Review: Lily Allen’s ‘West End Girl’ is a gut-wrenching, confrontational triumph

Writing about heartbreak is nothing novel, but the way Lily Allen pens it certainly is. Showcasing incredible vulnerability and narrative building, “West End Girl” contends for Album of the Year with a sweepingly emotional story arc that indicts her husband for the breakdown of their marriage. 

Allen’s first album in seven years, “West End Girl,” was released on Oct. 24 and peaked at #2 on the UK Albums chart and #93 on the US Billboard 200. The “divorce album” chronologically follows the later stages of her five-year marriage to actor David Harbour, brutally detailing his desire for an open relationship, acts of infidelity and Allen’s own emotional turmoil.

The tracklist shifts musically from familiarly audacious ballads to a newer sound that combines hyperpop with raw emotion. The album opens with its namesake track “West End Girl,” a song that charms the listener into Allen’s own domestic compliance, set to a smooth jazz background. “Sleepwalking” similarly dances to a waltzy tune, mixing idyllic production with warm, angrily layered vocals in the bridge. Dreamy composition comes to a screeching halt, unsurprisingly, early in the album with “Tennis,” as Allen playfully sings “If it was just sex / I wouldn’t be jealous / You won’t play with me,” and then cuts to a familiar deadpan that asks “And who the f— is Madeline?” 

In contrast, “Ruminating” and “Relapse” interestingly use synth as an instrument to represent Allen’s thought processes — whether spiraling and angry or vulnerably avoidant. This alternative style isn’t something we’ve seen from her yet or that a casual listener would come to expect. However, used here, it adds to the diverse production of the album well while still fulfilling its intended purpose.

Allen’s lyrical prowess, known for its humor and candour, rears its head in “Dallas Major,” which self-deprecatingly jokes to potential “prospects” — “I’m almost nearly 40, I’m just shy of 5 foot 2 / I’m a mum to teenage children, does that sound like fun to you?” We see a lot of her typical detail in the album, but it feels different this time. Rather than poking fun at others or the world, Allen’s songs bare a deeply personal part of her soul and marriage. “Just Enough,” an unexpected personal favorite on the album, quietly asks, “Why arе we here talking about vasеctomies? / Did you get someone pregnant? Someone who isn’t me?” with a soft, equally gut-wrenching guitar. She references her past substance-abuse struggles in the two-step garage track “Relapse,” a topic Allen has said is hard to publicly breach without tabloid backlash. It appears that as Allen has matured and grown in her time out of the spotlight, her music has shifted with her to a more naturally vulnerable chapter.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fantastic worldbuilding quality of Allen’s work here, which is served by both her lyrical detail and the genuine absurdity of the betrayal she describes. “4chan Stan” catchily references a suspicious Bergdorf’s receipt, while comparing her husband’s behavior to the questionable 4chan platform audience. “Madeline” walks the listener through the precise terms of her open marriage — “Be discreet and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers” — to a musical production fit for a Western duel. The hyperspecificity pièce de résistance of the record is indisputably “P—y Palace,” which describes Allen’s discovery of “hundreds of Trojans,” among other paraphernalia, in her husband’s private apartment. It would be hilarious if it weren’t jaw-droppingly horrifying. 

The spoken word monologues within the album aren’t surprising for Allen but work particularly well to drive the album’s narrative and bring the listener into her tumultuous world. The satirical valley-girl-esque message read throughout “Madeline” is funny, but what was most memorable was the one-sided phone call at the end of “West End Girl” that perfectly sets up the premise of the record through both its quiet disappointment and pregnant pauses. 

Overall, “West End Girl” is a devastatingly specific, if autofictitious, snapshot of a relationship ostensibly within the public eye. Although Allen may lament “The girls are looking at mе to teach them all about love / But I can’t seem to hold my shit together long enough,” the record’s vulnerability is a reminder that not every relationship is what it seems.