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Lily Allen pulls no punches on her new album, West End Girl.
The 14-track record, which was released Friday, October 24, chronicles the breakdown of Allen’s four-year marriage to David Harbour and heavily insinuates that the Stranger Things star, 50, cheated on the singer, 40, prior to their 2024 separation.
Allen opens the album with its title track, in which she recalls moving to New York City with Harbour at the beginning of her relationship. She sings that she later received a phone call informing her that she had gotten the lead role in a West End play. When she informed her partner, his “demeanor started to change,” so she went home to London “all alone” to begin rehearsals. (Allen has starred in both 2021’s 2:22 A Ghost Story and 2023’s The Pillowman.)
By the second and third songs, “Ruminating” and “Sleepwalking,” Allen finds herself staying up all night thinking about her better half having sex with other women while she is away. She sings in the latter, “Been no romance since we wed / ‘Why aren’t we f***ing, baby?’ Yeah, that’s what you said / But you let me think it was me in my head / And nothing to do with them girls in your bed.”
Eventually, Allen returns home, only to see a text from a woman named Madeline on her partner’s phone. She reveals in the lyrics to “Tennis” that she confronted her significant other, but he “made it all [her] fault.”
Allen decides to take matters into her own hands, messaging the other woman in the aptly titled track “Madeline” to ask, “How long has it been going on? Is it just sex or is there emotion?” Allen goes on to sing about having “an arrangement” in her marriage that permitted her husband to sleep with other women on a few conditions: “Be discreet and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers.”
After losing trust, a heartbroken Allen, who has been sober since 2019, yearns for a drink and a Valium in “Relapse.” She emotionally sings, “The ground is gone beneath me / You pulled the safety net / I moved across an ocean from my family, from my friends / The foundation is shattered / You’ve made such a f***ing mess.”
Allen’s pain turns to anger in “P**sy Palace” when she calls out her “sex addict” spouse’s “double life” and claims to have found a shopping bag filled with adult toys, lubricant and “hundreds” of condoms. She makes another gut-wrenching discovery in “4chan Stan” when she sees a receipt for a handbag from Bergdorf Goodman’s flagship NYC store that was purchased while she was in London.
“Why won’t you tell me what her name is?” she fumes. “This is outrageous / What, is she famous?”
Fed up, Allen admittedly starts looking for “someone to have fun with while [her] husband walks away” in “Dallas Major,” which is seemingly the fake name she used during a one-night stand. She sings to her paramour, “You know I used to be quite famous, that was way back in the day / Yes, I’m here for validation, and I probably should explain / How my marriage has been open since my husband went astray.”
By the album’s closing song, “Fruityloop,” Allen comes to the realization that “it’s not me, it’s you” (a nod to the title of her 2008 album) and tells her ex, “Wish I could fix all your s***, but all your s*** is yours to fix.”
Harbour’s rep did not respond to Us Weekly’s request for comment.
Harbour has only publicly addressed his split from Allen once. In a British GQ interview in April, he cryptically said, “I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life. There’s no use in that form of engaging [with rumors] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”
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Allen, for her part, confirmed to Vogue in a profile published Monday, October 20, that her new album is “inspired by what went on in the relationship,” though she added, “That’s not to say that it’s all gospel.”
Allen was previously married to Sam Cooper from 2011 to 2018. They share two daughters: Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12.
West End Girl, Allen’s first album in seven years, is available now.
English (US) ·