Lily Allen is "more of a personality than she is a singer", Joss Stone said this week, dismissing Allen's polemic against filesharing. "[Lily] needs to sell records because she's not a singer, and that's not an offence to her because I think that she knows that too," Stone told the Press Association.

Whereas Stone is "making real music [and] people [will] come to the show" for "artist[s] like Lily ... it's about the track, their personality and their celebrity".

All this is a response to Allen's increasingly militant stance against illegal filesharers. "Filesharing is a disaster," Allen wrote on her blog, "as it's making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge".

"She's not going to win [the] fight [over downloads]," Stone said. "None of us will win that fight. So let's just accept it and see it as something that can be beautiful and might change music for the better. It might sort the weeds from the flowers."

Stone's unconventional career path has informed her perspective on music – and its loudmouths. Discovered on the BBC's Star for a Night, she became a major-label star and then went rogue. During a disagreement over her fourth album, Stone pleaded with EMI to be released from her contract, and while the row has since been resolved (and the album released), Stone still complains that she has to "ask ... for approval on every single section of everything that [I] do".

For Stone, musicians shouldn't seek to amass as big a fortune as possible – but simply support themselves. "Who said that musicians have to be millionaires?" she asked. "Who made this a rule? We don't need that much money. We only need enough to make music, eat and go on tour."

Of course, that's all for her to say. Stone's contract with EMI is worth a reported £7.5m.

Sean Michaels, The Guardian, 04.11.09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/04/joss-stone-lily-allen