Story.
Listen to the full episode of Miss Me? here.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and find more resources here.
- Lily Allen
- Stephanie SoteriouBuzzFeed Staff
