I had a room to paint this week. What should I listen to while slapping on the Dulux? Having heard about Lily Allen’s new album West End Girl I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Forty-five minutes later I was sitting on the floor staring at the blank unpainted wall, dry paintbrush in hand, having been hit by the musical-emotional equivalent of a freight train.
Yes, some might describe Allen as a gob on a stick, a nepo baby (her father is the actor Keith Allen), a mouthpiece for woke snowflakes everywhere. Regardless, this album is a corker; or, in the words of Gwyneth Paltrow, ‘a masterpiece’.
While Gwyneth and her former husband Chris Martin ‘consciously uncoupled’ with graciousness, here Allen takes the opposite approach, hanging her ex-husband (Stranger Things actor David Harbour) out to dry by setting out all the allegations about his cheating, lies and betrayal over 14 songs.
What’s arresting about West End Girl is its mixture of candy-sweet pop music and horrendously painful lyrics: like biting into an M&M and finding a cyanide pill. In the first song Allen euphorically sings of her move to New York to be with the man she adores, looking at houses ‘with four or five floors’, buying a Brooklyn brownstone together thanks to her Prince Charming: ‘You want it? It’s yours.’
It’s bliss until she gets the lead part in a play (in 2022 she was cast in 2:22 A Ghost Story in London’s West End). Then, she sings more sadly: ‘That’s when your demeanour started to change… I thought that was quite strange.’
Once she has flown to London, we hear a one-sided phone call in which we are led to assume her husband proposes an open relationship while she is away. She grudgingly agrees: ‘But how will it work?… I want you to be happy.’
Lily Allen and ex husband David Harbour in 2020 at the Actors Guild Awards
With each song the story becomes more sordid. Of their open arrangement he asks her ‘if it [casual sex] has to happen, baby, do you want to know?’ It turns out they have made an agreement that he can only sleep with strangers if there is payment. Then she finds texts on his phone from a woman she doesn’t know: ‘Who the f*** is Madeline?’
Kept in emotional limbo by her increasingly distant husband, Allen sings plaintively: ‘You won’t love me, you won’t leave me…’
As her husband’s affections shift elsewhere, she starts picking on herself: ‘Look at my reflection / I feel so drawn, so old / I booked myself a facelift / Wondering how long it might hold…’
While the specifics of Allen’s situation are extreme – most wronged women won’t claim to have discovered their famous husband’s stash of condoms and sex toys – the agony of romantic betrayal is a theme that will resonate with millions. It did with me.
Listening to the album catapulted me back to my 20s when I moved in with a boyfriend. The relationship was serious. We had bought pots and pans from Ikea. We wrote both our names in birthday cards to friends. There was talk of The Future, but something was not right: a coldness in his gaze, indifference to my chatter. Could he really be working on something in the office at 9pm?
One night, as he showered, I seized my chance. Heart hammering like an SAS operative on a top secret mission, I rifled through pockets to find his phone (one of those Nokias we had back in the day; no passcode required). Scrolling through his texts I found the kind of information you really don’t want to see, but at the same time really do – because it confirms that you’re not going mad. ‘Sorry to text so late. Just wanted to say I had the best time! V xx.’
‘Hey, what was that song called again? Vx.’
‘Hahaha just thinking about that guy, lol x.’
The familiarity, the sprinkling of little kisses: the betrayal. By the time my then-boyfriend emerged from the bathroom I had become a splenetic ball of fury. ‘Who the hell is V? Who is she?’ I cried, enraged, hyperventilating.
‘It’s just a colleague!’ he protested, hands in the air as though I was wielding an AK47.
Within half an hour he had turned the tables, making me out to be a crazed lunatic for checking his phone, a bad girlfriend for failing to trust him.
It was too late to walk out so I slept on the living room floor that night – or rather ruminated endlessly on how unattractive I must be compared to ‘V’. Vicky? Venetia? Vision of loveliness? Who is she? Who the hell is she?
The following morning I moved back to my mum’s but was soon suckered back by promises I had misinterpreted the messages.
I hung on in for a few miserable months, knowing in my gut that the spectre of V wasn’t far away: he clung on to that Nokia day and night like it was his sole source of oxygen. When it finally ended I felt a curious mixture of emptiness and elation that the whole ghastly business was over.
West End Girl captures those feelings unlike any other music I’ve heard. Women like me recognise the way Allen’s husband turns the tables despite his own infidelities. They will recognise, too, the feeling of going a bit mad while suspecting that something is going on – gaslit into doubting themselves: ‘You let me think it was me in my head and nothing to do with them girls in your bed.’
There is, of course, a long history of deriding women as mad to shut them up or stop them from telling inconvenient truths. In the old days we were called ‘hysterical’ or ‘nervous’; these days it’s ‘psycho’ or ‘nutjob’, our sanity questioned in a way that rarely happens to men.
This album speaks (or sings) for all those women who have ever been played like a Stradivarius by a gaslighting partner.
She may be outspoken, but with this album Allen has written a thing of brilliance. Bravo.
Katy Perry and former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau arriving at the Crazy Horse Paris for the singer’s birthday celebration
Why do celebs ONLY date celebs?
Katy Perry and former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau make a handsome pair – but why do famous people always go out with other famous people?
Presumably it’s because they all meet on celebrity dating app Raya.
There’s a wider dating pool out there, you know… and maybe these romantically challenged celebs would fare better without two giant egos in the relationship.
Sorry Sydney, Bond’s a man
Actress Sydney Sweeney has said she would have ‘more fun playing Bond’ than a Bond girl.
Let’s hope no woke execs at Amazon MGM Studios (which owns the franchise) were listening.
The Pope must be Catholic, the King must be English, and Bond must be a tuxedo-wearing male named James. End of.
Sydney Sweeney shows off her new blonde bob haircut at the 2025 American Film Institute Fest
Hypocrisy of un-eco activists
A Just Stop Oil supporter who damaged Stonehenge in a protest against fossil fuels admits he drove to commit the crime – in his grandmother’s petrol car. What next? Flying to Paris in a fuel-guzzling jet to paint the Eiffel tower orange? When will these do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do activists understand that they do their cause no favours?
Just Stop Oil protesters spray an orange substance on Stonehenge in June last year
As unease grows about the inquiry into grooming gangs – or rape gangs, as I prefer to call them – London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been criticised for saying there are no such gangs in the capital. Can that really be the case? Or is Khan worried about causing offence? Years after these horrible crimes were first uncovered, it still feels like those in authority are putting cultural sensitivities above the protection of girls.
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