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\nLily Allen and David Harbour<\/p>\n
Pop singer Lily Allen has said it took her life “falling apart” for her to find her “authentic voice” as a music artist.<\/p>\n
Last Friday the Brit Award-winner, 40, released her first album in seven years, which is said to detail the alleged infidelity of her ex-husband, US actor David Harbour.<\/p>\n
West End Girl, which contains a mix of “truth” and “fantasy”, according to Allen, sees the pop star sing about a sexual “arrangement” that was broken.<\/p>\n
\nLily Allen and David Harbour<\/p>\n
Allen told Interview Magazine that she wrote and recorded the album across 10 days in December with a “guy called Blue” who was the musical director on her last tour in 2018.<\/p>\n
She said: “I feel very differently about the whole situation now. We all go through breakups and it’s always f***ing brutal. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you\u2019re in it.”<\/p>\n
It was at the end of December 2024 that reports surfaced of the singer\u2019s split from Stranger Things star Harbour, 50, who she married in 2020.<\/p>\n
Allen said: “At the time, I was really trying to process things and that\u2019s great in terms of the album, but I don\u2019t feel confused or angry now. I don\u2019t need revenge.”<\/p>\n
She added: “Some of it (the record) is based on truth and some of it is fantasy\u2026<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s not a cruel album. I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m being mean. It was just the feelings I was processing at the time.”<\/p>\n
Speaking about the album\u2019s format, she said: “There\u2019s an album I love called A Grand Don\u2019t Come For Free by The Streets, and it\u2019s like a movie from start to finish.<\/p>\n
“Each song can stand alone and make total sense, but together it\u2019s more like a novel. I\u2019ve always wanted to do that, and it just happened that way on this record.<\/p>\n
“The night before I went into the studio, I wrote 18 track titles \u2013 no melodies, no lyrics.<\/p>\n
“Nobody in the studio knew what was going on in my life.<\/p>\n
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“I got there, spent about two hours crying my heart out, and then I was like, ‘We\u2019re going to write an album based on some of these feelings\u2019.”<\/p>\n
In the album the narrator mentions a woman called Madeline and ponders if she is both emotionally and sexually involved with their cheating partner.<\/p>\n
Allen said: “It was very important to me that I didn\u2019t sound like a victim, so I\u2019d be like, \u2018We have to change that line. It just sounds too \u2018Poor me\u2019. I wanted it to feel brutal and tragic, but also empowering, that there was joy in being able to express it.”<\/p>\n
Allen also revealed she uses the membership-based dating app Raya and said she got banned from Hinge for “\u2018impersonating\u2019 myself.”<\/p>\n
The singer said dating apps are “awful, especially if you\u2019re going through heartbreak”.<\/p>\n
“There is nothing more depressing than hundreds of people that are nothing like the person that you\u2019re missing. It\u2019s just like, \u2018No, that\u2019s not him. That\u2019s not him. That\u2019s not him”, she said.<\/p>\n
In 2024 Allen revealed she had started uploading photos of her feet to the adult subscription site OnlyFans but suggested she does not use the website as much anymore.<\/p>\n
She said: “I started it just over a year ago. I was quite active in the beginning, but when I broke up with David, it just wasn\u2019t that fun anymore.”<\/p>\n
The singer released her last album, No Shame, in 2018 and has since ventured into the world of acting, having starred in sold-out runs of plays 2:22 A Ghost Story and The Pillowman.<\/p>\n
Speaking about her break from music, she said: “Everything I was writing was dog s***. I felt like I had writer\u2019s block or something, but actually I think I just knew that something wasn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n
“I always strive to tell the truth in my art, so I guess I subconsciously knew that something wasn\u2019t right in my personal life, and I couldn\u2019t go there creatively because if I did, then it would all fall apart.<\/p>\n
“So, it kind of took it all falling apart for me to find my authentic voice.”<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop singer Lily Allen has said it took her life “falling apart” for her to find her “authentic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-108856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}