The concept of “too much information” looms large throughout West End Girl, Lily Allen’s first album in seven years. Written in just 10 days in early 2025, it chronicles the disintegration of her relationship with Stranger Things actor David Harbour, whom she separated from after half a decade of marriage.
Break-up records tend to focus on the warp and weft of heartache, skipping the grisly details. Allen takes the opposite approach with a collection that picks away at the loose threads of an unravelling relationship. She talks about the open marriage she feels was foisted upon her and her obsession (understandable) with her other half’s lovers on the side.
These grim portraits of living through a slow-motion disaster are vividly drawn. It is thus a shame that the actual songs are an uncomfortable fit for the topic at hand. As a lyricist, Allen bravely goes above and beyond in terms of confessional writing. However, as a musician, she is trapped in that familiar soft-pop, reggae-infused purgatory – a blueprint that extends back to her early hits Smile and LDN.
A genteel indie plod underpins the title track and opener – the soothing groove at odds with the bereft lyrics (“I’m in a hotel room, I’m on my own”). She goes on to deliver an adequate Charli XCX pastiche on Ruminating – a recounting of the thoughts spinning around her head as she travels to London for a stint on the West End (hence the title) while her husband stays back in America, getting up to heaven knows what.
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Names are named. But they have (presumably) been changed to protect the innocent (and not so innocent): Allen refers over and over to “Madeline”, the mysterious other woman who becomes a recurring character throughout the record.
Just so nobody is confused as to the subject matter, Lily expands on her lyrics with excursions into spoken word. Between the first and second number, she restages her side of the transatlantic exchange in which her partner asks for an open relationship.
“It doesn’t make me feel great,” she says quietly, adding, “I want you to be happy”. There is a terrible sense of eavesdropping on a conversation you might be better off not hearing.
Horror is likewise piled upon horror in the flensing Relapse. In this nightmarish groover, Allen fights the urge to literally tranquillise her pain with booze and painkillers (“I need a drink ... I need a Valium ... I just need to be numb”). The song is brave and honest, and once encountered, many listeners will never want to revisit it.
The same is true of Tennis, in which she paints a picture of domestic dysfunction that unfolds like a psychological horror movie. “I made my baby’s favourite, but he didn’t seem to care/I just tell myself he’s jet lagged and I’m glad to have him here.”
Then there is Pussy Palace, a nightmarish plunge into heartbreak where Allen tells her spouse to stay away from their home and to “go to the apartment in the West Village instead”.
She proceeds to index the contents of the lovers’ pad. These include sex toys of various sorts (she goes into details) and a lifetime supply of contraceptives. “Am I looking at a sex addict?” she wonders over a tinny beat.
Having bumped along the bottom, the record climbs out of its nose-dive in its second half. Closer Fruityloop is a foray into a Billie Eilish style goth-pop where Allen’s heartache matures into pity for her ex (“you’re just a little boy looking for his mummy ... it’s not me, it’s you”).
The unflinching way she mourns her marriage is striking. But there is the constant feeling throughout West End Girl that a pop album is not necessarily the most suitable conduit for these heavy emotions. The songs are too flimsy to bear the weight of her trauma.
The subject would have made for a devastating stage show or a painful memoir. As an album, West End Girl’s musical compass never points in a clear direction.
