Lily Allen’s “West End Girl”; Divorce, Drama, and Damn Good Songwriting
Lube, and, butt plugs, and condoms, oh my!
After seven years away from the musical spotlight, Lily Allen returns with West End Girl, an emotional, theatrical, and brutally honest dissection of her marriage to actor David Harbour and its collapse. Written in just ten days, the 14-track record plays like a confessional stage production, skipping between genres and emotional states with dizzying precision. It’s Allen’s most accomplished (and perhaps most devastating) work yet.
The title track “West End Girl” sets the tone: a musical theatre–inspired opener filled with violins and fairytale imagery that curdles almost instantly. She recounts the start of her marriage with whimsical affection, moving to New York, falling in love, only to reveal the loneliness that followed. Her tone is sweet but cutting.
From there, Allen goes full tilt. “Ruminating” channels the chaotic energy of Charli xcx, all grungy industrial beats and acidic suspicion; she knows something’s off. “Sleepwalking” is softer but sadder, with Allen sighing “Been no romance since we wed” over mournful strings.
The record’s middle stretch is pure storytelling genius. “Tennis” captures the slow-motion dread of marital paranoia, a phone snatched, a name mentioned, which segues into the flamenco-laced, Spaghetti-style “Madeline.” Here, Allen dramatizes the confrontation, harmonizing the other woman’s name as gunshots echo behind her pleas and a Valley girl spoken word imitation. It’s melodrama heightened into art.
“Relapse” and “Pussy Palace” find her unraveling, the former a candid look at addiction temptations following relationship uncertainty, the latter a dark comic discovery of her husband’s secret sex stash and apartment finding her asking, “Am I lookingn at a sex addict?”. By “4chan Stan,” a Daft Punk–esque number, Allen’s suspicions have evolved into absurd resignation: maybe he’s cheating with someone famous now.
Her wit still cuts like a knife. “Nonmonogamummy (with Specialist Moss)” twists reggae and dancehall into sad satire, chronicling her doomed attempt to embrace open marriage as she people pleases. “Just Enough” strips the humor away, with Allen confronting manipulation, abortion, and the ache of self-doubt over delicate harp and guitar.
Later, she reclaims herself. “Dallas Major” (her dating alias) offers a funky, bittersweet look at modern relationships (“Does that sound like fun to you? I hate it here”), while “Beg for Me” and “Let You W/In” mix vulnerability and longing. The closer, “Fruityloop,” is a triumph: Allen finally releasing herself from the wreckage with a sly callback to her past album (“It’s not me, it’s you”). It’s light, airy, and gloriously free.
West End Girl is more than a divorce album; it’s an emotional catharsis. Scathing, witty, and deeply human, it places Allen alongside the modern heartbreak greats: Lemonade, Star-Crossed, 30. But where those albums mourn and mythologize, Allen bares her soul with diaristic intimacy and barbed humor.
It’s cathartic, confessional, and fearless, the sound of a woman burning her life down and taking a bow as the curtain falls as she enters a new era in her life.
