At the start of the school year, I had fallen into a music rut; I was bored of listening to the same songs that I’d streamed countless times over the past year. Then at the end of October, the 24th to be exact, British pop star Lily Allen released her fifth studio album, West End Girl, and single-handedly revitalized my campus playlists.
Raw, angry, and vulnerable; Allen’s album is a masterful deep-dive into her messy separation with now ex-husband, David Harbour. Since its release, this album has taken over TikTok, invoking many different controversies. Some people believe she exposed too much about their relationship, while others have cheered her on for turning her heartbreak into art. Discourse about who’s the “bad guy” has been running rampant. Are you Team Allen or Team Harbour? Although, as someone who enjoys engaging with pop-culture, I feel that people are focusing on the petty details that we, as listeners, have no control of, instead of giving Allen flowers for her dedication to her craft.
As a literary major, I am particularly fond of Allen’s storytelling. I can read through her lyrics every time and still find some new depth in every listen.
If I were to analyze the whole album, this article would be more like a manifesto, rather than a quick entertaining read. Instead, I’m going to briefly discuss the first song of the album and the title track, “West End Girl”.
The song tells a story about Allen receiving a role in a play which requires her to travel back and forth between her house with Harbour in New York and the rich theatre scene of West End, London. The song highlights the growing tension between her and Harbour with a titular moment when she receives the role in the play and he doesn’t react like a supportive husband is expected to, or as she sings: his “demeanour started to change” when he hears about her success. This moment goes to reveal Harbour’s jealousy for her achievements, rather than his expected support. Whether you’re supportive of Allen or not, this song raises an interesting conversation about gender dynamics as women’s professional success is still often met with resentment and insecurities from their male partners.
Allen ends the song by repeating, “now, I’m in London, I’m on my own, now I’m in London, and I’m all alone.” Despite the simple language used, Allen’s perspective works to evoke profound feelings of isolation, despite her new connection to the city, a feeling that I found incredibly relatable.
I moved to Istanbul for exchange shortly after a break-up without knowing anyone in the city. I spent a lot of time alone, but quickly found myself forming a deep bond with the city itself. In doing so, I managed to feel simultaneously alone and not lonely, because I felt like I had a real living bond with the city and it made anything feel possible. I see this connection reflected within Allen’s relationship to London.
Art is supposed to stir feelings within people, begging them to reflect and connect with the artist and the broader world around them. Whatever your personal opinions are on Allen, it’s obvious she’s achieved this goal with the album receiving critical acclaim and peaking at #2 most-streamed albums in the UK. Allen impressively uses her musical talent to create catchy bops that manage to hide deeper commentaries on gender, relationships, sexuality, and infidelity, in a way that caught my attention in a moment when my playlists were feeling quite stale. Though I would love to engage with debates about her best songs and lyricism, I worry that the current online world is too focused on the personalities and real-life situations that inspired the songs, rather than using the songs to reflect and find relatability and poeticism in their own life. To not do so is to reject art as the powerful tool that it truly is.