Lily Allen blames EMI for album delay

LONDON, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- British singer Lily Allen says her record label, EMI, is to blame for a delay in the release of her second album.

Writing in an undated entry for her Web site blog, Allen said the album had "been finished for a while now" and added that she didn't "really know what's going on with it."

Allen's first album, "Alright, Still," was released in 2006 and has sold more than 1.8 million copies in Britain, yielding hit singles including "Smile" and "LDN," the BBC reported. Allen apologized to fans awaiting her next effort.

"The record industry is a very political place at the moment," Allen wrote. "Lots of people have been fired or have taken redundancy recently as the company (EMI) was taken over. Many of these people were people assigned to my projects and now I don't quite know what's going on."

The BBC said nearly 2,000 jobs were cut after EMI was purchased by private equity firm Terra Firma for $6 billion last year.