Lily Allen on her sensational new album.
Lily Allen photographed by Morgan Maher for Perfect’s limited edition Lily Allen mini-zine.
West End Girl, the new album from Lily Allen, is a coruscating account of a broken marriage in 14 startling pop songs, alternately angry, despairing and defiant. Each track opens a new chapter in a sad and sometimes sordid story, and each is delivered with Allen’s bravura combination of angelic voice, acid tongue.
A hardcore revenge drama, a pitch-black anti-romcom, a work of bracing autofiction written from the point of view of a woman scorned, betrayed, provoked, Allen’s fifth album is that rare thing in the age of Spotify: a collection of songs conceived as a single work, to be consumed whole, in sequence.
The title nods to the Pet Shop Boys classic (“Too many shadows, whispering voices / Faces on posters, too many choices”) as well as to the singer’s recent successes as an actress on the London stage.
It opens with a title track that functions almost as if it were the opening scene in a stage musical, words spoken as much as sung, snatches of dialogue, crestfallen phone calls. Then it’s away: panicky spiralling (‘Ruminating’), unanswered pleas for honesty (‘Sleepwalking’) and the one-two gut-punch of ‘Tennis’ and ‘Madeline’, an imagined conversation between a wronged wife and the other woman in her husband’s life: ‘I can’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth / I’m not convinced that he didn’t fuck you in our house.’
The lurid, uncompromising ‘Pussy Palace’ will perhaps receive the most feverish attention from amateur online sleuths: ‘Duane Reade bag with the handles tied / Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside / Hundreds of Trojans you’re so fucking broken / How did I get caught up in your double life?’
On ‘4Chan Stan’ the cheating husband is dismissed with a sharp barb: ‘You’re not even cute.’ Later songs ‘Nonmonogamummy’; the forlorn ‘Dallas Major’ – explore the disappointments of a 40-year-old woman seeking validation on dating apps. And the drama reaches a vituperative pitch with the heartbroken ‘Beg For Me’.
West End Girl moves through suspicion, paranoia, shock, recrimination and, ultimately, some kind of catharsis: closing number ‘Fruityloop’, in which tentative accommodation is made with what has gone before, in a phrase that calls back to the title of her most successful album, from 2009: ‘And finally I see / It’s not me, it’s you.’
It is, as they say, a lot. But then much has happened – clearly! – in the seven years since Allen’s last album, 2018’s No Shame.
First, she got sober. Then she met and married the actor David Harbour and moved to a townhouse in Brooklyn. She embarked on a successful new career as a stage actor, starred in a TV sitcom, marketed her own sex toy. She launched a hit podcast with her friend Miquita Oliver. She opened an OnlyFans account to sell images of her feet. To much acclaim she returned to singing live, as a guest of the American pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo at Glastonbury and then at the O2 in London on Rodrigo’s Guts tour.
Everything seemed to be going splendidly, even if there were those, like me, who occasionally wished she’d get back in the studio and make some new music – because for all her many talents, being a pop star is still what she does best.
Then the relationship with Harbour broke down, and they separated.
This summer she turned 40. Kim Jones, the fashion designer, a great friend of hers, threw a birthday lunch for her in his garden in Sussex. We sat at long tables and feasted on Jamaican food. It was a dreamy, bucolic scene, filled with people who care about her. But we all knew she was going through a hard time.
Lily and I have been friends for close to two decades. Not showbiz friends. Actual, normal (relatively normal) friends who hang out, go for lunch, talk shit, moan about work, gossip about frenemies and generally try to perk each other up, as friends do.
The first time I listened to the songs on West End Girl, one afternoon earlier this year, was on headphones attached to her phone as we wandered around Kensington Gardens, sucking on our vapes. I snorted with laughter at the funny bits, of which there are many, and marvelled at the crystalline emotional honesty of the devastating bits, of which there are also many.
Allen’s writing has always been autobiographical, from ‘Alfie’, about her brother, on her first album, Alright, Still, to the self-lacerating ‘Family Man’, on No Shame. That doesn’t mean every word and image is a direct reference to something that happened in real life. It means that she aims to convey an authenticity of feeling. She’s telling it like it is, rather than offering factual reports of events in her life. Poetic licence, it’s called.
None of which will prevent anyone from parsing the new album for details about the demise of her recent marriage – the facts of which she is prevented from discussing specifically, on the record or ‘on the record’.
On a recent Wednesday morning I found Allen at home at her flat in west London with her dog, a Chihuahua mix called Jude Bellingham, who had recently arrived from Brooklyn, her other home. (‘I haven’t really decided where I belong yet,’ she told me.)
As soon as I walked in, Jude began growling and yapping, showing me his teeth.
‘He doesn’t like men,’ said his mistress. (Maybe he’s heard the new album?)
A couple of hours later Jude Bellingham was eating out of my hand. It was the only way to stop him humping my leg: not a sentence I thought I’d ever write.
Allen made me a cup of tea and offered chocolate covered ginger biscuits. We sat at her kitchen table and started to talk.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
Lily Allen: “If what you’re doing isn’t provocative, what’s the fucking point?”
AB: You haven’t released any new music in seven years. Was there a period where you thought you might permanently retire from pop stardom?
LA: Yeah, there was a lot of time where I felt like that. I was writing pretty consistently throughout the last four years, but I just didn’t think it was any good.
AB: Why not?
LA: I don’t know. I can’t really explain it. To me the value in it is meaningless until it feels like it’s something that you want to release into the world. And I hadn’t gotten to that point until I wrote this collection of songs.
AB: You were blocked?
LA: I was. I hated everything. I guess I have a barometer, which is that if I don’t leave the studio with a bounce of the song to listen to in the car or to send to friends, then I know I’m not emotionally attached to it, I know I don’t really care about it.
AB: What were you writing about at that time?
LA: Observational stuff about the internet and the world. It just all seemed really obvious and crap.
AB: No Shame was made after a turbulent period in your life. Among other things, you’d got divorced from Sam [Cooper, her first husband and father of her daughters]. Do you find it easier to write, and that the work is better, if you have had some personal difficulty that you can channel into the songs?
LA: Yes, but I don’t think that that’s unique in any way. I think everyone does. Even people on the Daily Mail comment section. It’s easier to write funny things that are rooted in darkness or anger or... terminal hatred.
AB: You know what they say: happiness writes white. Do you think that’s true?
LA: Well, I’m not really interested in listening to an album of somebody telling me how happy they are. But I’m actually not really that interested in listening to any music.
AB: That’s a good start!
LA: I’m not! Actually, you know what? I’m listening to Jade Thirlwall’s album at the moment. There are real moments of sadness on that and real moments of joy. And that’s about the only thing that’s happened in the last six months, musically, that’s got me remotely excited.
AB: Can you find joy in other art forms? I don’t know, painting or a movie?
LA: I haven’t been able to in the past year or so. I’ve found it nigh on impossible to concentrate on absorbing any kind of art or culture. I haven’t really been able to read any books. Even TV stuff that I would ordinarily have enjoyed, I’ve just sort of tolerated. I’ve felt pretty distracted and not really been able to focus.
AB: Do you want to say why that is?
LA: No.
AB: Well, you’ve obviously been through a difficult period in your personal life. And you haven’t found that art is a consolation.
LA: Not other people’s.
AB: But your own?
LA: Yes. And Jade’s.
AB: I don’t know that record.
LA: It’s really good.
AB: Jade Thirlwell used to be in…
LA: Little Mix.
AB: OK. Look, I’m going to ask you about the new album in a minute but there’s been this long period since No Shame. And you’ve done loads of other things, very successfully. Would you have been alright with pursuing all the other stuff and leaving music behind completely?
LA: No, I think it would always have niggled at me. Because those performances with Olivia Rodrigo triggered me, in a way. When I’ve been up on those stages with those audiences, I’ve thought, ‘I really enjoy this.’ It was just annoying that I couldn’t come up with anything good enough to justify doing it.
AB: When you say it triggered you, you mean that in a good way.
LA: Yeah. It reminded me, like, ‘Oh, shit, this is fun!’
AB: I wasn’t there for the Glastonbury performance, but I was there when you sang with her at the O2. And there was a lot of love for you. People were really excited to see you. I don’t know how old Olivia Rodrigo is but...
LA: She’s 22 or something. Alright, Still is 20 next year, so she would have been like two when it came out. And, yeah, her fans are even younger than she is.
AB: Her fans weren’t born when it came out. And yet they were excited to see you. How did it feel? Were you surprised?
LA: Because of the age difference and the audience not being my audience, there’s a self-hating part of me that catastrophises. Like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? This is going to be a disaster and humiliating and an embarrassment.’ And then when it turns out not to be, my brain should go, ‘Wow, look at that, you should be so proud of yourself!’ But it doesn’t. It’s annoying. I’m working on it. I’m doing EMDR therapy at the moment.
AB: Is it helping?
LA: I think so. Fucking 20 years of talk therapy doesn’t really seem to be helping, so it’s time for something new.
AB: One of the things that’s happened since No Shame is that you got sober. Your drinking and drugging always seemed to me to be bound up with the experience of being a famous pop star. It wasn’t independent from it.
LA: Mm hmm.
AB: How does it feel now that you’re going back into an area which was always associated with that?
LA: You know, I’ve used drugs and alcohol to cope with that attention. But it was a real outlet for me as well. People that have only known me since sobriety, they’ll be like, ‘I can’t imagine what you’re like when you were drunk.’ And I’m always like, ‘I was fucking horrible.’ I would turn into kind of a bully. It would be fun for a minute, but then it would go to quite a dark place. And I think my read on it is that I was getting so much negative attention – I was getting positive attention too, but obviously none of that registered – and that was a lot of weight to carry around with me. And then when I got drunk and high, it was like, ‘Right, now I can put everyone to rights.’
AB: And now?
LA: I don’t know. I don’t miss it. It’s so not a part of my life any more. I suppose maybe I wonder what it will feel like playing live. Because I love playing live, but part of it for me is the party after the show and the wind-down and the drugs and alcohol. And the adrenaline that you get from performing, it’s like a lethal, fun mix. I’ve only performed a handful of times in sobriety and it’s uncomfortable when you come off stage and that adrenaline has nowhere to go. And you haven’t got anything to numb it with.
AB: What about when you’re acting in a play? That’s got to be an adrenaline rush, coming offstage after that, and you’ve coped with it.
LA: I guess so, but it doesn’t feel so related to my sense of self-worth. It’s somebody else’s words, it’s somebody else’s character, it’s somebody else’s story and I’m having fun with it and I’m playing with it, but it’s not me.
AB: I guess we can address the other big thing that has happened in your life in a minute, when we talk about the album.
LA: My boob job?
AB: That’s two big things right there. Three, including the break-up. How are you feeling about your boob job now?
LA: Good, although I have got fucking massive lump in my right boob.
AB: A cyst?
LA: I think it must be a cyst, yeah. It’s not dangerous. I went to have a mammogram and an ultrasound in New York last week and it came back OK.
AB: That’s not connected to the boob job, or is it?
LA: I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.
AB: Why did you have a boob job?
LA: I felt like it. No, actually, you know what it was? It was that I got really, really thin when I was feeling at my lowest, in the past year or so. Or longer, actually. And I knew that I had to gain weight. And I’ve always been bottom-heavy and so I had a fear that if I was to gain weight, my body would feel out of proportion. And so I felt like, why not gift myself a get-out clause? Make it feel more enticing.
AB: More enticing to get a bit bigger bum?
LA: Yeah.
AB: Have you got a bit bigger bum now?
LA: Yeah. It’s all worked out fine!
AB: OK! Maybe we’ll come back to that, maybe not. It’s what the people want to hear, so why not give it to them, right?
LA: (Puts on irritating whiny voice) ‘Ooh, you’re perfect just the way you are! Why can’t you just embrace your natural self?’ Shut up!
AB: I think that’s my line, later on. Question 478.
LA: Yeah, can’t wait.
AB: Let’s talk about West End Girl. You’ve been saying to me over the years that you were struggling to come up with songs you liked. And then not so long ago you said you’re going to LA to make a record and it felt like two days later you got back and it was done.
LA: It was 10 days.
AB: Ten days is still astonishingly quick to write and record an album. Tell me how it happened. What was it that provoked this sudden outpouring of really good material?
LA: I wish I could tell you. If I knew the answer to that then I would make it happen all the time. I think with all my records – bar [her third album] Sheezus, which felt a little bit misguided – all of them have felt like… not hard. I mean, it was hard to make this record. It was incredibly manic, and it was emotionally traumatic. But nothing felt forced. It just sort of fell out of me. And I think that’s what happens when you’re writing from a place of truth, and without an agenda. I think when I struggle with writing it’s because I’m worried about how things are going to be perceived or how things are going to be consumed, or where I exist in the market, or whatever. This record was purely for me, and it was a way of processing things that I was going through in my private life.
AB: You made it in LA.
LA: I made it with a friend of mine who was also the musical director on my last tour, Blue May. And he put together a really strong team of different people – writers, producers, players – that would come and go from his studio in LA. There were a few days that we went and worked in this guy called Chrome Sparks’s house, but apart from that it was all done in the same room.
AB: It is a very dark record. It’s the sound of someone in pain. Forgive me for telling you what your own record’s about, but it is the story of a broken marriage and a series of betrayals that has caused the singer to feel really devastated. Is that an accurate description of West End Girl?
LA: Yes. That is an accurate description.
AB: You’ve been through a break-up yourself.
LA: Yeah. There are definitely some things that happened in my real life that are reflected on this record.
AB: This is a pretentious way of approaching it, so feel free to tell me I’m talking bollocks, but are you aware of autofiction as a form of writing?
LA: No.
“There are definitely some things that happened in my real life that are reflected on this record.”
AB: Autofiction in a novel – like Knausgaard or Rachel Cusk – draws from real-life experiences to create a mix of fiction and autobiography. Sometimes the writer uses their real name, but that doesn’t mean it’s them exactly. Sometimes they use the real names of family members. And sometimes they deliberately disguise people, for obvious reasons. It’s kind of merging the two forms, fiction writing and autobiography, in order, I think, to investigate the writer’s feelings about stuff that has happened to them without just relating the facts directly, as in nonfiction. Do you think that this album could be considered autofiction?
LA: Yeah, I do think it could be considered autofiction. I also think that what was going on in my life was really confusing, because I didn’t actually know what was going on in my life. I wasn’t sure what was real, and what was in my head. So there’s a certain amount of, like, joining dots. When you are not given answers, your brain is full of lots of questions. And if nobody’s willing to answer those questions, then your brain starts to answer them for you. And so I think some of that maybe happened here.
AB: Is the person singing you, or is that an alter ego?
LA: I’m going to say it’s an alter ego.
AB: In a way, this helps us discuss it. Because if we accept that this is a work of autofiction in which an alter ego also called Lily Allen has gone through a devastating breakup in which she’s been betrayed, then it makes it easy to talk about the content of the songs.
LA: Perfect!
AB: Does that mean that the other people in the songs, some named, some unnamed, are also sort of proxies for real people?
LA: Correct.
AB: OK, so let’s talk about it. It’s an angry record, there’s a lot of sorrow and pain. Is that how you felt when you were writing it?
LA: Yes.
AB: Why?
LA: I have deep-rooted issues with rejection and abandonment which I’ve been tussling with for most of my adult life and probably quite a lot of my childhood as well. And I was having, like an extreme reaction to things at the time.
AB: ‘Things’ being that your marriage broke down.
LA: Yes.
AB: Tell me about that. Otherwise, it’s just me telling your story. What can you say about it?
LA: I don’t know what I can say. Two people who were once together are not together. And that’s really sad. It’s hard. It’s hard for me to not have my person, you know? And I am quite a codependent person. And I find it difficult to lean on the people who are available to me when I’m missing the comfort and stability of what is not available to me.
AB: You mean missing being in a relationship?
LA: Yeah. And I know that what I have to do is to be able to make myself happy and that is a source of extreme irritation for me.
AB: Because it’s hard to make yourself happy instead of have someone else do that for you?
LA: Yeah. And it means doing the fucking work, and I feel like I’ve been doing the work for fucking ages. I’m exhausted by it. And I thought it was done. I thought it was happily ever after, you know?
AB: You thought that when you got married?
LA: Yeah. And guess what? The dating scene is much harder as a 40-year-old woman with two teenage children than it is for a 34-year-old woman. It’s bitterly disappointing. There’s an element of humiliation and shame around it. The world doesn’t portray women of my age as being desirable. And it just feels like climbing up a mountain. But also, at the same time, I’m like, I don’t have to get involved with it. But something in me says that I do.
AB: You don’t have to get involved with what, with another person?
LA: Yeah, being in a relationship is not the answer to all of my problems. In fact, it’s probably the opposite. But it feels like the easier option. But also quite hard to achieve in this current climate.
AB: There’s self-hatred on this record. And it’s related to some of what you’re saying. You write about being too old or not good-looking enough, being a failure.
LA: I don’t think that my previous relationship has helped me with any of that.
AB: With self-worth?
LA: With self-worth, yeah.
“Being in a relationship is not the answer to all of my problems. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.”
AB: The album paints a very unflattering portrait of the idea of open marriage. People have had open marriages for centuries, of course. But it does seem to have become somehow part of the culture lately, the idea of polyamorous relationships, multiple partners. And it strikes me that women are made to feel sort of uncool or uptight if they don’t go along with it, because it’s the modern way of being.
LA: Do I think that that’s true? Yeah, I do. And it seems to me that younger people find it easier to embrace as a concept. Maybe the 2.4-children-nuclear-family thing has not been rammed down their throats quite as much, so it’s not so much in their wiring. But it’s not something I ever thought about when I was younger or going into either one of my marriages.
AB: Do you find the idea of an open marriage appealing?
LA: No.
AB: Some people would be like, ‘Oh, amazing idea!’ You get to have all the comfort and reassurance of a relationship but you also get to fuck other people.
LA: I guess it’s just my attachment style. I grew up in a really unstable household. Neither of my parents was particularly present. And so what I craved in adulthood from my relationships was to be centred. And I’m not particularly interested in anything else. Right?
AB: Totally. I also would not find the idea of an open marriage appealing. I mean, I’m older than you. When I was younger this was not presented as a serious option. But everything’s changed. I think porn is responsible for a load of this.
LA: I think porn is responsible for a load of it, and I think that Instagram is responsible for a load of it. If you are a 60-year-old man and you’re on social media you’re not being served pictures of women in their forties. You’re being served pictures of women in their mid-twenties. The algorithm is showing you what is desirable.
AB: You desire what’s presented to you and what you are told you should desire.
LA: Yes, exactly. The messaging is worse than it’s ever been. It says only 25-year-olds are into sex. No one else. 25-year-olds and men. Women of my age are meant to be focusing either on our work or on our children. And I think that you’re meant to accept that your partner’s eyes will wander, but that’s not on the menu for you any more. And take up, like, knitting or crafts or something.
AB: The photos that this interview will run alongside, they’re very sexy.
LA: Yeah, and I can already feel the response to them, which is like, ‘She’s so sad, she’s so desperate, she’s too old for this.’ Why? Because it’s sexy? Why do we relate something that we all do for our entire lives only to youth? It’s fucking weird.
AB: I’ll be devil’s advocate. The photos were taken by a woman, but are you not, to some extent, playing into what we’ve just been talking about: the presentation of something that’s to be desired. There you are in your lingerie, on a bed, coming on to the camera.
LA: I don’t agree with that. I think it’s a reaction to how I’ve been made to feel, which is: you are undesirable and you’re not in the sexy bracket any more. I actually didn’t dress like this in pictures when I was in my early twenties. It wasn’t something that came naturally to me.
AB: Is that because you feel sexier now than you felt when you were in your twenties?
LA: Yeah! The act of having sex in my twenties was completely as an object. I didn’t feel it had anything to do with my own pleasure. I never felt like my enjoyment of it was a priority for any of the partners that I had chosen or anyone that I’d ended up with. I didn’t masturbate, even, when I was in my twenties. I existed purely for the enjoyment of men. And that didn’t feel sexy. It's only later that I’ve discovered what it is I like and what turns me on. And if I want to express that in photographs or on my record, then I’m going to do that.
AB: So when you see those pictures, how do you feel?
LA: It feels powerful. I feel like I’m comfortable with my body in a way that I haven’t been for most of my adult life. I work out five times a week. I’m proud of the effort and energy I put into my health. And also I know how the internet works! If there’s a picture of me going out with this album in a Brora cardigan, that’s not going to go very far.
AB: Well, that is the absolute nub of the thing, which is if it was a male artist of your age, a big star, no one’s asking him to get his kit off. I mean, Liam Gallagher’s not having to get his tits out in order to sell tickets.
LA: That’s the patriarchy at work. I went to see Oasis play on Sunday night and I thought it was fucking great. I love Oasis. Noel is a fantastic songwriter and I enjoyed every minute of it. But in contrast to that, I went to see Lady Gaga the next night at the O2 and the difference in what a woman has to put into a show to be able to exist in show business, it’s like night and day.
AB: Because you have to be sexy?
LA: Sexy, and also just the effort you’re expected to put in. You have to justify your existence as a woman, whereas you don’t as a man. Liam Gallagher can just sing a song and go ‘Nice one’ afterwards and do nothing with his entire body and people go fucking mental. If Lady Gaga got up on stage and just sang her songs and didn’t do any dancing and didn’t pile half a million quid into her production budget every night, people would be outraged! Or they would be asking the questions, how did she get there? Like, who’s the man behind her?
AB: The first time you played your new album to me, my first reaction was: it’s really funny. And often it’s the details that hit home. The Duane Reade bag in ‘Pussy Palace’ that contains sex toys, butt plugs… that’s an image – whatever the truth of it – that feels ripped from real life. That’s why it works, right? Are you filing stuff like that away as it happens to you so you can use it later?
LA: No, it’s more like… recall. I don’t ever live through an experience and go, ‘Oh, that’s funny! I should write it down.’ Actually, I do think that and then I don’t write it down and then I forget it. So I wish I did more of that. But maybe then things would feel a bit too contrived? I don’t know.
AB: There’s the famous Nora Ephron line…
LA: ‘Everything is copy’, yup.
AB: Everything is copy, but the copy tends to be more exciting if you live an eventful life. You’ve had a very eventful life.
LA: I have.
AB: I sometimes think, I wish my own life was a bit more eventful, then I’d have more material. But ultimately, I don’t mean that. I’m content having an uneventful life and having less material, less copy, as a result. Would you swap with me or with anyone who has a boring, uneventful life? Or would you rather have the drama and therefore the material?
LA: I guess I think music gives me the ability to feel things in a way that I don’t allow myself otherwise. I’ve often disconnected or disassociated from things that happen in my life because they feel really extreme. And music is one place where I feel like I can let it all go and wrap it up in a neat three-and-a-half minute package. It’s almost like hiding, in a way, even though it ends up being exposed. For want of a better phrase, it’s a safe space for me.
“The act of having sex in my twenties was completely as an object. I didn’t feel it had anything to do with my own pleasure. I never felt like my enjoyment of it was a priority for any of the partners that I had chosen or anyone that I’d ended up with.”
AB: Would you swap it for being happy?
LA: Yeah. I would. Not just for me. For my kids, I’d rather be happy.
AB: Now that you’ve completed this album and it’ll soon come, do you think you can move on from the experiences that informed it?
LA: Yes, I do. And I feel like having [the album] exist for as long as it has, and it not having been released into the world yet, has stunted my healing process or growth, as a result. It’s been something that’s been weighing on me. So I am excited about the possibility of it helping me to move on. And I’m trying not to feel shame around that, because there is a part of me that feels guilt and shame that I have to be able to share things on such a grand scale in order to process them. Like there’s a grandiosity or almost a sociopathic element to that. But that’s what I do! I do it on my podcasts, I did it in my book. I had a childhood where I felt completely invisible and in my adult life, for whatever reason, I’ve decided to be incredibly visible. And I guess I am a ‘character’ in lots of ways. And I feel like the character can’t move on until everyone knows the story. Can’t move on to the next chapter.
AB: Who knows what it’ll be?
LA: I hope it’s not more fucking trauma.
AB: Please, God, for everyone’s sake: no more trauma. Why can’t you just live a quiet life, a blameless little existence?
LA: The other thing is, contrary to popular belief, my parents have not been bankrolling my life since I was 17 or 18 years old. A year and a half ago I was financially stable and I didn’t have to think about work. And now I do. And this is what I do to earn money.
AB: It’s your job.
LA: And I have two children to support. This is all I know how to do. I’m not going to train to be a lawyer now. It’s a bit late for that.
AB: This grandiose thing you just described: there’s a dichotomy there. In one sense, you need everyone to look at you and consume your music and be aware of you as a famous person in the world, and on the other hand, you want everyone to fuck off and mind their own business and leave you in peace.
LA: No! I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that I just want people to be nice to me. I don’t want there to be any negative pushback to what I do. In a perfect world, I could be a show-off, I could share every thought that went through my head, and I’d never have to read any negative feedback.
AB: But you do accept that’s not likely to happen?
LA: I do accept that, now. Yes, it’s finally hit me!
AB: People are going to pick over this record whether you like it or not, and want to know which bits are true, which bits aren’t true. They’re double-fascinated because you’re really famous and your husband is really famous. A consequence of you releasing this album will be an increase in the sort of hysteria that you’ve experienced many times before. I know you need a lot of attention, but I have witnessed what happens when you get it, and it doesn’t seem to me that you’ve much enjoyed it. We don’t know exactly how people will respond to this album but we can guess. Have you changed sufficiently to deal with that? How are you feeling about it?
LA: I don’t make it easy for myself, do I?
AB: You really don’t.
LA: But hey, if what you’re doing isn’t provocative, what’s the fucking point? And if it’s not scary, what’s the point? I’m not here to be mediocre. My gift is my pen and my writing and the way that I observe the world. It’s not singing, really, and it’s not certainly not dance routines, and it’s not whatever else it is that other artists might have going in their favour. My strength is my ability to tell a story. And so I’m going to lean into that. I have to. It’s all I have.
AB: West End Girl is quite a rare thing now, I think, in that it’s a cohesive album, with a narrative arc: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. All the songs can be listened to independently of each other, but you get more out of it, I think, as a listener, if you sit down at the beginning and listen to it till the end. That’s quite bold, because that’s not how people consume music now.
LA: None of this album or anything around it, apart from the sexy photos, has been approached with commercial success in mind. It’s definitely not algorithm-friendly. There isn’t a lead focus track. It’s all going to come out together on one day with little to no promo apart from this and a couple of other interviews and photo shoots. I really want to embrace doing what feels right, at the moment. I think in the past I’ve felt the pressure of people-pleasing, pleasing record companies, pleasing managers, and I don’t think that’s worked out particularly well for me. So I’m not doing any of that. Cut to me on a chat show sofa.
AB: You’ve been through this traumatic period for the past year or so. How are you now? To me it seems like you’re in a better place than you were a year ago.
LA: Yeah. It was pretty brutal at points. I’m… I’m OK, I think. I think I have the same concerns about my sense of self-worth, and the stuff that’s going on in the world, truth as an idea. I struggle with things.
AB: OK – well, let’s talk about happier stuff. Are you going to tour this record?
LA: Yeah.
AB: I was wondering, since it’s almost 20 years since Alright, Still, if you’d thought about touring that album? That’s what people seem to do now.
LA: I have thought about it, yes. I don’t really know what’s going to happen. I guess it depends on how this album’s received. If people want to see this album live, then they’ll get this album. If it’s badly received, then they’ll get 20 years of Alright, Still.
AB: Because either way you’re going to tour.
LA: Yeah. Maybe we’ll book two nights at each venue and one night can be this album, and the next night can be the other? You can choose which Lily Allen you get!
AB: Christ, what an idea.
LA: Shall we go and have some lunch?
AB: Yeah, let’s do that.
West End Girl by Lily Allen is out on 24 October.