Lily Allen Shut Down This Unnecessary Tweet With A Surprisingly Candid Response

It’s safe to say that Lily Allen’s Twitter response to trolls and overall no-filter approach to social media has landed her in fair bit of controversy over the years. However, her latest clap-back has had quite the opposite effect as fans have praised the songstress for her well-pitched feminist response to a man who labelled her “mediocre” and put her success as a musician down to her famous dad, British actor and TV presenter, Keith Allen.

In a tweet directed at the star, who is currently awaiting the release of her fourth album, No Shame, the Twitter user wrote: “Sorry but Lily Allen mediocre singer only got where she is because she has a celebrity dad. Sad that real talent never gets a look in as they haven’t got the contacts.” The tweet has since been deleted but before that, Lily was quick to fire back, defending herself and pointing out the inequality between men and women in the music industry as a whole. “Mediocre men have dominated the music industry (all industry) since its inception,” she wrote. “Why shouldn’t mediocre women have their seat that the table too?” In a canny assertion of her position, she added #NoShame at the end of the tweet promoting her upcoming album.

With a Brit award, three prestigious Ivor Novellos and three successful albums under her belt, Lily is far from mediocre in my eyes. In fact, her undeniable flare for songwriting and catchy pop anthems have played a pivotal part in '00s British pop if you ask me. Not to mention that she was one of the first artists to make a name for herself with the use of social media, having built a following on MySpace back when it was what Instagram is to us today. While Lily might have meant the statement to be tongue in cheek, it would be sad if she did think of herself as a mediocre artist after all her success.

Nevertheless, I'm glad to see Allen back to empowering herself and others after developing a problematic relationship with feminism in the last few years. Back in 2014, Lily was criticised for claiming that feminist was over in an interview with Shortlist magazine. Naturally, her comments upset a lot of women and in true Lily Allen form, she jumped on Twitter to defend herself saying: "Unless you're standing outside Downing Street with one of those Australian bush hats with dirty tampons in place of corks shouting 'equal rights for men and women', you've got no place telling me what kind of feminist I am or am not. F**k off." As you can expect, it made things worse.

Last year, the "Smile" singer made the decision to quit social media altogether after receiving hateful trolling, The Independent reported. She revealed in an open tweet that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress following the tragic death of her son in 2010, which she explained happened after the umbilical cord became wrapped around her child's neck. The trolling about the incident came as a result of the singer's attempt to make a point about the prejudice against immigrants and Muslims which she tried to highlight in a series of tweets by replacing the words "immigrants" and "Muslims", with "pensioners."

In a recent interview with radio presenter Julie Adenuga on Beats 1, Lily, who has since returned to Twitter, discussed her relationship with social media and explained that she does still pay attention to what people say about her. “A lot of the time I’m saying things that really aren’t that bad [and] that get twisted to mean something really different, so no one can really take that away from me,” she said. “A lot of the stuff that I get in my timeline [is] horrible and threatening stuff. These people are saying a lot of horrible things about me, my kids, my role as a mother, my work – is everyone alright with that?" It's certainly not, and it makes sense that Allen likes to take a break every now and then.

The 33-year-old star recently performed at London's day festival Mighty Hoopla and will drop No Shame, her first album release since 2014's Sheezuz, this Friday 8 June.