Lily Allen’s new album, West End Girl, has pulled the rug out from under happily-married-after dreams. The record is an odyssey of betrayal and heartbreak, an investigation of the way we perceive ourselves and the people we wake up next to every morning, and a litmus test for how honest we’re allowed to be in art and life. As a result, her record stands as a marker on the musical landscape where storytelling is laid out in its barest and sharpest form. Impressively, she has found an audience that’s ready to listen.
From the title track — which begins like a whimsical skip down the altar to a brownstone in New York, before abruptly being rerouted to a devastating phone call — to the shocking confrontation of “Madeline,” where Allen endures the hollow sympathy from a woman who slept with her husband, West End Girl has left every corner of social media knocked off its high horse. Allen deftly channels her pain into a masterful portrayal of modern love and loss, and the damaging moments in between. “Absolutely obsessed and horrified at how specifically relatable every track was,” wrote a commenter on Allen’s Instagram, while another observed, “A load of lads’ll get triggered cause they’ve cheated on their birds, but for every woman who’s twisted herself into a human pretzel to keep some emotionally constipated bloke happy, this is our national anthem.”
While many songwriters may opt for coy innuendos to discuss similar subject matter, Allen has detailed revelations of butt plugs, condoms, and a husband who is quite possibly a sex addict — all set against honeyed pop scores — making it all feel like the time D. H. Lawrence scandalized Britain by penning the word “fuck” in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
The album has resonated with not just women in — and after — marriages, but anyone who has considered the idea of coupling with another person and trusting them enough to hold you at your most vulnerable. There’s a headline by satire website Reductress — “Woman Who Has Never Been Married or Cheated On Feeling Seen by New Lily Allen Album” — that rings true here, as each track is rooted in a fear that’s at once ubiquitous, timeless, and vividly current. “Pussy Palace” salts infidelity with the discovery of a Duane Reade plastic bag filled with lube, while “Nonmonogamummy” and “Dallas Major” find Allen wandering dating apps and hating it: “You know I used to be quite famous, that was way back in the day/I probably should explain how my marriage has been open since my husband went astray,” she sings.
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Pulling apart fact from fiction in Allen’s story is tricky territory, however, despite the album being widely perceived as a tell-all about her ex-husband, actor David Harbour. As Allen told Vogue, “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.” Listeners are left to explore the lyrics that echo in their own minds, and that’s the bit that strikes the heaviest chord.
“It broke me. It opened up the floodgates,” says Jessica Resendez when remembering the first time she heard West End Girl. Resendez, a social media editor with two children who is out of a long-term relationship, says that Allen’s record has arrived at a time when women are reclaiming their autonomy, chipping away at patriarchal norms, and publicly holding men accountable for their misdeeds. “Women have financially, emotionally, and mentally done the work to advance ourselves, and now we’re realizing we don’t need to keep putting ourselves in situations where men embarrass us or do things that make us feel ashamed,” she says.
As journalist Ella Alexander writes in Harper’s Bazaar, the “David Harbour character is a recognizable one — a performative soft boy who talks the talk, but can’t live up to the standards he sets.” Alexander compares Harbour’s 2017 SAG speech, in which he waxed on the finer points of morality and offered marching orders in the battle against narcissism, with Allen’s portrayals of the actor as a man who allegedly doubts her ability to lead a play (2:22 A Ghost Story) and gaslights her into thinking his betrayal was her fault all along. Following the release of West End Girl, the note that Harbour wrote Allen ahead of her stage debut resurfaced: “My ambitious wife, these are bad luck flowers ’cause if you get reviewed well in this play, you will get all kinds of awards and I’ll be miserable. Your loving husband.”
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And then there’s the wreckage of a broken heart and being left to mend it in an era where technology has plunged dating into overdrive. “When you put your trust into someone and they use it against you, or they have no empathy, the hardest part is learning how to navigate other relationships in your life. It puts you in this space where you’re walking around and feel like no one is ever going to understand you,” says Resendez. “You see that in Lily’s music. She sings about these sad, traumatic experiences, but the beat is uplifting. You still have to go about our day and go to work, take care of our loved ones, and do the song and dance every time you meet someone new on these apps, while still walking around with this grey cloud over you.”
Yet there’s liberation in Allen’s ability to strip down the shame, jealousy, fear, and torment into art — something she can remember on her own terms. On the penultimate song, “Let You W/In,” she asks, “All I can do is sing. So why should I let you win?” before declaring, “I can walk out with my dignity, if I lay my truth on the table.”
And when the tale of ill-starred lovers-turned-strangers closes with “Fruityloop,” Allen’s defiant refrain, “It’s not me, it’s you,” lands less as a kiss-off and more as a resounding victory. The story’s narrator has walked away from the disillusionment of divorce with not just her dignity intact, but with her voice honed. West End Girl isn’t an album about heartbreak — it’s about having the audacity to survive it.
