{"id":2113353,"date":"2025-10-24T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T18:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2113353"},"modified":"2025-10-24T18:39:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T18:39:00","slug":"i-dont-make-it-easy-for-myself-divorce-and-desire-power-lily-allens-autofictional-comeback-lily-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/i-dont-make-it-easy-for-myself-divorce-and-desire-power-lily-allens-autofictional-comeback-lily-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I don\u2019t make it easy for myself\u2019: divorce and desire power Lily Allen\u2019s autofictional comeback | Lily Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Lily Allen<\/a> released her fifth album on Friday morning, there were as many headlines breaking down the contents of the record as there were actual reviews of the music.<\/p>\n

West End Girl, surprise-announced on Monday, appears to concern the 40-year-old British pop star\u2019s divorce from the US actor David Harbour, who stars in the Netflix sci-fi series Stranger Things.<\/p>\n

In interviews, Allen has been careful to liken the album to a work of autofiction, and to tell British Vogue that it references things she experienced in her marriage \u201cbut that\u2019s not to say that it\u2019s all gospel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Given its highly detailed, eye-popping allegations about a husband breaking the agreed terms of an open relationship, his emotional manipulation and sex addiction, one would imagine that lawyers heavily advised her to add that caveat. (Harbour has not responded to the album\u2019s contents.)<\/p>\n

In an interview this week with Katie Grand\u2019s Perfect magazine<\/a>, Allen admitted that the record was likely to further stoke her tempestuous relationship with the media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t make it easy for myself, do I?\u201d she said. Still, beyond the obvious tabloid catnip contained within the album \u2013 including lyrics about discovering \u201csex toys, butt plugs, lube inside \/ Hundreds of Trojans\u201d (condoms) on the song Pussy Palace \u2013 some newspapers have bordered on sharply personal criticism when covering West End Girl. The headline on the Times\u2019 review stated: \u201cYou almost feel sorry for David Harbour.\u201d In a 2\/5 review, the Financial Times accused Allen of \u201ca hollow performance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, Allen\u2019s return to music, seven years after the release of her last album, No Shame, was greeted with widespread acclaim \u2013 and due consideration for its musical virtues. In a four-star review<\/a>, the Guardian\u2019s Alexis Petridis wrote: \u201cWhat ties the songs together beyond the story they tell is the striking prettiness of the tunes, which seem, jarringly, more evocative of a romantic fairytale ending than the anger and unhappiness the lyrics convey.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>While Allen\u2019s latest drop references her marital breakdown, the singer says it is not \u2018all gospel\u2019.<\/span> Photograph: Charlie Denis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In another four-star review, the Telegraph praised the technicalities of Allen\u2019s writing: \u201cThe power of West End Girl lies in the way it clearly presents itself as one side of the story: a woman trapped in her own head. Narrative tension builds because listeners can\u2019t pull out for a wider perspective on the situation, allowing us to share in Allen\u2019s claustrophobia and paranoia.\u201d The Daily Mail\u2019s four-star take said it sat alongside Fleetwood Mac\u2019s Rumours, Amy Winehouse\u2019s Back to Black and Adele\u2019s 21 in the annals of great pop breakup albums.<\/p>\n

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The Independent awarded it five stars, and highlighted the relatability of Allen\u2019s themes \u2013 not just hyperpersonal disclosure, but an illustration of \u201chow easy it is, in love, to drown in someone else\u2019s shame and mistake it for your own\u201d.<\/p>\n

Petridis also drew on how Allen\u2019s fans may have grown up alongside her and relate to the story she tells about modern relationships: \u201cUnderneath all the gory details, it seems to tacitly suggest that open arrangements are easily abused, usually by men, and that believing you\u2019re above outmoded concepts of fidelity \u2013 \u2018a modern wife\u2019, as Allen puts it at one point \u2013 is no guarantee you won\u2019t get your heart broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fan response on the Popheads subreddit and the Popjustice forums \u2013 two of the busiest and most ardent destinations for pop discussion online \u2013 was almost uniformly positive. One viral tweet likened the album to Lorde\u2019s cultishly adored second album, about the tempestuous rites of first heartbreak: \u201cCan\u2019t believe Lily Allen is about to drop the Melodrama for divorced white British women over 40.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>Allen married David Harbour in 2020.<\/span> Photograph: Vianney Le Caer\/Invision\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How the acclaim informs what Allen does next remains to be seen. No Shame received similar levels of praise but was her lowest-selling album \u2013 although her 2006 debut Alright, Still was released in the pre-streaming era, making it tricky to compare on an even playing field. She has not announced any tour dates in support of the record, and hasn\u2019t played live since 2019. In September, she said that she was temporarily stepping away from Miss Me?, the highly successful BBC podcast she presented with childhood friend Miquita Oliver, \u201cwhile I go and do some new stuff for a bit\u201d \u2013 presumably the album.<\/p>\n

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In the break since Allen released and toured No Shame, she has found success as a theatrical actor. The opening song and title track of West End Girl appears to document Allen discovering that she has landed the lead role in 2:22 A Ghost Story at the No\u00ebl Coward theatre in 2021, which necessitated her to move from her adopted family home in New York back to London, and the cracks it apparently created in her marriage. She earned excellent reviews and a Laurence Olivier award nomination<\/a> for best actress for her performance.<\/p>\n

Allen subsequently starred in a revival of Martin McDonagh\u2019s play The Pillowman as well as Hedda, a reimagining of the Henrik Ibsen play directed by Matthew Dunster.<\/p>\n

For now, Allen has no more roles on the cards. One she can play, though, is that of godmother to a new wave of younger pop stars forged in her image. In 2022, the US star Olivia Rodrigo invited Allen on stage with her at Glastonbury to cover the latter\u2019s 2008 song, Fuck You, which they dedicated to the US supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade<\/a>. Billie Eilish is a fan; her unbarred, conversational delivery is audible in the output of Charli xcx and Lola Young.<\/p>\n

As UK producer PinkPantheress put it: \u201cLily Allen made sounding like yourself feel cool.\u201d On West End Girl, she certainly doesn\u2019t sound like anyone else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Lily Allen released her fifth album on Friday morning, there were as many headlines breaking down the contents of the record as there were actual reviews of the music. West End Girl, surprise-announced on Monday, appears to concern the 40-year-old British pop star\u2019s divorce from the US actor David Harbour, who stars in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2113354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2113353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/\u2018I-dont-make-it-easy-for-myself-divorce-and-desire.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2113353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2113355,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113353\/revisions\/2113355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2113354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2113353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2113353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2113353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}