Lily Allen spent years holding a grudge against Elton John for not responding to a letter she wrote him— until she realized that she never actually sent it.
The “Smile” singer opened up about John, 77, being her former manager under his Rocket Music Entertainment Group during the Monday, May 6, episode of her BBC podcast “Miss Me?” Allen said the duo would talk “every couple of weeks to check in and say hi to make sure I was OK, but there were times in that period where I wasn’t OK.”
After the twosome parted ways professionally, Allen said that she wrote John a “long letter” to share how “sad” she was about the “Elton-shaped hole in her life.” However, when she didn’t hear back, her opinion of the “Tiny Dancer” musician changed.
“Over the next few years as my life began to sort of spiral out of control, I held much resentment for the fact that I’d made myself very vulnerable in this letter and told him all about my sobriety,” she said, adding that she was “quite cross with him for a few years.”
It was only in 2020 when she moved to New York — where she now lives with husband David Harbour and her two daughters, Ethel, 12, and Marnie, 11, whom she shares with ex-husband Sam Cooper — that she discovered the letter which was still left unsent.
“Elton, if you’re listening — which you’re probably not — I love you and I no longer harbor that resentment towards you,” Allen quipped on the episode, which was titled “Dear Elton, Sorry Seems to be the Most Appropriate Word.”
Allen took to social media on Tuesday, May 7, to extend her apology even further, linking the podcast episode via her Instagram Stories and on the BBC Sounds official Instagram page, captioning the post, “Oops. We love you @eltonjohn 💖.”
Allen and John do have a colorful history. In 2008, they teamed up for the GQ Men of the Year awards in London. When John suggested Allen lay off the champagne after getting increasingly drunk on stage, Allen replied, “F—k off, Elton. I’m 40 years younger than you. I have my whole life ahead of me.”
John, for his part, quipped back, “I could still snort you under the table.
The following year, Allen featured a John lookalike in the music video for her 2009 song “Who’d Have Known,” where she stalks, obsesses over and abducts the “Tiny Dancer” singer and ties him up in her home.
Allen’s former beef with John isn’t the only reason she’s made headlines in the past few months. In April, Allen claimed on her podcast that Beyoncé’s husband, Jay-Z‘s speech at the Grammys in February, where he criticized organizers for never awarding her with Best Album, was part of a “campaign” to boost her current album, Cowboy Carter.
“I think it’s been quite calculated,” Allen claimed of Beyoncé’s genre switch to country. “I feel like when Jay-Z got up at the Grammys, that was part of this campaign. It was before the album had come out or even been announced and she was wearing the blonde wig and a cowboy hat.”
Allen noted that Beyoncé is now “the most played woman on country music” before criticizing the Grammy-winner’s decision to cover Dolly Parton‘s 1973 smash hit “Jolene.”
“It’s quite an interesting thing to do when you’re trying to tackle a new genre and you pick the biggest song in that genre,” Allen said before edding, “I mean you do you, Beyoncé.”
