Last week, Lily Allen set social media ablaze with the release of her fifth album, West End Girl, which seemingly lifts the lid on the recent breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour.
The two married in 2020 but confirmed that they had split in February of this year. It was previously revealed that Lily has been “prevented from discussing specifically” the “details about the demise of her recent marriage,” but she has repeatedly said that her new album was heavily influenced by what went down between them.
With that in mind, it’s unsurprising that listeners were floored by West End Girl telling the story of Lily being left heartbroken by a partner who forced her into an open relationship after she landed an acting role in London in the summer of 2021.
You can read a full breakdown of the album’s jaw-dropping revelations here, but other key aspects include Lily’s partner blaming her for his own infidelity and showing no empathy or concern for how he made her feel. Lily also explicitly says on the record that she decided to release the exposing album because she found it unfair that her life had been completely torn apart while her ex-partner got to carry on unaffected by his actions.
And in a new conversation with Interview magazine, Lily opened up some more about her thought process when creating the album as she insisted that it’s not “cruel” and that she “doesn’t need revenge.”
After being asked if the record was her “revenge tour,” Lily explained that she wrote all of the songs in a little over a week back when the entire situation was still incredibly fresh, sharing: “I wrote this record in 10 days in December, and I feel very differently about the whole situation now. We all go through breakups, and it’s always fucking brutal. But I don’t think it’s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you’re in it.”
“That’s what’s fun about this record,” she went on. “It’s viscerally like going through the motions. At the time, I was really trying to process things and that’s great in terms of the album, but I don’t feel confused or angry now. I don’t need revenge.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Lily reiterated: “It’s not a cruel album. I don’t feel like I’m being mean. It was just the feelings I was processing at the time.”
And while Lily kept much of the raw emotion that she felt back in December in the final version of the album, she did reveal that she made some tweaks ahead of its release as she was concerned about sounding too much “like a victim.”
She said: “We did go back and tweak things. It was very important to me that I didn’t sound like a victim, so I’d be like: ‘We have to change that line. It just sounds too poor me.’ I wanted it to feel brutal and tragic, but also empowering, that there was joy in being able to express it.”
But despite clearly having no regrets about what she opted to share with the world, Lily did suggest that she is concerned about what David might make of it. When asked what she thinks his reaction to the songs would be, she confessed: “I try not to think about that.”
What do you make of West End Girl? Let me know in the comments below!