With West End Girl, music may have finally reached peak divorce album.<\/p>\n
On her fifth record, released Oct. 24, English singer-songwriter Lily Allen appears to debrief the dissolution of her five-year marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour in often eyebrow-raising detail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In interviews, Allen said the album, her first in seven years, came together in around two weeks last December, when she was processing emotional turmoil in her personal life \u2014 and that it’s a work of both fact and fiction.<\/p>\n
However, there are lyrics too specific to ignore when it comes to her relationship with Harbour, including details of their New York home and their growing estrangement. <\/p>\n
West End Girl arrives in the wake of recent chart-topping divorce albums like Kelly Clarkson’s Chemistry, Adele’s 30 and Kacey Musgraves Star-Crossed. But none of those albums go quite so far as this one.<\/p>\n
Over the course of 14 tracks, Allen tells the story of a seemingly idyllic life that painfully unravels due to infidelity and other betrayals. The result is a vulnerable album that combines raw emotion with a broad, electronic sound.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Together, Allen and Harbour were something approaching pop culture darlings, or at the very least an internet fascination. In the comments section of the famous 2023 Architectural Digest video tour of their Brooklyn brownstone home \u2014 which has been viewed more than eight million times \u2014 viewers discuss how unexpectedly cool and quirky the couple was, and how happy they seemed together.<\/p>\n
That same home is featured heavily in the title track of West End Girl. Allen sings about moving to New York, getting a brownstone and having it decorated by Billy Cotton \u2014 all of which rings true. <\/p>\n
From there, she sings about how her unnamed partner\u2019s \u201cdemeanour started to change\u201d after she \u201cgot a lead in a play\u201d in London, which appears to reference Allen\u2019s foray into acting in West End productions like 2:22 A Ghost Story and The Pillowman in recent years.<\/p>\n
WATCH | The 2023 tour of David Harbour and Lily Allen’s New York City townhouse:<\/p>\n
The story that Allen fills in between these recognizable facts goes something like this: <\/p>\n
With some reluctance, Allen agrees to an open relationship arrangement with her partner while she is away from him. There are signs they\u2019ve grown distant, or he is not as supportive as he once seemed, but she tries to ignore them \u2014 until she no longer can. Lies and insecurities erode trust, until feelings of paranoia and being taken for granted win out. Allen then finds evidence that he broke the rules of their arrangement, and confronts both him and the woman he\u2019s been with.<\/p>\n
Before the album was released, there were rumours the couple\u2019s marriage was in trouble. <\/p>\n
Last year, Allen made headlines for sharing on the podcast Miss Me? that she would sometimes go days without speaking to her husband. In a different episode of the podcast, she mused about whether she had incidentally kink-shamed Harbour for turning down some of his bedroom requests in the past.<\/p>\n
Now, listeners appear to be getting a close-up of what their relationship \u2014 and breakup \u2014 was like behind closed doors. <\/p>\n
Perhaps the most shocking track is P—y Palace, where Allen\u2019s sadness turns to rage. She tells her partner to \u201cgo to the apartment in the West Village instead,\u201d calling to mind Harbour\u2019s other Architectural Digest tour from 2019, of his New York loft apartment. In the song, Allen goes there to drop off some of his things and says she finds what appears to be the home of a “sex addict”: \u201cSheets pulled off the bed, they’re strewn all on the floor \/ Long black hair, probably from the night before,\u201d she sings.<\/p>\n
Fans online have been basking in the gossipy revelations since the album’s release.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire west end girl album is like being on facetime to your best friend post-breakup and they finally tell you all the diabolical things their man did which they didn\u2019t tell you about before!\u201d reads a post on X by user @jwstarling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI love when women air out their dirty laundry,\u201d said user @savahannaISme.<\/p>\n
Critics are also praising the album. Rolling Stone gave it four stars and called it \u201cpowerful.\u201d In Harpers Bazaar, writer Louis Staples said it \u201cmay very well have changed the chemistry of [my] brain.\u201d In a post on X, culture writer Bradley Stern said it\u2019s \u201ca surprise end-of-year stunner and an instant [album of the year] contender.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the album nears its end, Allen suggests what her new normal may look like. <\/p>\n
On Dallas Major, she sings about using dating apps again and includes a reference to her Vegas wedding to Harbour. <\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t shy away from the inevitable post-breakup emotional roller-coaster on Beg for Me, but by the final track, Fruityloop, her feelings have calcified into a resolve that she sums up in the chorus: \u201cIt\u2019s not me, it\u2019s you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With West End Girl, music may have finally reached peak divorce album. On her fifth record, released Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-248874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}