The pop music landscape is currently a loud reminder that love does not always last. And that the heartbreak that follows a split, while painful, can render great art \u2014 or at least art that will get the internet talking if you give the people enough juicy details. And this year is shaping up to be a banner year for the tell-all breakup album.<\/p>\n
Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires<\/a> released dueling albums about the dissolution of their marriage; Haim<\/a> went full-on messy with a summer breakup album; and a 50-year-old song by Fleetwood Mac honestly will not<\/a> leave the news cycle.<\/p>\n Currently at the front of the group sits British singer Lily Allen, who just released a scorched-earth, confessional album seemingly about her divorce from Stranger Things actor David Harbour. The album, West End Girl, breaks new ground for Allen \u2014 and for the art of the breakup record \u2014 with its candid, detail-filled account of the heartbreak and betrayal that led to the end of her marriage.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not sparing a single detail other than the person\u2019s name, which is never on the record,\u201d said Coleman Spilde<\/a>, senior staff culture writer and critic at Salon. \u201cThis is a breakup album that\u2019s also coming at a time where we have this very Taylor Swiftian sort of alternative romance songwriting that is very metaphorical. And Lily is kind of yanking us back to the style of songwriting that is incredibly candid.\u201d<\/p>\n The internet has lost its collective mind over the album, a reaction that signifies how our parasocial age is changing the breakup album\u2019s purpose. Today, Explained co-host Noel King sat down with Spilde to break it all down. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There\u2019s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Pandora<\/a>, and Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tell us: Who is Lily Allen and what did she do? <\/p>\n That is a very interesting and complicated question.<\/p>\n Lily Allen is a British musician and a tabloid fixture, and now she is back with her new album, West End Girl<\/a>, which is taking her sort of confessional songwriting to the next level by being incredibly honest, straightforward, candid, and revealing every sordid detail about the dissolution of her marriage to David Harbour, the actor from Stranger Things and Marvel fame.<\/p>\n West End Girl tells quite a tale. What is the tale that it is telling?<\/p>\n This is an album about a woman who is really excited to be in this marriage. She\u2019s been swept off her feet by this handsome man, and she\u2019s moving to New York to start her new life with him. We hear that in the opening title track of the album, \u201cWest End Girl,\u201d which is sort of a sing-songy introduction to the album.<\/p>\n And then suddenly she gets a call: Her agent has booked her a play. It seems that the nameless person that she\u2019s writing about on the album isn\u2019t quite so happy about that.<\/p>\n Then at the end of this opening track, we hear the recording of a one-sided FaceTime conversation between the two of them, where Lily is sort of talking to the person on the other end of the phone who seems to be asking for \u2014 maybe it\u2019s an open marriage; maybe he\u2019s confessing infidelity; maybe he\u2019s asking for a certain kind of marriage arrangement.<\/p>\n Then she is sort of thrust into this anxiety spiral, which a lot of listeners can probably relate to if they\u2019ve ever been in any kind of torrid relationship.<\/p>\n You have the follow-up track, the second track on the album, \u201cRuminating\u201d \u2014 this frenetic drum & bass song. She\u2019s remembering this line that he told her over the phone: \u201cIf it has to happen, baby, do you want to know?\u201d The end of the song, she just repeats [her reaction] \u2014 \u201cwhat a fucking line<\/a>\u201d \u2014 over and over and over again.<\/p>\n And then through the rest of the first half of the album, she\u2019s throwing back-to-back songs like \u201cTennis\u201d and \u201cMadeline.\u201d \u201cTennis\u201d is all about coming home from London to find that her partner may have been texting another woman. She\u2019s asking over and over, \u201cWho is Madeline? Who the fuck is Madeline?\u201d The very next song is answering that question. So it\u2019s sort of like a call-and-response that really invites the listener to have a lot of fun with it.<\/p>\n What are we supposed to be feeling by the time we finish?<\/p>\n It sort of flips a little bit to go a bit more introspective, thinking about, What can I do to be part of this relationship as he wants it to be? What can I do to make him happy? What sacrifices can I make?<\/p>\n You have songs like \u201cNon-Monogamummy,\u201d where Lily is kind of wrestling with her traditional ideas of motherhood and then being a mother who is also nonmonogamous, which doesn\u2019t quite fit for her. And then you have the sort of coda of the album, where she is finding some contentment with it and just accepting that this is someone who\u2019s never going to change.<\/p>\n And this is someone who didn\u2019t have her best priority in mind and someone who\u2019d prioritize themselves over the love of their marriage.<\/p>\n There are two types of reactions to this album: One of them is the offline reaction. That is your sister and your sister-in-law texting you, \u201cYou have to listen to this album.\u201d And then there is what happened on Al Gore\u2019s internet. <\/p>\n What was the reaction online?<\/p>\n There were a couple different reactions online.<\/p>\n People were starting to look at it as a morality tale. You had this initial reaction that was listening to the album and vilifying David Harbour and all of this. You had people who were calling for boycotts of the last season of Stranger Things, people who said that he should never be working in a Marvel movie again, and people who were really equating personal, romantic problems with sort of illegal sins \u2014 making infidelity into something that should be punishable by a law or by firing, which is just not how we work as a society.<\/p>\n