The Fear (song) - Background and Composition

Background and Composition

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." 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. The singer declared about the inspiration for the song, which has to do with materialism and the pressures of being rich and famous:

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 D flat to B flat. Lyrically, the song is a rant about 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.