Shame for You

"Shame for You" is a song by British recording artist Lily Allen from her debut studio album, Alright, Still. Written by Allen and Blair MacKichan, while sampling Jackie Mittoo's "Loving You" melody, the song was released as the A-Side to her fourth single, "Alfie", exclusively in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2007, by Regal Recordings.[1]

"Shame for You"
Single by Lily Allen
from the album Alright, Still
A-side"Alfie"
Released5 March 2007
Genre
Length4:05
LabelRegal
Songwriter(s)
  • Lily Allen
  • Blair MacKichan
Producer(s)Blair MacKichan
Lily Allen singles chronology
"Littlest Things"
(2006)		 "Shame for You" / "Alfie"
(2007)		 "Oh My God"
(2007)

While no music video had been shot for the song, it was performed live in Allen's 2007 concert tour.

Background

The song, Shame For You is a jazz song with pieces of funk and ska mixed with it. The song is set in the time signature of common time and played in the key of A minor, with Allen's vocals ranging from F#3 to A4.[2] It has a metronome of 80 beats per minute.[2] Allen plays the piano featured in the song. "Shame for You" samples parts of the melodic lines of "Loving You", a Jackie Mittoo song from his album, Evening Time.[3] Lyrically, the song has a "nice-then-naughty approach" and a vindictive streak that belies the sugarcoated sounds around it, while she revels in being the one that got away from her ex-boyfriend.[4] "Shame for You" was performed live, as part of the setlist of Allen's 2007 concert tour, for promoting Alright, Still.[5]

Reception

"Shame for You" was described by BBC reporter Lucy Davies to be a reggae-fused song, which "sticks in your head whilst you desperately suss out why [it's] familiar". Davies went on to say that Allen blatantly lifts the chorus hook from the song "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" by Dawn Penn.[6] Mark Pytlik of Pitchfork Media compared the singer's easy comfort with language to that of Mike Skinner, also suggesting she's confident enough that she never overexerts herself lyrically, but uses the song's wilting punchline, "Oh my God you must be joking me / If you think that you'll be poking me", to argue that she is "not above risking a stupid joke either".[7] Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine praised the production of "Shame for You", as well as "Alfie", with "plenty of catchy melodies and clever samples", but claimed that Allen lacks charisma.[8]

Having only being released through the "Alfie/Shame for You" single exclusively in the singer's home country, the song peaked at number 15, along with A-side "Alfie", on the UK Singles Chart.[9]

Track listing and formats

Credits and personnel
  • Lead vocals, piano - Lily Allen
  • Writer(s) - Lily Allen, Blair Mackichan
  • Producer - Blair Mackichan
  • Audio mixing - Future Cut
  • Audio mixing (assisted) - Dan Porter
  • Audio mixing (credited to) - Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola
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gollark: It would also have been quite hard to bias it against *lyricly* health, since it was me running the ++choose.
gollark: That's too vague, but roughly what I thought of, yes: use a pretrained language model and treat it as a classification task of some kind.
gollark: Maximum harm is probably wrong, ++choose allows phrases, and that isn't trivial to do anyway.
gollark: Never mind, I know how I would implement that but I don't think it'd be very good.

References
  1. "Alfie / Shame for You (Explicit)". Amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  2. "Lily Allen Shame for You Sheet Music". Music Notes. Alfred Music Publishing. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  3. "Lily Allen - Shame for You". Last.fm. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  4. "allmusic ((( Alright, Still > Overview )))". Allmusic. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  5. "Lily Allen at Salon 21, Mexico City, Mexico Setlist on March 23, 2007". Setlist.fm. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  6. Davies, Lucy (23 June 2006). "Review of Lily Allen - Alright, Still". BBC. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  7. Pytlik, Mark (18 July 2006). "Pitchfork: Album Reviews: Alright, Still". Pitchfork Media.
  8. Cinquemani, Sal (28 December 2006). "Lily Allen: Alright, Still - Musical Review". Slant Magazine. Archived from the original on 9 March 2009. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  9. ""Alfie"/"Shame for You" - chart positions". αCharts.us. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  10. "Lily Allen - Shame for You/Alfie - CD, Single". Discogs. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  11. "Alfie Tracklisting". Lily Allen Music. Archived from the original on 8 October 2009. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
  12. "Lily Allen - Shame for You - 7". Discogs. Retrieved 3 September 2009.
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