Lily Allen’s new album has left jaws dropping.
West End Girl is an ode to her marriage to philandering ex David Harbour, to whom she was married for four years after meeting on dating app Raya, with 14 tracks detailing in brutal honesty the breakdown of their relationship.
The record is her first in seven years and was recorded in just 10 days, in the wake of her devastating split from the Stranger Things actor, 50, in December after Lily, 40, discovered his three-year affair and slew of infidelities.
The raw tracks on the eagerly-anticipated album have not only exposed David’s extra-curricular activities but also a number of sordid details of his affair and their marriage, including the discovery of sex toys and condoms at his ‘P***y Palace’.
While many of her confessions are explicit, the star also takes to hinting, including alluding to prostitution on track five, Madeline, in which she states David was allowed to sleep with other women ‘as long as there was payment’.
Madeline is a constant thread of the album, as Lily appears to be naming the woman involved in David’s affair and reads out a message exchange, which sees Lily attempt to investigate whether he was emotionally cheating rather than just having sex.
OPEN MARRIAGE
Lily’s reveal of her open marriage is marred with heartache given her previous hopes for monogamy in the wake of her marriage to ex Sam Cooper.
While married to Sam, with whom she shares daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, she was frequently adulterous, as revealed in her 2018 memoir My Thoughts Exactly.
Soon after her 2020 wedding to David, Lily spoke to The Sunday Times about being monogamous, saying: ‘Erm, yeah. At this point it is [monogomous]. And I’d like it to stay that way. At this point we’re up for monogamy.’
Despite these hopes, the opening track West End Girl hears a one-sided conversation between Lily and the ‘husband’ saying he wants an open relationship.
She says: ‘Well, I mean it doesn’t feel great // Well, if that’s what you need to do then // mean, it makes me really sad but… I just, I want you to be happy.’
Tennis paints a picture of the singer preparing a welcome home dinner for an unappreciative partner before she spies texts on his phone from a mystery girl.
She sings: ‘I read your texts, and now I regret it // I can’t get my head round how you’ve been playing tennis // If it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous // You won’t play with me, and who’s Madeline?’
‘I got a lot of information that I can’t even process // So I wrote a little email and I told you what I saw. And then you came up to the bedroom and you made it all my fault.’
PROSTITUTION
In discussing their open marriage, Lily explains the rules of the arrangement – seemingly alluding to the use of sex workers.
On the heartbreaking Madeline, she sings: ‘We had an arrangement // Be discreet, and don’t be blatant // There had to be payment // It had to be with strangers // But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.’
Last year, Lily discussed her sex life with David and being accepting of other people’s preferences – while also detailing her own use of sex workers.
She said: ‘I’m quite into normalizing everything that people are ashamed about in themselves. I was talking to David about this last night…
‘During the breakdown of my last marriage, I was very, very promiscuous and experimental, and I had sex with female sex workers.’
In My Thoughts Exactly, she wrote: ‘She was expensive. High-class hookers are. I didn’t care. I just wanted her to help me feel something.’
She later explained her reasons for revealing the experiences, saying: ‘When they hear someone like me talking about their experiences in a non-shameful, matter-of-fact way, it makes people feel better about themselves…
‘To me, that’s what art is. Helping people to come to terms with their own behaviour and behaviour that society sometimes comes down on, but we’re all just human.’
LACK OF SEX
Despite her professions about her racy sex life in the past, Lily confesses on the album about her and David’s love life drying up.
On the track Sleepwalking, she sings: ‘Course I’m angry, course I’m hurt // Looking back at it’s so absurd // Course I trusted you and took you at your word (At your word) // Who said romance isn’t dead? Been no romance since we wed
”Why aren’t we f**king baby?’ Yeah, that’s what you said’.
Lily previously spoke about her determination not to ‘kink-shame’ her husband despite often saying no to some of his bedroom requests.
Last year, she said: ‘I’m quite into normalizing everything that people are ashamed about in themselves. I was talking to David about this last night…
‘During the breakdown of my last marriage, I was very, very promiscuous and experimental, and I had sex with female sex workers…
‘I wonder if I kink-shame my husband. Because he quite often asks for things, and I’m like: ‘No, babe, it’s not happening’…
‘I’m not like: “You piece of s**t, how dare you ask me to do that!” I’m just like: “Hmm, headache. Little headache, got a bit of a headache — maybe not tonight”.’
Lily added she felt she had changed from her days of being saucy and daring, due to the fact she is now sober.
Speaking to her best friend Miquita Oliver on their Miss Me? podcast, she went on: ‘Oh my god, I really hope my husband doesn’t listen to this show’…
‘He’s going to just be like: “Where? Where is this person that’s doing all these sexy things?” Like: “Why are you lying to everyone that you’re this liberated…”
Miquita responded: ‘David would love this! David would love this kinky b***h! So why do you think this kinky b***h has gone? Where did she go?’
Lily went on: ‘I think the alcohol had quite a lot to do with the kink for me. Before I got together with David, I don’t think I’d ever had sex not drunk, actually. Unless, maybe, like, morning sex, but still a bit drunk and definitely high.’
SEX TOYS AND CONDOMS
The song P***y Palace is undoubtedly the most shocking of the album, as the star describes throwing a partner out of their family home in New York and sending him to his separate West Village apartment – which earns the shock moniker.
She turns up at the apartment which she’d ‘assumed was a dojo // but I realised something don’t feel right // So am I looking at a sex addict?’
A dojo is a room or hall in which judo and other martial arts are practised.
In the second verse she sings about finding a shoebox of letters ‘from broken hearted women that wished you could have been better’ alongside sex toys as she asks ‘how did I get caught up in your double life?’
Lily then refers to American pharmacy Duane Reade and Trojan condoms.
While discussing arriving at the house, she sings of her discovery: ‘Duane Reade bag with the handles tied // Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside // Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so f*****g broken // How did I get caught up in your double life?’
In 2020, Lily unveiled her own sex toy. Speaking about the collaboration with Womanizer, she stated their sex toys ‘changed my life’. In a promoo, she said: ‘So, I’ve got a little secret – I masturbate. But why is saying it out loud the so weird?…
She goes on: ‘Sex toys are still seen as a taboo subject as they are related to masturbation and female pleasure and I think that female pleasure in itself is a taboo.’
At the time, Lily explained that she used toys with David – and that she liked the toys because they ‘give me an orgasm very quickly’. She says: ‘It changed my life! Please go and try sex toys, they are great fun!’
