Alright, Still is the debut studio album by English singer Lily Allen, released on 13 July 2006 by Regal Recordings.
Allen later travelled to the United States to work with Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, to complete the final half of the album in 2006.
Alright, Still is predominately a pop album, with songs that are heavily influenced by Jamaican ska music,[1] reggae and hip hop.
Upon release, Alright, Still received acclaim from the British music press, with international critics calling the record and Allen "original".
When her family went to Ibiza on holiday, Allen told her mother that she was staying with friends but remained in Sant Antoni de Portmany instead.
[7] In 2005, Allen was signed to Regal Recordings; the label gave her £25,000 to produce an album, though they were unable to provide much support for it due to their preoccupation with other releases such as Coldplay's X&Y and Gorillaz' Demon Days.
[8] In March 2006, OMM published an article about Allen's success through MySpace, and she received her first major mainstream coverage appearing in the magazine's cover story two months later.
Allen found herself distracted by the publicity, so to focus on finishing the album, she travelled to the United States to work with producers Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson.
[12] Joe Strummer, a close friend of Allen's father Keith, played mixtapes of Brazilian music and Jamaican reggae and ska when she was young.
[16] During the festival she reunited two members of the Specials, an act that guitarist Lynval Golding claimed played a "massive part" in the group's 2009 reunion.
[23] The Observer's Rosie Swash stated that Allen's "uniquely acidic brand of pop" music justified the publicity it generated and that "the icing on the cake is that brutally barbed tongue".
[30] Ron Webb wrote for Drowned in Sound that the album "is almost a brilliant record, easily a good one and one that promises to divide opinion like Marmite".
[28] Heather Phares of AllMusic stated that "enough of Alright, Still works—as pure pop and on the meta level Allen aims for—to make the album a fun, summery fling, and maybe more".
[11] Praising Allen for her "genuine personality with wit and attitude to spare", Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik remarked that the album "isn't anything else but a fantastic success".
[10] In his review for Blender, Jon Dolan complimented Allen's "little-sisterly" personality, describing it as a combination "of panache and self-doubt, courage and chaos".
[34] Rolling Stone published a similar story in December 2007, and it also identified Alright, Still as an album "so unrelentingly loud that the sound is actually distorted".
[38] Uncut called it "a terrific, bolshy, eclectic stew of London street pop", listing Alright, Still at number 38 on its "Definitive Albums of 2006".
[51] The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awarded the album a gold certification on 6 December 2007,[52] and by November 2013, it had sold 627,000 copies in the US.