Though Lily Allen supposedly retired “from writing, recording and touring under the name ‘Lily Allen’” recently, all it took were a few exchanges on Facebook and UK rapper Professor Green has brought the “LDN” singer out of retirement. As the story goes, Green, who was once signed to Streets mastermind Mike Skinner’s The Beats label, mentioned one of his songs to Allen via the social networking site. She immediately hit the proverbial “Like” button:

“‘Just Be Good To Green’ turned out to be one of her favorite songs,” he told NME. “She suggested her singing the chorus. I didn’t take much persuading! Lily’s wicked.”

The track, which is off Green’s forthcoming album, Alive Till I’m Dead, hit YouTube and though I can’t really say it’s my jam, a different cut from the LP, his heavily-sampled take on INXS’ “I Need You Tonight” is pretty fun. As My Poproks notes, the latter tune features singer Ed Drewett and is currently flirting with the UK Top 10 pop charts. Stream both songs below:

Paparazzi fodder aside, love her or hate her, Lily Allen is fun to follow, and today is perfect proof: Not only did Ms. “LDN” join the likes of David Bowie in defending radio institution BBC 6 Music, but she also weathered an inevitable Courtney Love storm.

“I read that they want to invest in quality over quantity, but how does that make sense?” Allen wrote in the Guardian of the BBC’s rationale for giving their beloved radio station the axe. “If they close 6 Music, instead of acts like Seasick Steve and presenters like Lauren Laverne, it will be the Pussycat Dolls and Fearne Cotton on Radio 1.”

I implore you not to accuse us of hating on Sir Paul McCartney or Lily Allen (the British tabloids have claimed their stake in that), but we do need to call these two out for a moment. As suggested above, they’re both chock full of benevolence toward the plight of up-and-coming artists and they do truly believe they “get the internet,” but whenever that’s put into words, pull quotes ensue and things just get ugly.

Here’s McCartney’s latest quote on the subject (via Ars Technica):

First some serious news: the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown was arrested by Scotland Yard today on suspicion of assaulting his wife, Fabiola Quiroz, NME reports.

Police were called to his residence in London by neighbors reporting on a disturbance early this morning. Brown was incarcerated briefly but released on bail until next month.

Well, it was a fun week of Lily Allen news, but it appears to have ended just in time for the weekend. Last night, the Featured Artists Coalition, a group of famous musicians who have banded together in support of the rights of alleged filesharers, met with their biggest detractor of late, Lily Allen. The FAC and Allen had been butting heads all week after Allen started a blog campaign criticizing the FAC’s more laissez-faire attitude towards music pirates, gained support from other famous musicians, including Sir Elton John, and promptly deleted the blog amid plagiarism accusations, malevolent commenters, and general blogosphere/media chaos.

Last night, however, they all agreed on a compromise, which supports “sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.”

Furthermore, the group got Lily’s back on the whole brouhaha:

“We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days,” their statement reads.

And… scene!

Now that he’s facing formidable opposition from Sir Elton John and Captain James Blunt, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien has finally spoken out about the pseudo showdown between the Featured Artists Coalition and Lily Allen’s “It’s Not Alright” blog (which has been either hacked or mysteriously deleted by Allen in the past 12 hours).

“I completely agree with Lily Allen,” O’Brien told BBC World Service (via NME). “We’re [Radiohead] certainly not going to suffer. A lot of people have downloaded our music for free, but ultimately we don’t suffer as much as a small band.”

O’Brien maintained his stance that the government should not be allowed to disconnect alleged illegal file-sharers, but insisted that what he and “people like Lily Allen are saying” to music pirates is: “Listen, if you want a great vibrant music scene and your favorite bands to be able to carry on doing it, you have a responsibility to pay for some of the work that they’ve produced.”

Sounds like a bit of damage control to me, but it’s still nice to see these two finally agreeing on something. Teaching the public responsibility could be an impossible task, though. Trent Reznor learned that the hard way.

Lily Allen’s MySpace blog post on file-sharing, which calls out Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, and others, has caused quite a stir in the UK. Patrick Wolf posted a response, Muse’s Matt Bellamy emailed his thoughts to Allen, which she promptly posted, and now “You’re Beautiful” singer James Blunt has joined the fray over stricter piracy laws in the UK.

“Sir, I want to put my hand up in support of Lily Allen,” Blunt wrote in an op-ed for Times Online. “She’s asking British musicians to galvanise over a serious crime: the death of a great British industry — our music business”

Whereas, Radiohead’s O’Brien thinks that unrestricted file-sharing is good for up-and-coming musicians, Allen and Blunt disagree. “Without the revenue from established artists, record labels cannot fund emerging musicians,” Blunt continued. “They’ll just re-master the Beatles albums again, because they can’t afford to put an amazing new band into a studio to record something that may surpass Sergeant Pepper.”

I see where he’s going with this, but let’s not bring the Beatles into this, okay? It’s easy to forget that the entire compact disc revolution was also a kind of remaster/reissue scheme. Though it would be kind of funny if this turned into a debate over the best way to make another Beatles.

TwenytFourBit’s going on an interstate road trip for most of today, but here are a few bits to enjoy until we get back online.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt announced the band will go on hiatus after their current U.S. tour. “You never know,” he said. “This could be be the last tour. We do every show like it’s our last show anyway.” More details and (final?) tour dates over at Consequence of Sound.

Lily Allen’s MySpace blog post on file sharing, which calls out Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, and others, is causing quite a stir in the UK. Now Patrick Wolf has posted a response and Muse’s Matt Bellamy has emailed his thoughts to Allen, which she promptly posted.

The Daily Swarm found this interesting bit: Jay Farrar recorded his own version of Mermaid Avenue, “original music based on unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics at the behest of his daughter.” You know, the record that Wilco already made. What’s more, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James is also on the to-be-announced LP.

The Pavement reunion is not only confirmed, but guitarist Scott Kannberg is now talking. “It’s not gonna be like Echo and the Bunnymen, where they don’t talk to each other, yet they tour every year,” he tells Rolling Stone.

That’s my favorite stuff for today so far. Provided there are no car breakdowns, high speed police chases, or mishaps on the road, we’ll be back shortly.

When Russian PM Vladimir Putin wants to watch a bare-knuckle fist fight, he isn’t going to let a measly Lily Allen concert get in the way. Contact Music reports that Allen was force to cancel a Saint Petersburg show in 2007, when Putin, a martial arts enthusiast and co-author of Judo with Vladimir Putin, chose to attend a fight nearby.

Lily Allen kind of reminds me of Scooby-Doo’s annoying nephew Scrappy (“Let me at ‘em!”) because she isn’t the least bit afraid of calling out Russia’s muscleman PM. “Last minute, he decided to go and watch a bare-knuckle fist fight” Allen said, “and therefore my concert got cancelled because of security issues. So whatever, Putin - I’m not into you.”

Hear that Georgia? Next time Russia invades, you should fight back with lines from Sex and the City.