Lily Allen Describes ‘Sheezus’ Market Research: “I Thought She’d F-cking Retired”

When asked if she’d ever had any market research performed on herself — following several comments regarding the stifling impact of her record label — UK singer Lily Allen recounted the time she was accidentally copied into an email that detailed less-than-constructive market research.

“I accidentally got copied in on a whole bunch of it and reading it was one of the most horrible moments of my life,” Allen told Popjustice. “They don’t actually tell the people what it is they’re listening to. So a lot of it was just people going, ‘Is this Lily Allen? It f-cking is Lily Allen! If this is her I thought she’d retired, the stupid c-nt!’ This is about six months ago… so it really set things off well.”

“The thing is, people who take part in market research: are they really representative of the marketplace? Probably not,” the singer added. Allen, who over the past few months has repeatedly complained about the industry machine, said that she finds market research “totally unhelpful.”

“My mum’s a film producer and they do these market research screenings… it’s just like school – people don’t have opinions but because they’re asked for them they come up with something and it becomes a statistic. It’s like, he didn’t actually think that, he was just trying to impress the bored-looking girl on Row 3… I’m yet to see an example of market research where it’s actually good.”

Among her recent label gripes, Allen said she was initially barred from releasing her track Sheezus, from the upcoming album of the same name, as a single because of a reference to menstruation, “which is really offensive to people, even though half the world has to deal with it once a month.”

Watch: Lily Allen – Sheezus

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