A Review of Lily Allen's New Album: West End Girl

Album Artwork by Nieves González

On October 24th, 2025, Lily Allen released her fifth studio album West End Girl, and it went ridiculously viral. While I’m not a fan of Allen’s, I had of course heard her big hits, namely Smile and Fuck You. These two are catchy songs with scathing lyrics, both things I really enjoy, but neither inspired me to listen to any more of her music. However, the swirl of news, opinions, and virality surrounding West End Girl absolutely did.

The catalyst for this album, as I found out through social media, was Allen’s messy divorce from actor David Harbour. Harbour is best known for his role in the TV show Stranger Things, in which he plays Jim Hopper, the ex-police chief and adoptive father of the show’s protagonist, Eleven.

The couple began dating in mid-2019 after meeting on Raya and got married in September of 2020. News of their split broke in December of 2024 with cheating sited as the cause. Beyond that, not many details were known. Until now, that is. West End Girl is jam-packed with just about every detail a nosy fan would want to know. The album is a deeply personal 14 track tell-all; you can’t overstate how much Allen excavates her marriage on it. She feeds you so many specifics that listening to these songs feels like reading your own diary.

To kick things off, the first track is the album’s title track. The song begins with Allen recounting her move to New York with Harbour and her two daughters, whom Allen shares with her first husband Sam Cooper.

West End Girl is pleasant-sounding. It’s an easy-listening song that explains the beginning of the end of Allen and Harbour’s marriage. In 2021, Allen got the part of Jenny in the thriller play 2:22 A Ghost Story, and moved back to London for several months in order to practice and star in the production’s full initial run. In the song, Allen mentions the fact that Harbour did not have a positive reaction to this. ‘I said "I got some good news, I got the lead in a play" / That's when your demeanor started to change / You said that I'd have to audition, I said "You're deranged”,’ Allen sings, vocalizing his displeasure with her theatrical success.

In my opinion, Harbour’s push-back against Allen’s acting opportunity is some very thinly veiled jealousy. This opinion of mine is affirmed by the fact that Harbour sent Allen a scarily back-handed note, along with a bouquet of flowers, for the opening night of 2:22 A Ghost Story. The note reads, ‘My ambitious wife, these are bad luck flowers ‘cause if you get reviewed well in this play, you will get all kinds of awards and I will be miserable. Your loving husband.’ Yikes.

Picture taken from Lily Allen's Instagram story

The song finishes with a reenactment of the phonically Harbour and Allen had, in which he proposed that they open their relationship. By the end of the conversation, Allen’s voice is noticeably distraught. It’s clear that she doesn’t really want to be in an open relationship.

On track two, Ruminating, Allen worries about the sex that Harbour is having outside of their marriage, while track three, Sleepwalking, worries about the state of their sexual relationship within their marriage. Ruminating specifically sounds like Allen’s attempt at writing a Charli xcx song. The beat skips and hops with vague elements of drum n’ bass, pounding drums, and strong, chorded piano. All this serves as the backdrop to her auto-tuned voice as she laments her and Harbour’s non-monogamous arrangement. Sleepwalking, on the other hand, is one of the more boring tracks in my opinion. Save for one unfortunate moment. During the bridge, she sings, ‘I know you've made me your Madonna / I wanna be your whore / Baby, it would be my honor / Please, sir, can I have some morе?’ I personally find the borrowing of the lyric ‘please sir, can I have some more?’ lyric from the musical Oliver! to be very corny. In my opinion, it’s the peak of millennial songwriting.

After Sleepwalking comes Tennis, another boring track. This song sets up Allen’s suspicions that Harbour is violating the rules of their open relationship, with a woman nicknamed ‘Madeline.’

Following Tennis is of the most pivotal songs on the album Madeline, the song in which Allen details her discovery, and eventual confrontation, of Harbour’s mistress. In one of the most ridiculous musical decisions I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear, Madeline features the sound of gunshots several times across the track in order to... Make a point? I really don’t know. It gave me a good laugh, though. Another choice that made laugh is Allen donning an American accent at the end of this song. She does this to act out ’Madeline’s’ response to her confrontation of what exactly this woman’s relationship with her husband is.

The song that follows all of Madeline’s hilarity is one of the most serious songs on the album, Relapse. Allen is a woman who has been sober from drugs and alcohol since the late 2010s. In this song, she repeats the refrain, ‘I need a drink / I need a valium,’ ragging on Harbour for pulling her safety net and shattering her foundation by betraying her trust, and cheating on her, thus triggering her impulse to relapse.

What follows Relapse’s gravity is another song that’s very pivotal to the story of Allen and Harbour’s break up, and what is my favorite song on the album: P*ssy Palace. This song is about Allen traveling across New York City to drop off ‘his clothes, his mail, and medication,’ only to reach his West Village apartment and find a mess of sex toys, condoms, and other sex-related paraphernalia. Allen wonders if her ex-husband is a raging sex addict over a borderline ethereal beat that twinkles and pulsates. Her voice is high and lovely, and the song is so catchy to me that I can ignore the corniness of chorus. ‘I didn't know it was your p*ssy palace, p*ssy palace, p*ssy palace, p*ssy palace / I always thought it was a dojo, dojo, dojo,’ Allen sings, once again employing her very millennial pen. The next two songs, though, I have a much harder time excusing.

Tracks eight and nine are titled 4chan Stan and Nonmonogamummy respectively. On 4chan Stan, Allen expresses her outrage that Harbour won’t tell her who his mistress is. I actually enjoy this song’s mid-tempo rhythm, but its refrain of ‘What a sad, sad man / It's giving 4chan stan,’ robs me of any further enjoyment.

However, Nonmonogamummy is an actually enjoyable listen thanks to the fact that it features artist and producer Specialist Moss. Specialist Moss brings an electric, upbeat energy to this track that allows for a moment of brevity from Allen’s otherwise repetitive and droning sound. It’s the biggest tonal switch up on the whole project and thank God for it. Something was definitely needed to save a song that was titled Nonmonogamummy. ‘I'll be your non-monogamummy,’ she sings, in a painstakingly cringey moment of recognizing her people pleasing tendencies.

As the album nears to a close, Allen tackles topics like age and motherhood. On Just Enough, Allen sings about the pain of feeling someone fall out of love with you. At this point in the album, her monotone way of singing and the looping strings in the background are starting to feel very repetitive. She clearly knew what she wanted this album to sound like, but I would’ve liked more variety, especially for songs as interesting as these are.

On Dallas Major, another favorite of mine, she gets candid about the realities of trying to date post-divorce, especially as a mother and a woman in her forties. This song sounds like a brutally honest Tinder bio. On the heels of Dallas Major is Beg For Me, a song that touches on the theme of life after divorce. This song is less of a plea to be loved and kept, and more of a complaint. It’s a, ‘How the f*ck could you do this to me?!’ song through and through.

The album’s penultimate track is a song entitled Let You W/In. It opens with acoustic guitar which, in this case, I really don’t enjoy. I’m not a fan of acoustic guitar in pop music usually, although there are some exceptions to this. Outside of how this song sounds, it’s the first song on the album in which Allen takes a firm stance on being happy that her relationship with Harbour is over.

And finally, there’s Fruityloop. This song is a high moment for me. After the 13 previous tracks about grief, loss, betrayal, suspicion, and sexual unfulfillment, it finally feels like Allen has come out of this relationship on the other side, not unscathed, but finally ready to heal. This song is also catchy, and I love the drums used on it. In it, Allen’s singing is more dynamic, even over the song’s subtle, whistling tune. It wraps everything up in a neat bow and infantilizes the sh*t out of Harbour in the process. As far as album endings go, it’s a solid one.

Did I like this album? Yes. Do I understand why it’s gone as viral as it has? Being honest, not really. I know that with any celebrity break up, everybody wants to know the intimate details, and Allen provides all of that and more for the listener on a silver platter. However, the album is pretty mediocre as far as music goes. It has its merits, especially in the way that it’s a good concept album just because it’s a divorce-slash-break-up album. However, I feel like this album should’ve had some more dynamism and more variety. I would’ve liked Allen to stray fully out of her comfort zone and do something that nobody has ever heard before. But I always want that from an album. The crowning jewels of this album, for me, are the tracks Pussy Palace and Fruityloop. All in all, I give it a six out of ten.