“Us females, we’ve made it quite obvious that we can do it all just as well, if not better, than the boys,” Allen said.
Like MIA with Diplo, Allen has found her “musical soul mate” in producer Greg Kurstin, the keys man behind indie buzz band the Bird and the Bee. Whereas she worked with a number of producers (including hitmaker Mark Ronson) on her breakthrough debut, Alright, Still, she stuck close to Kurstin for the entirety of It’s Not Me, It’s You.
“He’s like a young Burt Bacharach, and I’m (Hal David) — or better yet, I’m Elton and he’s Bernie,” Allen said. “He’s very much involved ... and I’m totally inspired by him.”
Allen doesn’t write before going into the studio, she said. (“If I come in with something preconceived, then it sounds like that,” she said.) Their writing process involved Kurstin behind a piano playing various chord progressions and Allen on the sofa with pen and paper, telling him to stop when she connected with something he was playing.
When asked what she thinks about their creations, Allen quickly replies, “It’s absolutely brilliant” — but then she quickly recoils, revealing her vulnerabilities and penchant for straight talk.
“No, I’d have to say that I didn’t think about it too much,” she said. “If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. I’m doing this project by project, so my next album will be something completely different.”
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