Lily Allen says it took her life ‘falling apart’ to find her ‘authentic voice’
By Hannah Roberts, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter
Pop singer Lily Allen has said it took her life “falling apart” for her to find her “authentic voice” as a music artist.
On Friday, the Brit Award-winner, 40, released her first album in seven years, which is said to detail the alleged infidelity of her ex-husband, US actor David Harbour.
West End Girl, which contains a mix of “truth” and “fantasy”, according to Allen, sees the pop star sing about a sexual “arrangement” that was broken.
Allen told Interview Magazine that she wrote and recorded the album across 10 days in December with a “guy called Blue” who was the musical director on her last tour in 2018.
She said: “I feel very differently about the whole situation now. We all go through breakups and it’s always fucking brutal. But I don’t think it’s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you’re in it.”
It was at the end of December 2024 that reports surfaced of the singer’s split from Stranger Things star Harbour, 50, who she married in 2020.
Allen said: “At the time, I was really trying to process things and that’s great in terms of the album, but I don’t feel confused or angry now. I don’t need revenge.”
She added: “Some of it (the record) is based on truth and some of it is fantasy…
“It’s not a cruel album. I don’t feel like I’m being mean. It was just the feelings I was processing at the time.”
Speaking about the album’s format, she said: “There’s an album I love called A Grand Don’t Come For Free by the Streets, and it’s like a movie from start to finish.
“Each song can stand alone and make total sense, but together it’s more like a novel. I’ve always wanted to do that, and it just happened that way on this record.
“The night before I went into the studio, I wrote 18 track titles – no melodies, no lyrics.
“Nobody in the studio knew what was going on in my life.
“I got there, spent about two hours crying my heart out, and then I was like, ‘We’re going to write an album based on some of these feelings’.”
In the album the narrator mentions a woman called Madeline, and ponders if she is both emotionally and sexually involved with their cheating partner.
Allen said: “It was very important to me that I didn’t sound like a victim, so I’d be like, ‘We have to change that line. It just sounds too ‘Poor me’. I wanted it to feel brutal and tragic, but also empowering, that there was joy in being able to express it.”
Allen also revealed she uses the membership-based dating app Raya and said she got banned from Hinge for “‘impersonating’ myself.”
The singer said dating apps are “awful, especially if you’re going through heartbreak”.
“There is nothing more depressing than hundreds of people that are nothing like the person that you’re missing. It’s just like, ‘No, that’s not him. That’s not him. That’s not him”, she said.
In 2024, Allen revealed she had started uploading photos of her feet to the adult subscription site OnlyFans, but suggested she does not use the website as much anymore.
She said: “I started it just over a year ago. I was quite active in the beginning, but when I broke up with David, it just wasn’t that fun anymore.”
The singer released her last album, No Shame, in 2018 and has since ventured into the world of acting, having starred in sold-out runs of plays 2:22 A Ghost Story and The Pillowman.
Speaking about her break from music, she said: “Everything I was writing was dog shit. I felt like I had writer’s block or something, but actually I think I just knew that something wasn’t right.
“I always strive to tell the truth in my art, so I guess I subconsciously knew that something wasn’t right in my personal life, and I couldn’t go there creatively because if I did, then it would all fall apart.
“So it kind of took it all falling apart for me to find my authentic voice.”