It lifts the lid on the implosion of her marriage and delivers killer revenge lines, but the reasons this album is addictive go deeper than that. Veronica Schmidt and Duncan Greive figure out what has them hooked.
Veronica Schmidt: Lily Allen released West End Girl, chronicling the breakdown of her marriage (with artistic license) to Stranger Things actor David Harbour, more than a month ago and we’re both still playing it on repeat. Why has this album got such a grip on us, is there something wrong with us, and should we seek help?
Duncan Greive: The album is incredible is why! So there’s nothing wrong with us, it’s the entirely correct response to encountering something so compelling (and so hooky). It’s so hard in this era of infinite niches and cultural overwhelm and that nagging sense that everything has already been done to create something that shocks us with its creativity, its vision, its sense of having found something bold and new to do.
But as much as the object itself and the story around it are extraordinary, the thing I can’t stop thinking about is that she wrote and recorded it in 10 days. On the first day she presented a group of songwriters (among them New Zealand’s underrated pop savant Leroy Clampitt) with a vision for the narrative, and by the day’s end they already had ‘Just Enough’ and ‘Tennis’ – one of the album’s most important songs.
It just blows my mind that she could come up with something so well-constructed, with such a profound narrative in 10 lousy days. Especially coming off a long period of writer’s block. What is it about West End Girl that won’t let go of you?
VS: My profuse apologies but I’m about to combine a humble travel brag with a wanky art reference in order to explain. The album reminds me of the British artist Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed. I saw it at the Edinburgh Festival years ago and just stood there gaping.
She had this terrible break up that left her feeling suicidal. She stayed in bed for days on end, and later exhibited the bed, complete with blood-stained underwear, empty alcohol bottles, stained sheets and old condoms. It was simultaneously uncomfortable and intoxicating to feel like you were standing in a stranger’s bedroom, surveying the detritus of her emotional crisis.
I feel the same way listening to West End Girl. I’m overwhelmed by conflicting feelings: I really shouldn’t be here in this apartment in the West Village watching Lily sifting through a bag of butt plugs and condoms, but there’s also no way in hell I’m looking away and missing this!
So, it’s the rawness that has me hooked. I feel like a voyeur, to the point I actually don’t want to miss a moment of her messy marital story and I listen to the whole album in order, over and over.
DG: Look sometimes a wanky art reference just fits and you have no option but to deploy it. And honestly, I feel that sense of (artful!) voyeurism into the messy, deeply strange interior of a celebrity relationship is what has made it such a phenomenon. And to be clear, I love that, particularly the jaw dropping first half of the album, climaxing with ‘Pussy Palace’. But I want to pick up on something you said then about listening to the “whole album in order”.
That feels like such a crucial part of its appeal. We had that golden run of concept albums in the mid-00s. Most notably The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free, to which Allen has acknowledged a debt, but also Green Day’s American Idiot and My Chem’s The Black Parade (deeply uncomfortable to say but R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet was also in there). It was like the last gasp of the CD era, which valued a coherent collection, sequencing and artwork in a way that has struggled to translate into the streaming era.
It’s very medium-is-the-message, but I do think that Spotify’s development as a product has encouraged listeners to think about songs and playlists and letting the algo lead you much more than engaging with a profound and highly considered album. And as someone who loves albums and believes in their importance as a form, the fact West End Girl makes the case for that so well is a huge part of what I enjoy about it too. But again, I’m straying from the thing to ideas around it – what else do you find so delicious about the actual content of it all?
VS: The lyrics are delicious! There are so many killer lines: “Giving 4chan Stan”; “Who the fuck is Madeleine?”; “I didn’t know it was a pussy palace… I always thought it was a dojo”; and, indeed, a line about a line: “What a fucking line!”
These are the ones that leap out and grab you by the collar, but, actually, her writing goes far beyond pithy one-liners. The lyrics that really get me are the ones that invite you into the domestic detail in each of these torturous scenes. I mean, on ‘Pussy Palace’, it’s not the description of sex toys that makes me feel like I’m in the room with her as she discovers her husband’s secrets, it’s that she finds them in a “Duane Reade bag with the handles tied”.
She juxtaposes these relatable domestic visuals with lurid sex-related shocks. It’s so jarring, in the best possible way, eh?
DG: Yeah, I think, ultimately, while I’ve been talking around how it was made and what it means for albums, I really need to just admit that it’s the breathtaking lifting of the lid on a celebrity relationship that grabbed me and hooked me and won’t let me go. Like so many, I was led to that chilling Architectural Digest tour of their brownstone the weekend the album dropped and it just stains your conception of it in such a profound way. To know what was coming down the pipe for them, the cruelties he inflicted on her and the exquisite revenge she enacted – I can’t really think of another recent piece of pop culture that’s landed this way. (It’s also so crackup that they listed it for sale so soon after. Maybe it’s just the greatest content marketing since the Michelin Guide).
The most obvious recent comparisons it calls to mind for me are ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version)’ and ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ from Brat. But both were somewhat more coy, letting the audience decide who they were about, even if no one is particularly unsure at this point. But West End Girl is memoir, is almost journalistic – her description as autofiction feels right too.
These are her best songs since the ‘00s, with all the sly wit and self-effacement that made her such a glorious pop star in the first place. I’m so sorry she had to go through that, but damn are we all lucky she did. I’m curious about his side of it too. Do you think this is survivable from a career standpoint?
VS: It’s hard to see how she can top this – what would that even look like? If it happens, I’ll meet you back here to discuss obsessively.
For now, can we end on the ending? I’m really into the album’s last song, ‘FruityLoop’, and I think it’s because, as you say, she has so much insight. A classic, youthful, revenge album would say, “you hurt me and now I’m going to get my revenge”. Hers has far more nuance, opening with a bounce, moving to hurt and darkness, over to anger and self-doubt and then, finally, it lifts into lightness and acceptance.
In my experience (strokes chin), when it comes to life’s shitty experiences, often the best you can hope for is that you work your way to acceptance. So, I love that, after an album of total honesty, she finishes here, real to the last note.
