{"id":335715,"date":"2025-12-26T00:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/335715\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T00:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:32:07","slug":"lily-arrived-with-the-song-titles-which-is-really-unusual-she-would-come-in-and-say-i-want-to-write-a-song-called-dallas-major-and-were-like-ok-let","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/335715\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLily arrived with the song titles, which is really unusual. She would come in and say, \u2018I want to write a song called Dallas Major,\u2019 and we\u2019re like, \u2018OK, let\u2019s have some backstory\u201d: The group songwriting sessions that yielded Lily Allen\u2019s West End Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEST OF 2025:<\/a> Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that topped MusicRadar’s charts in 2025.<\/p>\n

It might have been her vision, but Lily Allen\u2019s West End Girl<\/a> \u2013 the hit \u2018autofiction\u2019 album that documents the \u2018opening\u2019 of a marriage and its subsequent breakdown in bruising detail \u2013 was very much a team effort.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Confirmation of this can be found in the credits: there are no fewer than 10 different producers (including Allen herself) and a lengthy list of songwriting collaborators.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Now Violet Skies (AKA Hannah Berney), a songwriter from Wales who contributed to multiple tracks on West End Girl including viral single Madeline, has been speaking about her experience of working on the record, which was written and recorded in Los Angeles over a 10-day period last year.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Grazia<\/a>, Skies describes being given just a couple of weeks notice to get to the LA home of Blue May, Allen\u2019s long-time collaborator, and says that the star had a strong outline of the album right from the outset.<\/p>\n

\u201cLily arrived with the song titles, which is really very unusual,\u201d she explains. \u201cShe would come in and say, \u2018Right, I want to write a song called Dallas Major,\u2019 and we\u2019re like, \u2018OK, let\u2019s have some backstory.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen certainly had plenty of material to draw on, but given how personal the subject matter was, Skies had to approach the sessions with a degree of sensitivity.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese are very real feelings Lily had,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was very intense, some 12-hour days. The day we wrote Relapse was a night-time studio session at Blue\u2019s house, but earlier we\u2019d been writing Madeline, so it was very heavy, and you have to really talk through the process enough to work out what she wants to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn days like that, it was like playing tennis with Lily. I\u2019d throw some melodies or lyrics, and she\u2019d throw some back. Sometimes she would hand me a whole paragraph of thoughts and then we\u2019d organise them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lily Allen – Madeline (Visualiser) – YouTube
\n\"Lily<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a group of people crowded round a laptop, though \u2013 Skies says that the studio was full of people playing guitars<\/a>, piano<\/a> and drums<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like days I had as a teenager in a band, writing live in the room,\u201d she remembers. \u201cThat\u2019s not normal these days. Many songwriting sessions have less and less real instruments, it\u2019s just a computer<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC News<\/a>, Skies stressed how invested Allen was in the project, and how open she was to collaboration. She also believes that, given the story it tells, West End Girl deserves to be consumed whole rather piecemeal.<\/p>\n

“Making this album with friends I’ve known for years is a massive part of the reason I’m so proud of these songs,\u201d she says. \u201cPlease listen top to bottom.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEST OF 2025: Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that topped MusicRadar’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-335715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}