Listening to West End Girl is a bit like watching a surgeon during an operation. Equal parts brutal and revealing, Lily Allen dissects the collapse of her relationship with Stranger Things star David Harbour with sharp lyrics and relatively unadorned production. Allen grapples with the pressures and imbalances of her marriage, the devastation and horror at finding physical proof of an affair, as well as the difficulty of navigating the end of a relationship as someone in the spotlight. It’s confessional and explicit to the point of discomfort, and that’s kind of the point.
Throughout the album, there is little reliance on winding metaphors and winking innuendoes. Instead, the specificity of the details brings the audience in on the story. The listener is easily able to picture the Duane Reade bag Allen finds in her apartment or the long strand of black hair (not hers) in her bed. Allen utilises real texts she received from one of her husband’s mistresses in the song ‘Madeleine’, which places the listener squarely in her shoes.
There is a benefit to the use of plain language instead of more poetic and flowery prose, which is that it is accessible and understandable to a wide audience. Indeed, the magic of West End Girl lies in its stripped-down style. Allen’s marriage is broken, and there is all sorts of fallout: with her family, her friends, and the public. Yet she still has one thing left untouched: her ability to make music. At times throughout the album, Allen is painfully exposed to the listener, yet it is this act of telling her story, warts and all, that has helped her move forward in the healing process. As she sings in the track ‘Let You W/In’: “I can walk out with my dignity, if I lay my truth on the table.”
However, this level of confessionalism can have drawbacks. People may assume they know everything about the situation. Despite Allen’s remarkable candour, there are always more parts to the story, and this album is just one individual piece. It feels safe to assume that there are more dimensions to the narrative, possibly parts the writer herself has withheld on purpose. Allen herself said to Vogue: “There are things that are on the record that I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say it’s all gospel.”
Yet, once a piece of media has been released, it is no longer the creator’s property alone. It has been given to the public to enjoy and analyse. No matter how hard an artist tries, it can be difficult to correct a narrative once the “proof” is out there, especially when there is an element of celebrity drama involved. Like all albums, West End Girl is similar to a buried time capsule, representative of the anger and grief Allen was feeling during a specific period of her life. But unlike all albums, West End Girl is made for our modern era, where the need for privacy is second to the desire for absolute authenticity, no matter the cost.
