Release Date: 24 October 2025
Song Count: 14
Rating: 6.7/10
Description:
A renown pop artist's fifth album after seven years, Lily Allen's West End Girl is a project that is deeply personal to the singer's life, a fact that is striking from the very beginnings of the opening track. Following a narrative story of Lily, from whose point of view one experiences it, trying to deal with an unsatisfying marriage, her partner's infidelity and the subsequent fallout that her love life and mentality goes through as a result, the album is, in a sense, a 14-part piece of artistic self-expression for Allen's own experiences, wrapped together in a mostly slow and chilled pop-sounding package for an audience to witness.
With the nature of West End Girl primarily being focused on telling a story through its lyrics, the instrumental aspects of the tracks are naturally never at the forefront, often reserving itself to low contrast, quieter beats, simple theoretical compositions often just following four chords, and an overall "chill" and at times even wistful energy. On their own, there's little differentiating these tracks musically, save for Lily's differing line deliveries and the different emotions she puts into each section of what forms the overall narrative, altering between fast and snappy, auto-tuned, and slow and somber styles of singing. Certain tracks also dare to inject in elements or influences from alternate genres of music, such as Latin pop, music from the 1950's, R&B, and even collaborating with artist Specialist Moss in a dancehall-infused track, "Nonmonogamummy".
The real meat and potatoes of the album, however, lies with the way the aforementioned story of Allen and heir failing marriage is told, drawing on her real-life divorce with a famous actor early this year. Lyrics portray the singer's thoughts, emotions and reactions towards the revelations happening around her in a direct and explicit manner, leaving metaphoricism or any sort of verbal "coating" aside to express her perspective in a raw manner that leaves little room for any misinterpretation of the words being sung. The effectivity of this approach varies between songs, with some instances making this no-nonsense style come across as oversimplified or otherwise insufficient to convey the full complexity of the described situation, and some other moments acting as more suitable backdrops leading to the unfiltered verbal expressions swing in with power and a similar force to hearing a cold, hard truth that is difficult to accept but even more difficult to deny.
West End Girl is an album that, even with its mainstream appeal and approachable sound, may not be to the liking of all due to its more stylised nature that lies more close and personal to Allen, but that is far to say that there is no sort of valuable artistic credibility or even just simpler enjoyment of songs relatable to many individuals who may be struggling with their own romantic partnerships. To me, these tracks with their consistent main sound yet flexibility with external inspirations and experimentation, seem relatively well-crafted and cared for, and even hold a lot of further potential into positive musical developments for Lily Allen's music in general, though lack a certain small factor to elevate them to that higher point they are reaching for. Still, this may be a piece worth checking out if you're interested in a retrospecting piece on heartbreak and processing tough emotions, or are even simply just interested to see what the star of the 2000s has been up to in her career in recent times.