Since she broke out in 2006 with her debut single, “Smile,” the British singer Lily Allen has been a fixture of the British tabloids and a lightning rod on social media. The English press has long focused on the lives of young women, but Allen proved a particularly ripe target: At the beginning of her career she was known as a foul-mouthed party girl who had long detailed her life on Myspace, and was unwilling to soften her edges for critics.
On her 2009 album, “It’s Not Me, It’s You,” she made light of this toxic relationship: “I’ll look in The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror,” she winked on “The Fear,” name-checking two British papers. By her fourth album nine years later, “No Shame,” any jocularity had faded: “If you go on record saying that you know me / Then why am I so lonely? ’Cause nobody [expletive] phones me,” she sang.
On her new album, “West End Girl,” released with a week’s notice on Friday, Allen takes a new tack. It’s a lurid, linear and detail-filled account of the dissolution of a marriage — widely believed to be a tell-all about Allen’s failed union with the “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, an assumption spurred on by Allen in interviews (with the caveat, she told The Times of London, “I don’t think I could say it’s all true”). “West End Girl” finds Allen writing candidly about discovering a partner’s affair, her desire to find refuge in alcohol and prescription drugs, and her struggles to enter into an open relationship. In essence, Allen has become the tabloid, airing out the last remains of her own dirty laundry before anyone else can.
“West End Girl” marks the end of a few years away from music for Allen. She married Harbour in 2020; made her debut on London’s West End in 2021 in “2:22 A Ghost Story,” for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award; and started both a podcast, “Miss Me?” for the BBC with her friend Miquita Oliver, and a since-shuttered OnlyFans account, on which she shared photos of her feet. Allen has said that “West End Girl,” recorded in 16 days in December 2024, recounts the prior four years of her life; it is a salacious account of a marriage in which a husband systematically cheats on and gaslights his wife.
“West End Girl” has garnered heaps of chatter and, in the scheme of Allen’s career, unique praise in the United Kingdom. Musically, it is one of her more interesting records — the house producer Leon Vynehall contributed to a handful of tracks, as did the buzzy Australian producer Kito — but it is not altogether a radical departure. Like “No Shame,” it deals with the fallout of a messy divorce; it largely presents a muted take on the London-centric genres that have always formed the bedrock of Allen’s sound, including U.K. garage, soul and dancehall. And like “URL Badman,” from her 2014 LP “Sheezus,” it badly misuses internet terminology, on the song “4chan Stan.”
The difference, though, is that “West End Girl” taps into contemporary pop music’s thirst for lore — the real-life details behind the music. In recent years, artists have trained their audiences to pore over songs for tidbits about their personal lives: Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” invited listeners to speculate over who “that blonde girl” might be, while “Go-Go Juice,” from Sabrina Carpenter’s recent album “Man’s Best Friend,” makes oblique reference to three of her exes in its chorus. Taylor Swift, of course, has been a progenitor and virtuoso of the form since at least “Dear John” in 2010. The lyrics on her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” have provoked endless discussion about their sources, some more oblique (Charli XCX, her former label boss Scott Borchetta) and some more explicit (her fiancé’s manhood).
“West End Girl” covers extremely similar ground to “No Shame,” but bears the marks of an artist who, nearly 20 years into her career, knows how to manipulate media narratives. Allen doesn’t hide any of her album’s revelations beneath poetics or wordplay. While Swift fans play detective, decoding messages hidden in artwork and lyrics, Allen’s album, with its gory details of hidden sex toys and illicit text messages, encourages her listeners to consume “West End Girl” like they would a true crime podcast, or a gossip magazine exposé.
On the album, Allen suggests that writing explicitly about her own life is a way of reclaiming her power in her broken relationship: “I can walk out with my dignity if I lay my truth on the table,” she sings on “Let You W/In.” That motive belies less altruistic concerns: “West End Girl” has pulled Allen, who has regularly discussed how hard it is for female pop stars to maintain their popularity, back into the conversation after the commercial failure of “No Shame.” While its debut-week sales numbers are yet to come, it is a success in terms of the attention economy, giving Allen the boost she has been seeking for many years — but not without a pound of flesh.
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