Lily Allen has finally made her long-awaited return to music after seven years with her fifth album West End Girl, and it might be her most mature yet quintessentially Lily album thus far. Where Allen’s last album No Shame centred around facing accountability for her own self-destructive behaviour, this album reads more as a vulnerable record processing her confusion and hurt.
It is, undoubtedly, the kind of record that demands a start-to-finish listen. The first track 'West End Girl' starts off the cohesive narrative of a marriage breaking down. It begins with a deceptively upbeat tone, before the vocals begin, and with them, shockingly raw lyrics that bowl you over on the first listen. Lyrics such as "we’ve moved to New York, we’ve found a nice little rental near a sweet little school" portray a fairy-tale that soon turns dark: "that’s when your demeanour started to change… I thought that that was quite strange, and I thought, I thought that that was quite strange".
Depending on how you look at it, the repetition seen throughout the album could be a deliberate tactic to emphasise her confusion, or a tel-ltale marker of the fact that the album was allegedly written in only ten days.
In the second half of the track, the pain in Allen’s voice as we hear one half of a phone call is palpable, making for a listening experience that tugs at the heartstrings even for those who might not find the content at all relatable in a literal sense.
The second track, 'Ruminating', is where Allen begins to unravel what people online are taking as juicy and verbatim details about the breakdown of her marriage, despite the fact that Allen has said herself that the record is inspired by some of her real experiences, “but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel”. 'Sleepwalking' starts off lilting and beautifully sung, and crescendos angrily before the chorus, with the accusatory "you let me think it was all in my head, and nothing to do with them girls in your bed".
The next two tracks, 'Tennis' and 'Madeline', go perfectly together and only pique the listener’s interest further, as Allen masterfully shows off her storytelling prowess. 'Tennis' is sweetly sung, the content matter less sweet, punctuated repeatedly, and with increasing frustration, by the question "who’s Madeline?" — one that Allen seems to answer in the next track. She reminds you of her segue into acting, a talent she has displayed this summer performing in the play Hedda Gabler as the title character, with her sickly sweet American accent imitating ‘Madeline’ herself, signing off "love and light, Madeline". The instrumentals themselves sound like the soundtrack to a conflict in an old Western film, reinforced by gunshot sounds heard halfway through.
'Relapse' is next, rhythmic and autotuned, delving into a depiction of utter desperation. Allen sings "the ground is gone beneath me, you pulled the safety net", and the heart-breaking line "the girls are looking at me, to teach them all about love". Meanwhile, back-to-back tracks 'Pussy Palace' and '4chan Stan' have that classic, facetious Lily Allen nature, with exposing lyrics such as "hundreds of Trojans, you're so fucking broken" alongside witty ones: "was there an encore? Did it pay dividends?". The words are open, honest, raw, and yet set to at times sweet, and usually catchy music. As Lily Allen said herself, she writes “music [that] sounds really pretty and it’s not”.
While the entire album does focus on the same sordid saga, and the Lily Allen signature style is present throughout, the influences are varied and fun to listen to. 'Nonmonogamummy', featuring Specialist Moss, is reminiscent of the early reggae influences found in her debut album Alright, Still, while the autotune in the catchy track 'Ruminating' is Charli xcx-esque. In the haunting and all-too-understandable 'Just Enough', Allen sings "I gave you all my power... but you, you give me just enough". It’s sad and lamenting, and one of the most subtle and gentle tracks on the album.
Of course, Allen has faced renewed backlash on the internet for past mistakes she wrote about in her own autobiography, with some deeming her an insufficiently deserving recipient of our sympathy. Whatever you think of Lily Allen, you cannot deny that she is open about her own flaws. The lyrics are self-aware and funny in 'Dallas Major', as the narrator dons a fake name to explore dating in an open marriage, saying "you know I used to be quite famous, that was way back in the day... yes, I'm here for validation", and asking "I’m almost nearly forty… I'm a mum to teenage children, does that sound like fun to you?". They pair well with the upbeat and rhythmic instrumentals.
Soon enough, however, the record returns to the sad once more. After 'Beg for Me', which is catchy but potentially feels like nothing especially new, we get to 'Let You W/In', a track that may be mellow and melancholic but that is not completely devoid of hope as Allen sings "but I can walk out with my dignity, if I lay my truth on the table". The album ends strongly with 'Fruityloop', which is, like all the others, still somewhat sad, but undeniably hopeful now, with the refrain "it’s not me, it’s you" paying tribute to Allen’s second album in a full-circle moment that signifies a kind of acceptance and self-discovery.
All in all, Lily Allen has ensured that her return to music has been impactful and, amazingly with such big (self-made) shoes to fill, not at all disappointing, with a raw, cohesive, and beautiful record. It is, to put it simply, a no-skips album.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4Dn3Z14YfT2gQVDgLmWUVn?si=uu60qG56TJSGPQ_gCYRj4Q
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