Since she entered the indie blogosphere some twenty years ago, Lily Allen's strong point has always been her voice: an airy soprano capable of communicating contempt with a sigh or so. Her voice helped her maintain her recognizability even in the constant changes of genre and while she faced problems with the press, with record labels, with other artists, not to mention conflicts in her personal life.
Conflicts, the latter, which are at the center of West End Girlhis first album after that No Shameshortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2018. It is also her first release since marrying and separating from the star of Stranger Things David Harbour, fundamental information as the entire narrative arc of the album follows the protagonist's journey from marital happiness to its exact opposite.
The album opens with the track that gives the work its title, a sophistipop piece structured like the opening sequence of a horror film: Allen first basks in his good life as a wealthy man, then throws himself headlong into the mud of Harbour's wounded ego. He gaslights her acting talent and then drops the “bomb” that destroys her, with the arcs growing along with confusion and anxiety. Then it arrives Ruminating in which her husband's request – he wants an open marriage – is revealed – over a two-step beat she turns her head into a 24/7 club where anxieties about extramarital activities are the main attraction.
Allen has always had an eclectic approach to music, which lends itself very well to representing the entire emotional spectrum of West End Girlwith music in which the phases of pain and humiliation suffered echo. 4chan Stan is, for example, a representation of her partner's midlife crisis, a fluffy synth-pop that recalls the kind of music someone recently turned 50 might have grown up with. Its lightness makes the lyrics (“You love the power / But you're not even cute”) even more pointed.
But it's in And Who's Madeline? that Allen asks the question of questions about the dissolution of his marriage, a question that turns into the “da-da-da” of the chorus that just won't get out of Allen's head. In Beg for MeAllen instead talks about the pain you feel when you are no longer loved by your partner. It's all pathos, while the music underneath sounds like a slowed down version of Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh) by Lumidee.
Allen told the Englishman Times to have written West End Girl in the space of ten days to be able to put depression behind us. «I thought I wasn't capable of writing good songs anymore. I was writing badly and it took something happening to me, everything falling apart, for me to find inspiration again.”
Maybe this is why the last song on the album, Fruitylooprevolves around a single phrase – “it's not me, it's you” – which harks back to Allen's early days, also being the title of the 2009 album that consolidated his status as a pop star. In a good part of West End Girl Allen unsparingly takes stock of the wounds she suffered at the end of her marriage: there couldn't be a happier ending than the one in which she begins to remind herself of who she could be.
From Rolling Stone US.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
