"No matter how much you brace for the end of a relationship, nothing prepares you for when the floor suddenly gives out. On the title track of her fifth album, West End Girl, Lily Allen recreates the moments when the ground began to shift beneath her marriage. Over jazzy guitar and the coo of what sounds like animated bluebirds, the singer first settles into a super-charmed life: a seamless transatlantic move, fantasy real estate, a plum leading role landed audition-free in a West End play."
"If she were merely grateful, she'd be Gwen Stefani, but because this is Lily Allen, we're conditioned to expect there's a bucket of pig's blood in the offing. As the music recedes, she picks up a FaceTime call, and the mood deflates. We hear only one side of the conversation, but we're led to imagine she's being asked for a time-out from being a couple."
Lily Allen's fifth album doubles as an insider account of a tabloid divorce and reframes her signature lightness as a vehicle for hurt. The title track West End Girl reconstructs the moment her marriage began to unravel over jazzy guitar and the coo of animated bluebirds, moving from a super-charmed life—transatlantic move, fantasy real estate, audition-free West End role—to a deflating FaceTime and a shaky "I love you." The record interweaves paparazzi-fueled facts—red carpet awkwardness, ominous love notes, Architectural Digest tours—with Allen's MySpace-era ironic first-person directness. The songs slice through pretense and reconsider industry and sexual politics with sharp, often humorous clarity.
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