Lily Allen’s new album has been a huge talking point across the internet since its release. The album comes with news of the separation of Allen and her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour, and the sale of their home. It is a definitive breakup album in the most Lilly Allen fashion, and certainly a review and rebuttal of her relationship that pulls no punches with its sharp and brutal lyricism.
The tone is overall one of rebellion, confidence and a woman regaining her self-respect, with thoughtful lyrics that detail a relationship that felt ‘suffocating’ and imbalanced. The first song, ‘West End Girl’, takes the listener through the first cracks beginning to show in a once-beautiful romance, and the slow realisation that something is wrong, akin to going through the stages of grief.
The songs are progressively brutal, going from that sense of wrongness to an outright exposing of her ex-husband. Accusations of cheating fill a third of the songs, beginning with ‘Tennis’ as it ends with the repeated question of “who’s Madeline?” This leads the listener into a story of deepening lies and betrayal that becomes increasingly on the nose as it goes into songs like ‘Pussy Palace’ and ‘4chan Stan.’ It details a demolition of good favour leading to a deep distrust of any of her love’s actions, and an abandonment of the relationship as a lost cause. It is soul-baring, with a fantastic exploration of feeling detailing Allen’s disappointment at her husband’s lack of support, fading love, and affairs. Its brilliant layering of sound creates an interesting range between melodic and upbeat techno.
[The album] is soul-baring, with a fantastic exploration of feeling detailing Allen’s disappointment at her husband’s lack of support, fading love, and affairs.
This album has a more mature sound but is no less brutal, in traditional fashion for Allen after other albums such as ‘It’s Not Me it’s You,’ which contains one of her most well-known songs ‘F*ck You.’ In the final song on the album, ‘Fruitloop,’ Allen repeats that tone and uses the classic line, “it’s not me, it’s you,” as she resigns herself to the reality that nothing could be changed.
Part of the album’s attention is to the high status of David Harbour and the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things due to air before the end of the year. This album certainly seems to have many people looking at the actor, who plays the beloved character of Hopper, in a very new light.
