For the first time in seven years, Lily Allen is back with a new album. It's intimate, raw and auto-fictional.
Last week, the “Smile” singer shared the 14-track album “West End Girl.” Against the backdrop of her separation from “Stranger Things” actor David Harbor Allen takes an in-depth look at broken relationships, where the line between openness and infidelity is thin, where dating apps are on the table, and where heartbreak seems inevitable.
The album, written in 10 days last December, begins with Allen moving to New York. The singer moved to the East Coast in 2020 with her two daughters and then-husband after a couple's whirlwind wedding in Las Vegas. When Allen started dating Harbor in 2019, she had just finalized her divorce from Sam Cooper, with whom she shares children.
On the opening track “West End Girl”, she sings about receiving an offer to appear in a West End production in London. In 2021, Allen made her debut in the supernatural play “2:22 – A Ghost Story.” From that moment on, the tension and distance between the couple only continued to grow. Towards the end of the title track, Allen plays her end of a call where her partner apparently asks to open up the marriage.
As pop tunes continue to ebb and flow, Allen addresses allegations of infidelity, the complexities of an open marriage and mentions a mistress's alias on a track called “Madeline.” She doesn't shy away from the details, especially when it comes to finding boxes of sex toys, love letters from other women and calling her partner a “sex addict” in P-Palace.
By the end of the record, she makes it clear that the relationship is irreversible. The couple announced their separation in February last year after four years of marriage. Since the project's release last Friday, critics have been quick to fawn over Allen's return to music, and Allen made sure to let the press know that the album isn't entirely factual.
In an interview with TimesBritain's oldest national daily newspaper, she says: “I don't think I can say it's all true – I have creative license… But yes, there are definitely things that I've experienced in my relationships that ended up on this album.”
She also said Ideal magazine that the work can be considered an “autofiction” and that the “alter ego” sings. When you sit down with British Vogueshe clarified that the album was inspired by what was going on between them, but “that doesn't mean it's all gospel.”
Harbor has yet to speak directly about their relationship and has retreated from the public eye by turning off comments on his Instagram page.
In an interview with GQ in April he said: “There is no point in this form of interaction. [with tabloid news] because it's all based on hysterical hyperbole.”
The highly anticipated final season of Netflix's Stranger Things, starring Harbor as Police Chief Jim Hopper, premieres on November 27.
