Lily Allen has something of a history of pushing buttons with her Halloween costumes, and this year was no exception. The singer showed off a full Madeline costume on TikTok on Halloween, wearing a pastel blue coatdress, red necktie, straw hat, and Mary Jane shoes while strutting down a hallway to Cardi B’s “Magnet.” Her caption: “Who IS Madeline though, actually?” A cute literary nod on its surface — unless you’ve heard the breakup track she released last week with the exact same name.
For those who don’t know, “Madeline” has been one of the most talked-about songs on Allen’s new album, West End Girl, which chronicles the breakdown of her marriage to actor David Harbour. In it, she sings about an arrangement to sleep with other people — one she says only worked until her partner got involved with someone he actually knew. “We had an arrangement / Be discreet and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers / But you’re not a stranger, Madeline,” she sings on the track. The album dropped October 24, and Allen confirmed that “Madeline” is not one woman, but a “fictional construct” made up of “multiple individuals.”
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Harbour hasn’t publicly addressed the cheating interpretations. Earlier this year, the Stranger Things star told GQ, “I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life,” adding that responding to rumors was “based on hysterical hyperbole,” so there’s that. The pair married in 2020 and separated in late 2024.
While West End Girl is broadly being embraced as a divorced-mom anthems album — Allen wrote it in 10 days while parenting two teens and processing the breakup — the Madeline costume makes it clear she hasn’t moved into the silent-healing phase just yet.
It’s not the first time she’s used Halloween as commentary, either. In 2014, she attended Kate Hudson’s party dressed as Dr. Luke during the height of Kesha’s legal battle against the producer. She wore teal medical scrubs with a stethoscope and a name badge that read “Dr. Luke, Gynecology Department,” a detail that sparked backlash as photos resurfaced online amidst her divorce from Harbour. Allen later said she was mocking him, not Kesha — but even supporters have admitted it was a choice that hasn’t aged smoothly, and that is putting it politely.
And she’s not the only ex sending messages through costumes this year. Kayla Nicole went viral for her Toni Braxton look, widely read as a post-Travis Kelce jab at Taylor Swift — proving Halloween is increasingly becoming a breakup subgenre of its own.
Before you go, click here to see all the celebrity couples who have stayed together after cheating scandals.
Kate Middleton, Prince William
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