ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Lily Allen's breakup album West End Girl

LILY ALLEN: West End Girl (BMG)

Verdict: Captivating breakup album 

Rating:

Most pop stars returning to the fray after a seven-year break would find themselves facing an uphill struggle, with musical tastes inevitably having changed in their time away. Lily Allen is an exception.

With a wave of younger female singers citing her brand of clever, chatty pop as an inspiration, her reputation has only grown in her absence.

Billie Eilish cried the first time she heard Allen’s 2006 debut single Smile, and British singer PinkPantheress reckons Lily’s honesty gave her the confidence to ‘sound like myself’.

More pertinently, superstar Olivia Rodrigo invited Lily to duet with her at Glastonbury in 2022, and brought her onstage again as her Guts tour reached London’s O2 Arena in 2024.

It was those guest appearances that persuaded Allen, 40, to return to the studio for the first time since her 2018 release No Shame. 

The upshot is a new album, West End Girl, its title inspired by her acting stints on the London stage… and its raw, confessional contents informed by the breakdown of her relationship with Stranger Things actor David Harbour.

Allen and Harbour separated, after four years of marriage, in January, amid reports of his alleged infidelity, and she recently revealed that the upheaval left her feeling suicidal. 

She’s since stressed that her new album’s lyrics are a mixture of fact and fiction, but it’s hard to listen to the 14 gripping narratives here without thinking of them as intensely personal.

The album starts with its title track, a string-drenched bossa nova that opens with Lily’s protagonist embarking on an idyllic new life in New York with her perfect man. 

But, from the moment she’s whisked back to London to rehearse for a play, the fairytale unravels, with a phone call from America informing the tearful singer that her dream lover wants a non-monogamous relationship.

A roller-coaster ride ensues. Lily’s confusion grows as she’s haunted by images of a partner’s betrayal on Ruminating (‘I can’t shake the image of her naked’), and her imagination runs riot on the tender doo-wop lullaby Sleepwalking. 

‘You won’t love me, you won’t leave me,’ she sings. ‘I don’t know if you do it intentionally, but somehow you make it my fault.’

After discovering suspicious text messages, she confronts the other woman on Madeline (‘Is it just sex, or is there emotion?’) before contemplating drowning her sorrows on Relapse and reluctantly signing up to a dating app on Dallas Major, admitting on her acerbic online profile that she’s a mum to teenage children. ‘Does that sound like fun to you?,’ she asks.

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She hits a low point on indie-pop ballad Just Enough, but finally finds some solace on closing track Fruityloop. ‘It’s not me, it’s you,’ she concludes, a cutting throwback to the title of her second album, released in 2009.

Despite the heartache, or perhaps because of it, she sounds artistically reinvigorated. Working with producer Blue May, she candidly chronicles the arc of a breakup against a backdrop of jittery drum and bass, tuneful balladry and – on Madeline – flamenco guitar and castanets. 

There’s a touch too much auto-tune on her voice at times, but no doubting her ability to convey raw emotion with sharp, pithy pop.

From Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours to Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black and Adele’s 21, breakup albums have long been one of the staples of great pop. With West End Girl, Lily Allen has delivered a captivating addition to the genre.