Lily Allen has opened up about how her new album ‘West End Girl’ was inspired by her “deep-rooted issues with rejection and abandonment” after a divorce.
The new record arrived today (Friday October 24) via BMG and marked her first new album in seven years – following on from 2018’s ‘No Shame’.
The years away from the music industry have proved busy for the ‘Smile’ star, with her making theatre debuts in the 2021 play 2:22 A Ghost Story and 2023’s The Pillowman. She had also gone on-screen to play Elizabeth Taylor in the 2019 film How To Build A Girl and Mel in the 2023 comedy series Dreamland.
Since then she has co-hosted the hit podcast Miss Me? with Miquita Oliver, and found herself making headlines for her split with husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour.
The latter has proved a huge source of inspiration for the new music, and in a new interview with Perfect, the singer explained how the separation affected her wellbeing, and threatened her sobriety.
Agreeing that the album is one of “sorrow and pain”, Allen shared: “I have deep-rooted issues with rejection and abandonment which I’ve been tussling with for most of my adult life and probably quite a lot of my childhood as well. And I was having, like an extreme reaction to things at the time.”
Going on to confirm that “things” referred to her marriage breaking down, she added: “It’s hard for me to not have my person, you know? And I am quite a codependent person. And I find it difficult to lean on the people who are available to me when I’m missing the comfort and stability of what is not available to me.”
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“I know that what I have to do is to be able to make myself happy and that is a source of extreme irritation for me,” she continued, going on to recall the “humiliation and shame” that comes with dating in your 40s.
“It means doing the fucking work, and I feel like I’ve been doing the work for fucking ages. I’m exhausted by it. And I thought it was done. I thought it was happily ever after, you know?”
The interview also saw her agree with the host about how open marriages and polyamory don’t work for many relationships, and often lead to a woman being labelled as “uncool or uptight” if she doesn’t want to take part.
“Do I think that that’s true? Yeah, I do. And it seems to me that younger people find it easier to embrace as a concept,” she shared. “Maybe the 2.4-children-nuclear-family thing has not been rammed down their throats quite as much, so it’s not so much in their wiring. But it’s not something I ever thought about when I was younger or going into either one of my marriages.”
Allen and Harbour began dating in 2019 after meeting on the dating app Raya, and tied the knot in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony in September 2020.
News of their separation arose towards the start of the year, amid rumours that there was cheating on his part. Earlier this year, Allen revealed that she went into a treatment centre to deal with the “emotional turmoil” of the split.
‘West End Girl’ arrived today and contains numerous lyrics nodding to infidelity, including the title track which looks at the picturesque early days of their relationship, when she moved with her daughters to New York to be with the actor.
On ‘Ruminating’, Allen sings about asking whether “you kiss[ed] her on the lips and look[ed] into her eyes”, and adds that “I can’t shake the image of her naked before repeating ‘you’re mine.’”
On ‘Tennis’, she recalls finding messages to another woman on the phone of her lover when going on his phone. “I read your texts, and now I regret it… If it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous. You won’t play with me, and who’s Madeline?” she sings.
The name Madeline arises again on a song of the same name, and she admits she messages the other woman asking “Is it just sex or is it emotion?”.
On ‘Relapse’, Allen explains how she nearly lost her sobriety over the struggles, ‘Let You W/In’ details how she returned to music after taking years off, and ‘Just Enough’ tackles the acceptance of her relationship breakdown: “I think you’re in love with somebody else, felt you pull away and now I’m blaming myself.”
‘West End Girl’ was given a four-star review from NME, and praised as “a sleek, smart collection that sees Allen back at her very best”.
“As you’d expect from her most ‘vulnerable’ album, there’s a lot of grief and misery across ‘West End Girl’, but it never sounds depressing,” it read. “Since ‘Smile’, Allen’s always had a knack for making devastation sound exciting.
“There’s rage behind the pulsating ‘Ruminating’ as she struggles with the realities of an open marriage, playful other woman anthem ‘Madeline’ is a dizzying cocktail of uncertainty, fury and empathy, while the gorgeous ‘Just Enough’ is as crushing as it gets, heartbreak amplified by lush strings. It feels like a much-needed purge.”
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