Lily Allen recently surprised everyone with the release of her fifth studio album, West End Girl which is her first new music in seven years.
I was curious to give it a listen, especially since I had drifted away from her work after the disappointing Sheezus and the largely forgotten No Shame.
But after pressing play on West End Girl, all I can say is wow.
The album feels like a return to form, echoing the sharp pop sensibilities of It’s Not Me, It’s You while delving into more mature and personal territory.
At its core, it’s a concept album that lays bare the unraveling of a marriage, told with Allen’s signature wit and emotional candor.
A bold, brutally honest, and musically vibrant comeback—West End Girl stands as one of the most pleasant surprises of 2025.
About the album by Lily:
The record, Lily’s first in seven years, features 14 brand new songs, written and recorded over an intense 10-day period in Los Angeles starting in Dec 2024, and later finished in London and New York.
Now with West End Girl Lily Allen pivots the spotlight back on herself, using her move to New York as the basis for a narrative journey within 14 new songs – an outstandingly candid and accomplished fusion of fact and fiction which is undoubtedly the most expansively empathetic work of her career.
“I’m nervous”, the writer/singer reveals. “The record is vulnerable in a way that my music perhaps hasn’t been before – certainly not over the course of a whole album. I’ve tried to document my life in a new city and the events that led me to where I am in my life now. At the same time, I’ve used shared experiences as the basis for songs which try to delve into why we humans behave as we do, so the record is a mixture of fact and fiction which I hope serves as a reminder of how stoic yet also how frail we humans can be. In that respect I think it’s very much an album about the complexities of relationships and how we all navigate them. It’s a story…….”
West End Girl gets: 📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷/10.
Lily Allen – West End Girl [Streaming]
