Lily Allen was always an enviably cool girl.<\/p>\n
When she first burst on to the music scene nearly two decades ago at 21, it was with a breezy, don\u2019t-care London swagger. Her songs concealed big, painful feelings under flippant, deadpan lyrics and deceptively sweet melodies, which made them easier to swallow. Even this summer, when she talked on her thrillingly unfiltered podcast Miss Me?<\/a> about having lost count of exactly how many abortions she\u2019d had, she sang the words to the tune of Frank Sinatra\u2019s My Way.<\/p>\n In the noughties, she seemed fearless, getting paralytic at awards ceremonies<\/a> and picking public beef with Madonna<\/a>. However, it looked as if she might be settling into a quieter life when she married Sam Cooper and had their two daughters, but within four years they\u2019d split up<\/a>. You might not immediately have guessed, when she wrote in her memoir about a fling with Liam Gallagher<\/a>, that since childhood she\u2019d been dreaming of \u201ctwo point four children, living in the country\u201d, as she told this newspaper<\/a>. But now we know what was really going on underneath.<\/p>\n Or do we? Her new album West End Girl<\/a> tells the story of \u2013 well let\u2019s just say, an open marriage gone sour, rather than necessarily her open marriage, since like Beyonc\u00e9 and Taylor Swift before her, Allen carefully blurs the question of exactly how much is about her real-life split from her second husband David Harbour last year and how much is just pure creative licence. Whoever this musical alter ego really is, she starts the title track singing dreamily about settling with her husband into a New York brownstone and finding schools for the kids, but ends it uncertainly trying to convince herself that doing whatever it takes to keep him happy will somehow work out for the best. After that, it\u2019s downhill all the way, as she comes sadly to realise that he hasn\u2019t even stuck to their agreement to \u201cbe discreet and don\u2019t be blatant\u201d, and that trying to match him at his own game as a 40-something mother of two isn\u2019t nearly as fun as it looks.<\/p>\n Though the guessing game of trying to match these lyrics to real life events is obviously driving a lot of downloads, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s why women of all ages have spent the past week listening to the album over and over on repeat, quoting scraps of it in their group chats, and arguing about whether putting \u201cethically non-mongamous\u201d on your dating profile is just a fancy new pseudo-progressive name for behaving badly. Allen seems to have tapped into a deep vein of female anger about having to pretend to be fine with something you\u2019re not, for fear that otherwise you\u2019ll look uncool or uptight \u2013 and then he\u2019ll leave you.<\/p>\n It\u2019s clearly resonating with plenty of women her age, sick of being strung along on dating apps by middle-aged Peter Pans who never seem ready to have the conversation about being exclusive. But there\u2019s something here too for younger women, secretly wondering whether the shattering of stigma around casual hookups or infidelity or various shades of kinky sex \u2013 while undoubtedly liberating for some \u2013 has made it harder for others to admit that they just want something vanilla. It\u2019s music for women tired of pretending to be fine with situationships in which they never know where they stand; tired of having to be a cool girl who never complains or makes demands, tired of worrying that it sounds too needy or basic to say you want more commitment or would like kids one day.<\/p>\n \u201cI tried to be your modern wife,\u201d Allen sings plaintively on Relapse, \u201cbut the child in me protests.\u201d But is it really so immature to want some stability, especially if (as Allen\u2019s by all accounts was) your own childhood was fairly chaotic, and especially once you have (as Allen does) children yourself?<\/p>\n For this isn\u2019t what sexual liberation was meant to feel like. It wasn\u2019t supposed to mean squashing your own needs anxiously down to fit some man\u2019s fantasy \u2013 whether that involves becoming a downtrodden tradwife or one-third of a throuple \u2013 while gamely pretending you want it just as much as he does. Revolutions are liberating only when the freedoms gained are genuine freedoms, not something more closely resembling an obligation in disguise. On the album, Allen sings about her daughters looking to her for lessons about love. Well, it turns out, she\u2019s written one: and it\u2019s not to be shamed out of asking for what you want, even \u2013 perhaps especially \u2013 if it sounds slightly boring.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lily Allen was always an enviably cool girl. 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