One track into West End Girl, Lily Allen’s new tour de force of a divorce album, and I’m already hooked. Three tracks in, I’m messaging with several friends about it simultaneously, liveblogging my every thought and reaction to each searing lyric. Five tracks in, my jaw is on the floor and may never recover its former position. Who the f*** is Madeline indeed?!
Any album spilling this much supposed tea was always going to grab our attention (though Allen or, more likely, Allen’s lawyers, have made very clear that the singer’s marriage to and subsequent breakup with Stranger Things actor David Harbour merely serves as “inspiration” and that fact mingles with fiction throughout the 14 tracks). For whom among us can resist the lure of a celebrity scandal? Despite the fact that we will likely never know what is real and what is fantasy, Allen’s stream-of-consciousness storytelling on West End Girl feels as though we’re reading the messiest bits of someone else’s diary, complete with West Village p***y palaces and the now infamous Duane Reade bag stuffed full of sex toys, butt plugs and lube.
