Lily Allen, You're No Amy Winehouse

Ever the pot-stirrer, Lily Allen has decided to dedicate her forthcoming album Sheezus to the late Amy Winehouse. The album, which drops May 6, is already a cause for some concern — since she released her first single "Hard Out Here" from the new record, Allen has been, frankly, pissing people off with her uninformed and crude definitions of feminism. In response to being called a racist for objectifying black women in the video for "Hard Out Here," she posted a silencing tweet to her critics telling them they've "got no place telling me what kind of feminist I am. Fuck off." Charming!

To dedicate Sheezus to Winehouse, then, seems like just another ploy for Allen to grab some media attention, as if she hasn't received enough already simply from naming the album in honor of Kanye West. On the dedication, Allen said:

What [Amy] had to deal with was 10 times anything I had to deal with. She’d sold a hell of a lot more albums than me, and there was a lot more interest in her. There were people outside her home 24 hours a day, seven days a week. [But] I know what that was like on a much smaller level, and I felt trapped.

It's true that Winehouse and Allen share some vague similarities: they released their biggest albums in the same year, 2006, and were the stars on the forefront of British pop music. But for Allen to say she feels a kinship to Winehouse, who struggled terribly with her demons of addiction, seems like she's just glomming on the the memory of a woman who lost a battle with her disease.

Has Allen been the victim of negative attention from the press? Well, sure, but she's earned it, so to speak. She says that she feels a connection to Winehouse, who was, according to Allen, "too interesting for her own good," which is often an attribute that people ascribe to addicts to take the edge off. To romanticize Winehouse's addiction does an injustice to the late singer.

Allen also said of Winehouse, "She was not in a great place when we knew each other, so I don’t feel I knew Amy; I knew a version of Amy. She couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without there being a frenzy ... She was a prisoner."

If Allen was a different artist, the dedication might read as sentimental or respectful, but her general "fuck off" attitude in the buildup of Sheezus makes it seem like it's just an effort to associate herself with Winehouse.

It's all a little suspicious.