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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Gaby Hinsliff

Lily Allen’s new album shows the pain behind the ‘cool girl’ myth – that’s why women are obsessed with it

Lily Allen with former partner David Harbour at the 2022 Met Gala in New York, May 2022
Lily Allen with former partner David Harbour at the 2022 Met Gala in New York, May 2022. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Lily Allen was always an enviably cool girl.

When she first burst on to the music scene nearly two decades ago at 21, it was with a breezy, don’t-care London swagger. Her songs concealed big, painful feelings under flippant, deadpan lyrics and deceptively sweet melodies, which made them easier to swallow. Even this summer, when she talked on her thrillingly unfiltered podcast Miss Me? about having lost count of exactly how many abortions she’d had, she sang the words to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s My Way.

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