It’s arguably one of the more memorable tracks on Lily Allen’s new album, an unsweetened and often unsavoury account of her turbulent marriage to David Harbour.Â
But pointed lyrics about sex addiction and suspected infidelities aside, P**sy Palace – the seventh track on Allen’s West End Girl – appears to feature another, rather more coded reference to the beleaguered American actor.Â
With its synthesiser led opening, the track -co-written with Chloe Angelides, Leroy Clampitt and Blue May – bears a passing resemblance to the pulsing, suspenseful Stranger Things intro, albeit played at a slower tempo.Â
Both songs lead with an unaccompanied synth refrain, before veering in vastly different directions – the now iconic Stranger Things theme tune an instrumental play on the show’s ’80s backdrop, Allen’s a brutal takedown of her estranged husband’s alleged extra-curricular activities.Â
The song’s accompanying promotional video – it was released as a single on October 24, climbing to number 12 on the UK Top 40 – is no less direct, with Allen portraying herself as vampish nun while reeling off Harbour’s indiscretions. Â
But P**sy Palace, its title a dismissive reference to the £6million, five-bedroom, Brooklyn townhouse Allen shared with Harbour and her two daughters, is just one of many highlights on an album devoted entirely to their five year marriage.
With its synthesiser led opening, Lily Allen’s P**sy Palace bears a passing resemblance to the pulsing, suspenseful intro to Stranger Things, in which estranged husband David Harbour stars
Allen confirmed her separation from husband of five years Harbour in October, shortly before the release of her latest album West End GirlÂ
While she insists its 14 songs are part fiction, part fact, Allen weaves in unmistakable details about the past five years of her life in what appears to be a blistering takedown of her ex.Â
The narrative begins with the title track which takes listeners back to the idyllic early days of the couple’s relationship, when she moved to New York with her daughters to be with the American star.
She recalls the joy when they purchased a family brownstone and finding a school for her kids before her elation when she got a call to say she had landed the lead role in the 2021 West End show 2:22 A Ghost Story, singing ‘that’s when your demeanor started to change.’
The song then cuts to an emotional phone call, with a dejected Allen murmuring: ‘I miss you. OK, well it doesn’t make me feel great…If that’s what you need to do then…I guess. But how would it work? I mean, it makes me really sad but I want you to be happy. I love you.’
On the second track, Ruminating, she sings about her insomnia whilst working in London and her worries about a relationship, singing ‘I can’t shake the image of her naked before repeating ‘you’re mine.’
‘Why can’t you wait for me to come home? This conversation’s too big for a phone call. Ruminating, ruminating, I’ve been up all night. Did you kiss her on the lips, and look into her eyes? Did you have fun? Now that it’s done, baby, won’t you tell me I’m still your number one? ‘Cause you’re my number one.’
On third track Sleepwalking, she claims there has ‘been no romance since we wed. ‘Why aren’t we f***ing, baby?’ Yeah, that’s what you said. But you let me think it was me in my head, and nothing to do with them girls in your bed.’
In Relapse, Allen details an agreement about an open relationship as she sings ‘I tried to be your modern wife But the child in me protests.’
West End Girl (pictured), Allen’s fifth studio album, was released by BMG on October 24
Her estranged husband famously plays Sheriff Jim Hopper in Stranger Things (pictured)
Tennis then 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.
‘I read your texts, and now I regret it,’ she sings. ‘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.’Â
On the now notorious Madelineco, she confesses to messaging the other woman as she begs to know ‘is it just sex or is it emotion?’ before reading out the replies.
P**sy Palace is one of the most explosive songs on 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.
P**sy Palace, its title a dismissive reference to the £6million townhouse Allen shared with Harbour and her two daughters, is one of numerous references to her marriage on the albumÂ
Allen and Harbour are pictured attending a New York City screening in 2022, two years before the British singer announced their separationÂ
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?’
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?’
On ballad Just Enough she opens with the heartbreaking lyric ‘I think you’re in love with somebody else, felt you pull away and now I’m blaming myself.’
Allen, who previously revealed she had joined Raya to spy on her husband, confesses to using a dating app on the upbeat Dallas Major ‘to look for someone to have fun with while my husband works away.’
The penultimate track Let You W-in sees the singer reveal her motivation for writing new music, singing ‘I can walk out with my dignity if I lay my truth out on the table.’
