Over the last few years, the music world waits with baited breath for each new Taylor Swift album to carefully dissect the lyrics to figure out who the song are about. While that is happening, Lily Allen snuck in through the backdoor with her recent West End Girl album that outlines in great detail the breakdown of her relationship with actor David Harbour. The album plays like a concept album that The Streets would have released many years ago. An arms length list of producers help craft an auto tuned album filled with adult styled beats and stories of heartbreak, but in the Lily Allen spirit of snuck in jokes and classic one liners.
The title track is string laden with a passage that includes a one-sided conversation between Lily and Harbour while she describes getting the lead part in a West End London play. Nothing is held back lyrically and songs touch on lack of sex in their marriage, infidelity (to put it mildly), his own “Pussy Palace”, and calling up one of the girls that he was suspected of not only sleeping with but also playing “Tennis” with. All this while Lily asks, “who’s Madeline?”.
On “Ruminating’, the one-sided open relationship asks “If it has to happen, baby, do you want to know?” while later Lily sings that “A life with you looked good on paper” over the bouncy beats of “Nonmonogamummy”. Towards the end, a posting on a dating website asks, “I’m almost nearly forty, I’m just shy of five-foot-two/I’m a mum to teenage children, does that sound like fun to you?”
For people following, Lily Allen’s life has been an open book over the years of quotable interviews, addictions, broken relationships, unfortunate miscarriages, and later successfully giving birth to children. West End Girl is a fascinating run through her last relationship and does hold the listener’s attention to wonder, “what’s next”. Whether it holds up in several years time remains to be seen.
7.5/10
The Light Appears 