After a blissful seven years, Lily Allen returned this year with a brand new album, West End Girl. Lyrically, the songs are heavily inspired by her recent separation from her husband, actor David Harbour, and his alleged infidelity that led to it. This is no Taylor Swift-style heartbreak album, with contrived lyrics that cause the public to endlessly speculate as to their true meaning. This is a clear, no-holds-barred exposé of the fallout between the Smile singer and Stranger Things actor. The title track explores her casting in the semi-popular play 2:22 A Ghost Story back in 2021 and how Harbour’s lack of enthusiasm affected her own happiness.
This is one of the stronger songs lyrically on the album as it sets the scene well for what kind of narrative to expect, however, the elevator music backing and jarring tempo changes halfway through make it an ultimately disappointing opener. The whole second half of the song is Allen faking a phone call, supposedly to her husband, which showcases that maybe she wasn’t all that deserving of the lead role in a play after all.
In June 2024, Charli XCX started a cultural phenomenon with the release of her album Brat. The worst part of the success of that was always going to be the many artists that tried to recapture the singular nature of an album like that. Ruminating is Lily Allen’s attempt, and what came of it is one of the most repetitive songs of 2025. While it is meant to portray Allen’s mental spiral after agreeing to an open relationship, the heavy auto-tune of her vocals and lyrical repetition make for a difficult listen. What follows is Sleepwalking, one of the better songs on the album.
The composition fittingly sounds like a lullaby, as she describes how listening to Harbour talk makes her feel as though she is in a state of sleepwalking through their relationship. The song also features one of the best lyrics on the whole album as she takes inspiration from Freud and Oliver Twist: “I know you’ve made me your Madonna, I wanna be your whore, Baby, it would be my honour, Please, sir, can I have some more?”. Tennis, the song to follow up this lullaby-like track, is the best on the album. It maintains the emotionally raw lyrical style, the soft pop melody makes it an easy listen, even with the sharp injection of the question of Madeline, and just who she is.
Those spoken dialogue elements of Allen’s music, though they don’t always land, sets up the next song, Madeline, well. Listeners may already know what to expect from Allen without having listened to her extensively. Pop music with deadpan dialogue infused to highlight her playful demeanour and thick British accent. Madeline is the closest to that expectation that we see on this album. It also unfortunately features another attempt by Allen to showcase her ‘talents’ as an actress as she adopts a dodgy American accent to play the titular subject of the song.
But for all those promising moments, the midpoint of the album brings on another cringe garage track. This is a shame, especially as this song represents Allen’s struggle with sobriety and how the fallout of her marriage could lead to a point of no return. This serious subject matter deserves to be the focus of one of the more mellow songs on the album, but instead, the auto-tuned vocals ironically make it harder to hear and appreciate the sentiment behind the words. Further on with Pussy Palace and the allegations of Harbour’s sex life, butt plugs, sex addictions and all repeated throughout, it’s understandably had people talking. But it has a poor execution with the crudity and awkwardness of it outweighing the shock value that it so heavily relies on.
4Chan Stan too has trouble, a song all about Harbour taking the woman that he’s been sleeping with out shopping, and how he treats her better than his own wife. It has nothing to do with the controversial Internet imageboard 4chan, and yet it is involved, in title form only. Title only trouble continues with Nonmonogamummy, featuring Specialist Moss, a British MC and DJ. While the title is good, the song is not great. The supporting artist is definitely the better part of it. After that is the surprisingly gentle Just Enough, with a lovely strings-based accompanying melody that makes the song almost enjoyable to listen to. The lyrics are focused on Harbour having potentially fathered another woman’s baby, which is a much less lovely narrative.
Contrast that with Dallas Major, a nice little soul and disco-inspired tune that centres around Allen creating an online dating profile ‘after her husband went astray’, as she lists off reasons that would likely make her a less than popular candidate, sarcastically questioning ‘does that sound like fun to you?’. The song itself is fun enough to listen to once, but it isn’t one worth returning to. Beg for Me is an incredibly repetitive song where Lily Allen begs for you to beg for her. The irony can be assumed as intentional, but at this point, there’s no way to be certain. Let You W/In is one of the more cleverly titled and better songs on West End Girl, and then it’s Fruityloop, a disappointing closing track to an, ultimately, disappointing album.
The lyrics hear Allen finally come to terms with the breakdown of her marriage as she settles on the foregone conclusion that she is not to blame, but her unfaithful husband is. The song references Allen being a “little girl looking for her daddy” and with her real father being popular actor Keith Allen, she may be looking for some acting tips. As a member himself of one-hit wonder Fat Les, listening to him singing about curry over another Lily Allen album is preferable.
Lily Allen’s comeback has understandably caused major waves in both music and wider pop culture due to her appreciated, brutal honesty and unique style. However, this album seems to overwhelmingly favour style over substance as Allen uses her music as a form of therapy through a difficult period of her life. With the announcement of a USB stick of music shaped as a butt plug, it’s clear that Allen is using her unfortunate experience to capitalise on the wave of interest in her work, and with a recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, you’d struggle to claim it isn’t working.
