Sidelong "Smile"


I loved Lily Allen's "Smile" at first listen, and not only because it's a deliciously mean break-up song with a current of true and righteous feeling under it, at least as I hear it. I'm also a sucker for the little hi-hat skip that leavens the last beats of every fourth measure (here's the original recording if you're somehow unfamiliar).

But what gets me every time is the precise blur of the melody, which I think somewhat (somewhat!) softens or sweetens the song's gleeful hostility toward a cheating ex. The whole thing is built on two jazzy piano chords, Gm7 and FMaj7, over a loping rocksteady groove, and while the verse is straightforward singalong, it hammers a C note over the Gm7 quite often, a suspension that sets up the glorious, unexpected rise and fall of the chorus.
To spell it out: We start with a C over Gm7, a tentative-sounding dissonance that blooms into the notes of a full F major chord over that Gm7. The F chord "catches up" to the melody on "cry," but the triadic certainty of that landing is smudged at the end by a G note. A pop song with an FMaj9? Watch this space. On the first "smile" she sings the notes of a Gm9 chord over the Gm7, then sings the final "smile" in one of my favorite non-resolutions in pop: G, F, E, spelling out that FMaj9 even more clearly in case we missed it the first time. That foggy 9th interval also returns for the beguiling la-la-la interlude. Indeed the lovely, sighing quality of this harmony arguably makes it a more devastating kiss-off than a more aggressive sound would be. Lily isn't just dressed to kill here—she's dressed to the nines.

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