Lily Allen released her latest album, West End Girl, this past October, giving fans a revealing look into the end of her four-year marriage to actor David Harbour. The album was written during the breakup, and Allen has since admitted that while its themes were inspired by reality, there’s also an element of fantasy in the lyrics. Still, the process took a toll on her healing, and she recently described waiting to release the album as a “nightmare.”
Speaking with CBS News, Allen stated, “You know, while I was writing it, I wasn’t really sure that it was going to see the light of day.” For Allen, writing the album was “an act of desperation,” but it also said “everything I needed to say.”
That doesn’t mean the process was easy. Allen revealed that the album actually hindered her healing from the breakup, and that holding onto it before release was a “nightmare.” But since releasing it into the world, Lily Allen expressed her overwhelming feeling of relief.
“Since I’ve put it out, it’s felt completely and utterly liberating. It was kind of hellish having it in the background,” she said. “I don’t know. I just feel like I couldn’t. It said everything that I needed to say. And I felt like I couldn’t really, like, get on with my life until I’d said it.”
Lily Allen’s ‘West End Girl’ Touched On Themes of Infidelity and Betrayal
Lily Allen wrote West End Girl in about ten days near the end of 2024, as her marriage was falling apart. She eventually checked herself into a treatment facility, looking for a way to safely move through her intense emotions while acknowledging her history as a recovering alcoholic.
“I knew the things I was feeling were too intense,” she admitted. Allen got sober in 2019 and hasn’t toured since then. But she recently announced a 2026 tour in support of the new album.
Meanwhile, the Brooklyn townhouse that Allen and Harbour have shared since 2021 has been listed for $8 million. While Harbour hasn’t directly addressed West End Girl, he alluded vaguely to the breakup around the release date. In an interview with Esquire UK, he noted that his work is about being honest. He also stated that he tries to accept his mistakes.
“I’d change everything or nothing,” he said. “If you accept your past, you accept it completely, even the pain, the mistakes. It’s all part of the journey, the growth, the wisdom, the empathy, and the connection, and if you change one thing, you change everything.”
Allen’s two children, whom she shares with ex-husband Sam Cooper, also benefited from the catharsis of West End Girl. “All of the pain that, you know, that I’ve been through in the past year, they’ve been through too,” she revealed. “But you know, one thing that I wanted to do was to show my kids that, you know, you can use that pain and harness it and turn it into something else. And I think I’ve done that.”
Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
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