Five years ago, who would have believed that Lily Allen could sell out New York City’s Radio City Music Hall for a performance of an entirely new album—and nothing else. No “Smile”; no “F—k You”; not one of her ‘00s/’10s hits; heck, not even an encore.
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That’s not to diss the English singer-songwriter: most artists who’ve been around for two decades have an uphill battle when it comes to getting longtime listeners interested in the new material. Fans buy concert tickets to hear the nostalgic hits of yesteryear and use the new songs as time for a bathroom break; if an artist is lucky, they might score a couple of songs per new album that genuinely get the crowd riled.
Plus, over the last decade, Allen had mostly made Stateside headlines for her personal life (she married Stranger Things actor David Harbour in 2020, splitting up last year), not her music (her 2018 album remains her lowest-charting LP on the Billboard 200).
All of which is to say that the Lily Allen career comeback of the last half-year is something no one (even Allen herself, it seems) saw coming. And it’s all the sweeter for coming out of nowhere, despite the messy, bitter fodder that yielded her critically acclaimed 2025 album about the disillusionment of being in a relationship with someone you can’t trust and the dissolution of that marriage.
On Tuesday (April 14), Allen sold out Radio City to deliver that album, West End Girl, start to finish, as a one-woman show concert. No backing band, no backup dancers, no backup singers (the album’s sole guest, Specialist Moss, appeared via video screen). And as previously mentioned, no encore—anyone who wants to hear her retro hits will have to catch Allen’s upcoming North American arena tour, which kicks off Sept. 3 in NYC’s Madison Square Garden.
Despite the lack of “Smile,” the mostly millennial crowd was beaming as they left Radio City on Tuesday night, because they got exactly what they wanted: a potent, succinct performance of Allen’s mid-career masterpiece.
Here are five highlights from Lily Allen’s West End Girl show at Radio City Music Hall.
The Opening Salvo
As Stop Making Sense taught us, when you have a minimal stage setup, a slow reveal goes a long way toward visual storytelling. Creative director/set designer Anna Fleischle well understands that. Allen opened the show by stepping out from behind deep emerald-green curtains in a pink pencil skirt while cooing the calm-before-the-storm title track. For the one-sided phone conversation portion of “West End Girls,” Allen crouched down and pantomimed the call using an old-school rotary landline. In spite of the downer subject matter, people in the audience were bouncing with glee to the exotica-tinged tune—there was a pinch-me sense of watching Allen act out her narrative concept album in the flesh.
That American Accent
During the Latin pop-inflected “Madeline,” Allen busted out her best American accent, and just like on the album, it’s a hoot—a deliciously spiteful send-up of a self-involved, faux-mindful lady who doth protest too much.
Her Performance
On an album about cheating, lies and addictions, “Relapse” might be the most emotionally gutting song—and that’s saying something. “I need a drink / I need a Valium / you pushed me this far and I just need to be numb,” Allen sang while riffling through her purse, acting out the desperate pain of a person about to break their sobriety. “If I relapse, I know I stand to lose it all,” she continued as light bulbs blinked on and off above her, echoing the song’s skittering beats.
The Fashion
Allen’s outfits were uniformly excellent, but special shoutout goes to that “4chan Stan” fit: A lengthy piece of olive-green fabric covered with (presumably real) receipts of purchases illuminating her then-husband’s infidelities, which she gradually unravels, figuratively and literally.
Her Wry Humor
Another excellent outfit was Allen’s BDSM vinyl, which she donned to demonstrate her open marriage alter ego Dallas Major while feather dusting the bedroom. After singing the cheeky, vibey song of the same name, Allen—cringe-smile plastered on her face—attempted to curtsy, at least as much as one can in a form-fitting piece of vinyl.
On “Dallas Major,” Allen sings, “You know I used to be quite famous way back in the day,” but with the in-studio and onstage creative peaks she’s reaching with West End Girl, it’s probably safe to drop the “used to be” part of that lyric moving forward.
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