This morning, British singer and two-time PAPER cover star Lily Allen announced her new album West End Girl, her first album since 2018’s No Shame. The reveal came with a hauntingly beautiful portrait of Allen in a powder-blue puffer, already being dubbed as “the Melodrama for divorced British women over 40.” But the internet might be onto something, because this record is shaping up to be Allen’s rawest and most self-aware era yet.
According to British Vogue, Allen wrote West End Girl in just sixteen days last December, amid her split from Stranger Things actor David Harbour. The two quietly separated earlier this year, after Allen allegedly discovered his Raya profile and later checked herself into a trauma treatment center to focus on her mental health. She’s since moved back to London, poured herself into writing, and somehow spun heartbreak into a creative renaissance. “I can’t really talk about what I’m going through with friends,” she told Vogue. “But I can do it in a three-and-a-half-minute pop song.”
As we know, Allen has always been a little bit messy, witty, and sharp with her takes on her personal relationships and culture at large. That lyricism shows in the album’s newly revealed tracklist, which reads like both a diary and a group chat: “4chan Stan,” “Nonmonogamummy,” “Pussy Palace,” and “Relapse” sit alongside more contemplative cuts like “Sleepwalking” and “Dallas Major.” It’s witty, wounded, and deeply British — exactly the kind of tonal whiplash Allen built her name on. If No Shame was about reckoning, West End Girl looks like catharsis.
The new album is also a reminder of who the OG British pop girl really is. Long before PinkPantheress, Lola Young, or Jade were dominating the airwaves, Allen was turning her diary confessions into TMZ-able snippets and songs. She turned gossip into art, oversharing into pop poetry, and heartbreak into something danceable.
Sixteen days, one Raya discovery, and a dozen cheeky track titles later, Lily Allen has found her voice again — older, funnier, and just as brutally honest as ever. Honestly, we’re sat.
Lead photo by Charlie Denis
