Kito on the Magic of Making Lily Allen's 'West End Girl'

For listeners, jetting into Allen’s marital turmoil was harrowing enough. One could only imagine the intensity of Allen’s co-collaborators who helped the British star craft the record in a roughly 16 day sprint of writing and recording. One of those collaborators is Kito, who co–executive produced the entire record and was a co-writer/co-producer on 8 of the album’s 14 tracks.

“The first day ... [Lily] just caught us up on everything and she'd written down song titles the night before,” Kito tells PAPER. “I don't think we really thought that we'd pull off an album that quickly.”

Kito describes the experience of hearing Allen’s story as “heavy,” but offers there was a helpful balance of energy in the room, between a real urgency to finish record in the short time while Allen was in Los Angeles, alongside a sensitivity to Allen’s very recent experience. That said, the sense of needing to finish the album was needed: “There was that race to the finish line; it sort of felt like, if we don't just finish it, it might not come out,” recalls Kito.

There is undoubtable strangeness, Kito shares, in the fact that the whole world is now “singing along” to Allen’s difficult story. She remembers recently when Allen and her collaborators had a “Pussy Palace” party on Halloween (“Pussy Palace” is the name of a song and what Allen calls her ex’s Manhattan pad.) “We were all dancing to 'Pussy Palace' in my living room and I said to Lily, ‘Is it a bit weird that we're all celebrating and dancing to…’ And she's like, ‘My trauma?’” Kito shares.

That balance between pain, humor and urgency is what gives the record its singular energy. It's also indicative of Allen's enduring artistic essence, which has always deftly melded casual ease with rage and heart ache. “We shut out all references, all noise of what's happening in the music industry right now. There was no label involvement,” Kito says. “There’s that cheekiness of classic Lily where the music is a little bit happy, but she's saying something really cutting. There's always a bit of cheekiness even with the heavy content.”

Kito and co. are feeling some well deserved triumph following the success of West End Girl, and Kito is taking the experience and inspiration into new projects; she co-produced star choreographer Parris Goebel’s debut project A GIRL IS A DRUG.

“After Lily’s album, around the start of January, I was like, I don’t want to roll with whatever comes my way this year. I want to just reach for the things that I have a gut instinct about," Kito shares. "I reached out to Parris about making music, and she was like, ‘Oh, it's so funny. I was going to reach out to you. We got obsessed with making music together and just didn't stop."

With both projects out in the world, Kito is sitting in the excitement, enjoying and being a bit "overwhelmed" with the influx of attention and requests (including some from the British tabloids looking for salacious details on Allen). Thankfully, Kito took some time after a hectic night in Australia at the ARIA Music Awards to reflect on these seminal projects and this breakthrough year in her career with PAPER.

This Lily Allen project has taken over my life.

It’s got a life of its own now. Everyone's singing along.

Singing along to the most specific stories. I joked that I know more about her life than I know about my own life.

It's so funny. [Producer] Blue May had an interview in Variety and, and the headline said: “It’s an album of zero metaphors. I was like, That's exactly what it is. This is what happened, here are the receipts, and this is how I feel about it.

I would love to hear about how you got looped into this. I know the whole recording happened basically over 16 days. What was the pitch to you?

Blue May is a really old friend of mine, and we've never worked together before this project, but we hang out all the time and he's really close with Lily and was her creative director for her last tour. He introduced me to Lily in 2019. We did a session, weirdly, when she first started dating [Lily Allen’s ex] David [Harbour], so she was in a very different place.

Blue has talked about working on an album with Lily for a long time. He’s always said, “I feel like Lily's got another really great album in her. At some point she's going to be ready to do it again.” So Lily and Blue caught up and he asked if I wanted to be involved [with an album]. At first we thought the album would be the three of us or one other person, because Lily doesn't usually co-write with people. But because she was going to be in LA for such a short period of time, we were like, Why don't we just pull together a really nice little group of people so we have all our bases covered?

So we had some writers to see how that goes. We lucked out. That combination of people haven't worked together, but I'm really close with Chloe [Angelides], Leroy [Clampitt] and Chrome Sparks. Blue's really close with myself and Violet [Skies]. There weren't any awkward first days. Lily was walking into a space that was really comfortable. But I don't think we really thought that we'd pull off an album that quickly.

The first day, [Lily] caught us up on everything and she'd written down song titles the night before. She wanted to do this chronological album of everything that happened. The first day we did “Just Enough” and “Tennis,” which is insane when I think about it. We had the most devastating song first, and then one that could be a single. From there, shaping the rest felt easy in a weird way. That's thanks to Lily just pouring out to us.

I can't imagine what it was like in that room as you're hearing about the dissolution of her marriage from Lily herself. What was the vibe in the room? Was there humor to it? Was there a heaviness?

It was heavy. There was a lot of sensitivity, especially with the girls in the room. It was a nice combination. Blue was on a mission to get to the finish line, and we were feeling more sensitive to what she's going through. It was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster packed into a short space of time. It's weird to look back on it now just because it feels like a bit of a blur.

There were moments where I was a bit nervous about the content of it coming out. I was like, Is it going to be helpful for Lily when it comes out? Is it going to do what she wants it to do personally? Will it backfire on her? We all thought it was amazing, but the content ... it's just really brave. It's amazing that it touched people in the way that I would have hoped it would. I was crossing my fingers that people would see it as self-reflective and honest about her experience and not just pointing her finger. She definitely drags her ex, though, as she should.

As a producer, you usually have some time if you're working on a whole project to think about what your references are going to be, or which genre this project will fall under. With 16 days, how did you make those initial decisions about what direction you're going to go in?

It naturally evolved, but beforehand Blue and I were talking through references. We were going through other songs by Lily and being like, “She often writes in these keys … it's often major.” Blue wanted to have ideas to start with, but from the first day, and understanding what the album was going to be about, it felt so much better to start from scratch every day. Lily would tell us, “I want to work on this song today,” and she would tell us what it was about, and then we'd search for chords until something clicked. And then she'd have notes and we would shape it.

A factor of the way it sounds is that we shut out all references, all noise of what's happening in the music industry right now. There was no label involvement. That's probably why it sounds like it does in a funny way. Lily's such a theater girl. There’s that cheekiness of classic Lily where the music is a little bit happy, but she's saying something really cutting. There's always a bit of cheekiness even with the heavy content.

I know working on a record can be a long process and sonic choices are debated and belabored, but this was so quick. How did you finish it?

Has that experience changed how you make other work? Are you going to take this model forward?

I started working with Parris Goebel around the same time. She's similar in that she’s really confident in her choices. She’s like: “I like that. I wanna put that out.” For her EP, the focus track on it is the first song we did. We made it around this period of time I was working with Lily too, so it was a completely different type of music, but it really did inspire that process.

[Lily’s album is] what made me also want to go and just focus on something that I really believed in, like the project with Parris … I just love working on a project and not bouncing around. I love creating a world with someone.

How did you get connected with Parris?

I met her in London about 8 years ago, and she was doing music. We did a session then, and then she got caught up in being iconic and doing what she does. We reconnected in LA at Tommy Genesis’s birthday, and I hadn't seen her in years. I saw that she'd started DJing and I was like, “You should come play at my party.” So she came and played and it was so good. I was like, “You should make music that you would play in your sets.”

After Lily’s album, around the start of January, I was like, I don’t want to roll with whatever comes my way this year. I want to just reach for the things that I have a gut instinct about. I reached out to Parris about making music, and she was like, “Oh, it's so funny. I was going to reach out to you.” So we gave it a go, and then we got obsessed with making music together and just didn't stop.

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Is there something that's unique about making music with someone who primarily has a dance background?

She basically co-produces with me. She's so instinctual with every aspect of the music, even mixing. Blue May mixed her project and she'd sit with Blue throughout the process …he was like, “Damn, she's got such a good ear.” It’s just the way she experiences music. I'll add something and she's like, “It's not making me move. Take it out. Switch it to something else.”

She is thinking about the visual world, rather than just sitting in a studio and listening to it. She's thinking about the whole world around it and playing it in the club, performing it, the visuals: it's so fun. It feels like stuff comes to life when you're working on it cause you're thinking about this whole world around it.

To return a little bit to the Lily album, I'm now aware that it's out in the world and provoked this huge reaction, if you've been able to come together with the crew that made it, including Lily, and take it in?

But is there a sense of triumph and success that it's gone over so well, or is it more a feeling of overwhelm?

The first week we were just overwhelmed. Especially for Blue and I ... we're not big producers or anything, and all of a sudden there was an onslaught of tabloids asking for our takes on things … we're all calling each other like, “What do I do about this?” To have any kind of success in music is always amazing. But then a project like this feels especially special because it's so personal. I just feel really lucky to be involved in something that just came together in the way that it did.

A year ago, Blue and I were hanging out and talking about how we've gotta do some shit together and, and he was talking about how Lily could come back with an amazing album.

And then I was saying, “I feel like Parris should do music.” It was funny, recently, we were like, isn't that crazy? We were just talking about ideas we could work on together a year ago so seeing both those projects come to life now is really crazy.

Photography courtesy of Kito.