Lily Allen has ended a seven-year music hiatus with the surprise release of her fifth album, West End Girl, which appears to detail her divorce from US actor David Harbour. The 40-year-old British pop star has described the record as autofiction, telling British Vogue that while it references experiences from her marriage, it is not entirely factual.
The album includes explicit allegations about Harbour breaking agreed terms of an open relationship, emotional manipulation, and sex addiction. Harbour has not responded to the album's contents. Allen admitted in an interview with Perfect magazine that the record would likely stoke her tempestuous relationship with the media, saying, 'I don't make it easy for myself, do I?'
Critical reception has been largely positive, with four- and five-star reviews from The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, and the Daily Mail. The Guardian praised the 'striking prettiness of the tunes' contrasting with the anger in the lyrics, while the Telegraph highlighted the narrative tension from Allen's one-sided perspective. The Daily Mail compared the album to classic breakup records like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black.
However, some reviews were less favourable. The Times' headline read 'You almost feel sorry for David Harbour', and the Financial Times gave a 2/5 rating, accusing Allen of 'a hollow performance'. Fans online have been almost uniformly positive, with one viral tweet calling it 'the Melodrama for divorced white British women over 40'.
Allen has not announced tour dates for the album and has not performed live since 2019. She recently stepped away from her BBC podcast Miss Me? to focus on new projects, presumably including this album.
