Lily Allen is not pulling any punches with her new album as she seems to make many pointed remarks at David Harbour.
Allen’s last full album was 2018’s No Shame and in the intervening years she insisted she had continued writing, but “emotionally attached” material was hard to come by.
As she told Perfect Magazine: “I just didn’t think it was any good.” She added: “It’s easier to write funny things that are rooted in darkness or anger or… terminal hatred.”
The making of West End Girl
West End Girl was said to be written and recorded in just ten days, capturing Allen’s shock, grief, confusion and anger as her marriage with the Stranger Things star fell apart amid accusations of infidelity.
In her own words: “It was hard to make this record. It was incredibly manic, and it was emotionally traumatic. But nothing felt forced. It just sort of fell out of me. And I think that’s what happens when you’re writing from a place of truth, and without an agenda.”
She explained: “This record was purely for me, and it was a way of processing things that I was going through in my private life.”
At the same time Allen stressed that: “There are things that are on the record that I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel.”
And: “There are definitely some things that happened in my real life that are reflected on this record.” She described the collection as the product of “a mixture of fact and fiction which I hope serves as a reminder of how stoic yet also how frail we humans can be.”
Lily Allen and David Harbour split after cheating accusations. Credit: Dia Dipasupil / Getty
A narrative arc of love, betrayal and reckoning
The album’s storytelling structure reportedly begins with Allen falling in love, moving to New York with her two daughters and buying a brownstone: she sings: “Now I'm looking at houses / With four or five floors / And you found us a brownstone / Said, ’You want it? It's yours’ / I could never afford this / You were pushing it forward / Made me feel a bit awkward.”
Then comes the first sign of trouble: her partner’s demeanor changes when she lands a lead role in the West End. She sings: “That’s when your demeanor started to change … I thought that was quite strange / I found that strange.”
The relationship spirals into days of absence and the revelation of an arrangement around an open marriage: “I’ve been trying to be open / I just want to meet your needs," Allen sings in 'Nonmonogamummy'.
And she confronts the reality of betrayal in “Ruminating”: “I can't shake the image of her naked / On top of you, and I'm disassociated / Did you kiss her on the lips and look into her eyes? Now that it's done / Baby, won't you tell me that I'm still your number one? / ‘Cause you're my number one.”
One of the album’s most brutal sequences has her entering an apartment where her partner supposedly practices karate, only to find “a room scattered with sex toys and a shoebox full of handwritten letters from broken‑hearted women.”
By the closing tracks she draws a line under the relationship: “I will not absorb your shame, it's you who put me through this … I can walk out with my dignity if I lay my truth out on the table.”
Allen summarises her mission: “My strength is my ability to tell a story. And so I’m going to lean into that. I have to. It’s all I have.”
Lily Allen has not pulled any punches. Credit: Ammar Rowaid / Getty
Critical reception
Reviews of West End Girl have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
One critic called it “a brutal, tell‑all masterpiece,” describing the musical of deceit and suffering in which Allen “seizes control of her narrative and holds little back.”
Another described it as “a victorious comeback” with “a lot of grief and misery [but] Allen’s always had a knack for making devastation sound exciting.”
And from The Guardian: “What ties the songs together beyond the story they tell is the striking prettiness of the tunes, which seem, jarringly, more evocative of a romantic fairytale ending than the anger and unhappiness the lyrics convey.”
Meanwhile, some listeners have remarked that it adheres to that familiar Allen recipe - sharp, pithy pop - that blends wit with emotional reckoning.
Allen herself admitted: “If what you’re doing isn’t provocative, what’s the point? And if it’s not scary, what’s the point? I’m not here to be mediocre.”
Harbour has declined to get drawn into tabloid coverage, saying: “I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life… There’s no use in that form of engaging [with tabloid news] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”