Ode to the Bitchy British Songbirds

Now I know you feel betrayed
But it's been weeks since I got laid
This doesn't mean
I don't think you're a fool
-"Never Gonna Happen"

He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
-"Back to Black"

Wrap it up cause I ain't
Carrying your embryo
-"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)"

If you can imbue caustic, obscene lyrics like those above with easy charm, you must be a Bitchy British Songbird. These ladies can don fabulous earrings, deball a man, and write a fetching song about it on any given afternoon. They can also do the vulnerable vocal equivalent of languishing on the couch with an ice cream pint. That's range.

No matter how much of a laughingstock she becomes, I keep loving Amy Winehouse. When someone is willing to rip open her soul for my listening pleasure, I forgive just about anything. Hence I still want to set Amy up in a little hutch in the backyard with some fresh straw and clean water and care for her until she gets better. Sure it's irrational. But if you were off listening to Mary Wells and the Shangri-Las when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, hearing that Motowny girl group sound coming from a sassy, contemporary London Jewgirl is too much to resist. In interviews about her hypothetical next album, Winehouse has said it will be like Back to Black, "but with more ska." Which makes me want to cry, because I would like to hear that so very, very much, and its future existence is dubious.

Not that I mind listening to Back to Black even yet more. The title track manages to chop and screw chipper Motown into the darkest of lamentations on love lost: We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times. (Of course she's talking about that fuckup Blake guy, but never you mind.) And "Wake Up Alone" is a slow jam straight out of the secret Kellerman's staff party in Dirty Dancing. She really croons on that one:

If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up
And I'm--breathless
This ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now

The sensational Estelle also harkens back to all my favorite old soul. But if Amy is widely known as cracked-out "Rehab" chick, the general listening public knows Estelle as just the popstar of "American Boy." Only marginally less of an underestimation. Her Shine album reminds me so much of Aretha's Sparkle that I have to wonder if the one-shimmery-word title thing is coincidental. The splendiferous "More Than Friends" samples the Queen of Soul version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," so it had me at hello. Then it overclosed with tender lyrics and Estelle's sultrily earthy rapping:

Don't play me like a extra
I got speaking roles
I am not that ho
I am so much more

And the "American Boy" thing is no joke. Seems every big man on the American music campus wants to musically date Estelle. Her "(feat...)" stable includes John Legend, Kanye West, Wyclef and Sean Paul. And the latter sounds especially excited to introduce the two of them (Sean-a-Paul and ESTELLE!) at the beginning of the "Come Over" remix.

Lily Allen's offerings remind me not of my old Motown tapes, but of driving out to Orange County for ska shows in high school. Her first hit "Smile" does, anyway. And come to think of it, I wish her new album, It's Not Me, It's You sounded more like "Smile" and less like microwave popcorn with fake butter. (You can say something mean like that to her, because she can dish it out, hence she can take it.) She may be lightweight, but she is just the perfect confection. A vanilla meringue, spiked with vodka.

Brits are always better at using the language, and Londoners seem to specialize in rich, cussy slang. Why say "lots of diamonds" when you can say "fuckloads" like Lily? (Amy also enjoys nouns that employ the "fuck-" stem, as in, What kind of fuckery is this?) The BBS's use those dirty mouths to dress down men, which is a healthy tonic if you listen to fuckloads of misogynistic rap, as I do. There's nothing quite like Estelle's final blow at the end of "No Substitute Love": You need to grow a couple boy/You ain't bout nothin boy.

It's Not Me, It's You goes ahead and takes it there by having a song entitled "Fuck You." It's about a bigoted individual to whose racism and homophobia Lily Allen is saying "fuck you very much"--but you know that theme was an afterthought. The girl wanted to have a song called "Fuck You." And then she was like, well it would be too obvious if it was another of my deballing tracks, so I'll go in this unexpected political direction. She never tires of using her cherubic voice to say something demonic, and I haven't tired of it yet either. If and when I do tire, I'll write her a saccharine-toned grenade of self-esteem demolition. Because she can dish it out.