Lily Allen has reflected on her John Lewis Christmas advert song, claiming she was “bullied” into recording the track.
Back in 2013, Lily topped the UK singles chart with a cover of Keane’s ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, which was first debuted in the John Lewis Christmas ad ‘The Bear & The Hare’.
The song marked Lily’s first solo single in four years, after previously claiming she was bowing out of the music scene to focus on motherhood and other career ventures.
However, despite the success of ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, Lily has now suggested she never wanted to record the track, and was actually “bullied” into partnering with John Lewis.
Reflecting on her 2014 ‘Sheezus’ album campaign, Lily told Vulture: “What fucked me off was being bullied into doing ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ for the John Lewis advert.
“They made me do it. I said, ‘I don’t wanna be in a John Lewis advert’. And they said, ‘If you don’t, the morale’s gonna be low at the label’.”
She added: “It was money. It’s free. John Lewis payed for studio costs, promo, everything.
“It was No. 1 for four weeks, got 250 million plays on Spotify. I don’t see any of it, because it’s not my song. I didn’t write it. The label owns copyright of me.”
Lily previously admitted that she only recorded ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ so her record label would promote her song, ‘Hard Out Here’, the lead single from her third album, ‘Sheezus’.
She told Popjustice: “I did [want to do the John Lewis advert].
“I knew that ‘Hard Out Here’ as a song – before the video was shot – was one of the more important moments on the album. But I also thought that because it had the word ‘bitch’ on it, it wasn’t going to get played on the radio…
“I wasn’t going to be able to get the label to pay for a video unless I had some kind of bargaining tool. So when John Lewis came along and said ‘would you pitch for this?’, I was like, ‘yes, if you guys put up the money for this’. And they said, ‘yeah, yeah, sure we will, oh hang on we haven’t got any money so let’s get E-Lites and Beats By Dre and a load of other people to pay for it instead’.”
Lily added: “I do actually really like ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, and it’s come in handy for those little acoustic gigs.”
The singer is currently gearing up for the release of her fourth album, ‘No Shame’, released on 8 June.