West End Girls Know the Importance of Being Earnest

The opening (and title track) of Lily Allen’s first album in 7 years sets the scene acutely and painfully accurate for an album that explores the doom and demise of a marriage led by deception and at its worst, narcissism.

Within the first minute of the opening track Lily gently begins to paint the portrait of a narcissistic man, jealous and resentful of a woman’s career. Lily, like many people dealing with narcissistic men tries to bury her disappointment / disbelief to the man she married, and loves. It’s not easy to be in situations like this, where the person you love diminishes your accomplishments, and at the 2 minute mark, abruptly the song ends (bubbly and charming) to a bitter and heartbreaking one sided phone call, omitting the other persons dialogue. We are left to assume that her husband, over the phone, is asking to open their marriage, while they are presumably in different countries.

Jaunty sounds etc showing you sometimes do have to laugh at situations so dire, otherwise you’ll cry, worse yet, never run the risk of experiencing love again.

A lesson in humility

“On tinder / or maybe more of a hinger” she deadpans over an infectious pop beat, highlighting the

The complaints I hear about this album surround its candour. My response to this is generally: she’s an artist. But more specifically, when listening to this album, it’s ethos is laid bare on the track ‘Let You W/In’, whereby Allen States: but I can walk away with my head high / if I lay my truth on the table

Just enough - the sorry lament of unconditional love: I gave you all my power.

Another point of contention was the duration it took to create the album, Allen stated it was created and finished within a ___ period. Simply stating “it was a way to make sense of how I was feeling”, as all art is.

This knowledge was divisive online, some people reducing the body of work to this fact alone, claiming it to be rushed. It was used as a barometer to judge the albums merit. But this timeline, namely the short span used to create this album, as an artist makes complete sense to me. The themes Allen explores are not the feelings she is going to have forever. Within heartbreak, there is a numerous amount of feelings that, despite feeling like they will last forever, simply do not. So in order to create such autobiographic work, it’s actually very admirable to create in this way.

Lily Allen has always been a genius of sincere, sharp, and hard hitting lyrics, never shying away from topics that can often be reduced by the general public as gauche. With her latest album, West End Girl, Lily Allen takes a well deserved victory lap, and career highlight, that will not easily be forgotten.

At the end of the day, West End Girl makes me have faith in confessionals and the candid / candour

Maybe if more people spoke so openly about their experiences with shitty men, they would be less wayward in their behaviour. Or maybe I’m just an optimist

If more men had to worry about their reputation being stained by their own actions and a scorned lovers confessions, then perhaps their wayward behaviour could be curbed to some degree