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I<\/span>t is seven years since Lily Allen<\/a> last released an album. No Shame<\/a> was Mercury-nominated and far better reviewed than 2014\u2019s Sheezus<\/a> \u2013 not least by Allen herself \u2013 but it was also her lowest-selling album to date. You could have taken that as evidence pop had moved on. In Britain, 2018 was a year that the well-mannered boy\/girl-next-door pop of George Ezra, Jess Glynne and Ed Sheeran held sway; Allen seemed symbolic of a messier, mouthier era. Afterwards, Allen stepped away from music, concentrating instead on what you\u2019d have to call a diverse portfolio of interests, including acting, podcasting, launching her own sex toy and selling photographs of her feet to fetishists on OnlyFans.<\/p>\n But pop has a habit of developing in a cyclical way. When Olivia Rodrigo brought Allen on stage at Glastonbury in 2022<\/a>, it highlighted how deep her impact on the younger artist\u2019s songwriting ran: you could trace a direct line between Allen\u2019s splenetic, sweary Smile and Rodrigo\u2019s similarly forthright brand of breakup anthems. And Rodrigo is merely one among a succession of younger female artists claiming Allen\u2019s influence: Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx, PinkPantheress. If Lola Young<\/a> had a fiver for every time she was compared to Allen, she would never need to work again.<\/p>\n So West End Girl arrives in a very different and more welcoming climate to its predecessor. But although you can hear a Charli xcx influence on the fizzing, trebly synths and Auto-Tune overdose of Ruminating, and a whisper of PinkPantheress about the two-step garage-fuelled Relapse, West End Girl really doesn\u2019t seem like an album made for opportune reasons. It feels more like an act of unstoppable personal exorcism. It appears to pick through the collapse of Allen\u2019s second marriage so unsparingly, with such attention to vivid, grubby detail, that you have to assume the lyrics were reviewed by a lawyer. (She told British Vogue<\/a> that the album references things \u201cI experienced within my marriage, but that\u2019s not to say that it\u2019s all gospel.\u201d)<\/p>\n While you can\u2019t tell where poetic licence has been applied, its narrative arc traces accepting an open marriage along certain guidelines (\u201cHe had an arrangement, be discreet and don\u2019t be blatant,\u201d Allen sings on Madeline, \u201cthere had to be payment, it had to be with strangers\u201d) only for the relationship to explode when it transpires that the husband isn\u2019t abiding by the rules. There are confrontations with other women, a visit to an apartment where Allen (or her character) believes her husband is practising martial arts but where she finds \u201csex toys, butt plugs, lube\u201d and \u201ca shoebox full of handwritten letters from brokenhearted women\u201d. There is a brief, unhappy attempt to beat him at his own game \u2013 on Dallas Major, she joins a dating app under an assumed name, but keeps repeating the phrase \u201cI hate it\u201d. It reaches a bitterly unhappy denouement: \u201cIt is what it is \u2013 you\u2019re a mess, I\u2019m a bitch \u2026 all your shit\u2019s yours to fix.\u201d It\u2019s simultaneously gripping and shocking. There are moments when you find yourself wondering if airing this much dirty laundry can possibly be a good idea, impeccably written and laced with mordant wit though the lyrics are.<\/p>\n Obviously said lyrics will attract the lion\u2019s share of attention. In an era where every pop song is combed through for inferences about the artist\u2019s private life, Allen has dramatically upped the ante: certainly, Taylor Swift complaining that another star once called her \u201cboring Barbie\u201d seems pretty small beer by comparison. But there\u2019s far more to West End Girl than just cathartic disclosure. The songs skip through a variety of styles: the title track\u2019s orchestrated Latin pop; Beg for Me borrows from Lumidee\u2019s 2003 R&B hit Never Leave You; Nonmonogamummy blends electronics and dancehall-influenced guest vocals by London MC Specialist Moss.<\/p>\n What ties the songs together beyond the story they tell is the striking prettiness of the tunes, which seem, jarringly, more evocative of a romantic fairytale ending than the anger and unhappiness the lyrics convey. And West End Girl seems to reserve its sweetest melodies for its bleakest moments. 4chan Stan is possessed of a wistful loveliness at odds with its internet basement dweller-referencing title; Pussy Palace \u2013 the one with the lyric about butt plugs etc \u2013 may well be the most musically addictive, hook-laden track here: it\u2019s as if Allen is defying you not to hit rewind even if you don\u2019t want to hear its squalid story more than once.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard not to wonder whether West End Girl is going to get the reception it deserves for its boldness and the quality of its songwriting: it would be a great pop album regardless of the subject matter. Perhaps some listeners will view it as too personal to countenance. Or perhaps fans who have grown up alongside Allen, now 40, will find something profoundly relatable in the story it has to tell about modern relationships. Underneath all the gory details, it seems to tacitly suggest that open arrangements are easily abused, usually by men, and that believing you\u2019re above outmoded concepts of fidelity \u2013 \u201ca modern wife\u201d, as Allen puts it at one point \u2013 is no guarantee you won\u2019t get your heart broken. We shall see. What\u2019s for certain is West End Girl is a divorce album like no other.<\/p>\n Daniel Avery \u2013 The Ghost of Her Smile ft Julie Dawson<\/strong> It is seven years since Lily Allen last released an album. No Shame was Mercury-nominated and far better reviewed than 2014\u2019s Sheezus \u2013 not least by Allen herself \u2013 but it was also her lowest-selling album to date. You could have taken that as evidence pop had moved on. In Britain, 2018 was a year … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Lily-Allen-West-End-Girl-\u2013-a-gobsmacking-autopsy-of.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7327,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325\/revisions\/7327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}This week Alexis listened to<\/h2>\n
The British dance producer explores what he calls \u201cthe shoegaze and ethereal corners inside my skull\u201d in the company of NewDad vocalist Dawson to blissful effect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"