"The Fear" is a song by English singer-songwriter Lily Allen from her second studio album, It's Not Me, It's You (2009). Written by Allen and Greg Kurstin, the song was released as the lead single from the album. Initially, "Everyone's at It" was announced to be the first single from the album. However, it was ultimately decided on "The Fear" to be released on 26 January 2009 by Regal Recordings, while Allen posted the demo (which was then titled "I Don't Know") onto her MySpace account in April 2008. The song incorporates electropop music as the lyrics articulate problems with celebrity lifestyles and include metaphors for recognised tabloid national newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Mirror.
Contemporary critics complimented the song and its themes of consumerism and the postmodern condition. "The Fear" topped the UK Singles Chart for four consecutive weeks, thus becoming the longest running number 1 in the UK of 2009, while peaking inside the top 10 in Australia and Ireland and the top 20 in several European countries. It is also Allen's second entry on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, where it reached number 80.
The accompanying music video portrayed a fantasy theme, with Allen dancing with giant wrapped gifts and balloons. It was shot at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire and also featured dancers dressed as butlers; the locations were initially in a caravan in a park, and then in a giant colourful mansion, surrounded by contrasting grey clouds. The song was performed live for the first time via The Scott Mills Show on BBC Radio 1 and during Allen's 2009 concert tour. "The Fear" was awarded with Best Track prize at the 2009 Q Awards, and also won Allen two Ivor Novello Awards in 2010, for Best Song Musically and Lyrically, and Most Performed Work.
Background and composition
Allen wrote and recorded the song with Greg Kurstin in a cottage located in Moreton-in-Marsh in 2007. She released a demo version of the song, which was then called "I Don't Know", onto her Myspace account, along with another song, "I Could Say", in April 2008. Initially, the song "Everyone's at It" was announced to be released as the lead single from the album, but it was ultimately decided on "The Fear". While discussing It's Not Me, It's You, Allen stated that her intention was to make "bigger sounding, more ethereal songs, real songs. [...] I think I've grown up a bit as a person and I hope it reflects that." The singer declared about the inspiration for the song, which has to do with materialism and the pressures of being rich and famous: [I'll] tell you where the inspiration for it came from. I was walking down this street, in this village in the middle of the countryside in the U.K., and there was this little girl who must have been eight or nine, walking down the street with her mum in, like, high-waisted hot pants and a little crop top. And I just thought, 'That's not really right.' And I could tell she was the kind of girl that would be trying out for Pop Idol in five years time, and wants to be famous when she grows up. And there's definitely the whole culture of that where I come from, and it's not necessarily a culture that I think is particularly healthy. But at the same time, I'm very aware that I am a part of that culture – but it's not something that I feel particularly comfortable with.
Musically, Allen adopts a more mature electropop groove for the song, which has been described to have "a pulsing, sleekly modern electro dance backing", while coming through a "flood of soft synths" and being "eminently danceable and slightly trancey". It is set in common time and in the key of F major and has a metronome of 134 beats per minute. Allen's voice spans from F3 to A4. Lyrically, the song is a satire of materialism "sung in the voice of a would-be starlet", and tackles societal consumerism and overnight-fame-hunting. It also makes reference, through the line "I'll look at The Sun and I'll look in The Mirror", at the daily British tabloid national newspapers The Sun and Daily Mirror, which often report on Allen. The synthesiser parts were written by Greg Kurstin using Apple's Logic Studio, using its built-in instruments.