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.
Lily Allen’s new album West End Girl has stunned fans with a slew of jaw-dropping confessions about her marriage to David Harbour
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’
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?’
Lily and David, who tied the knot in 2020, are pictured together in December 2023
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, during which she was frequently adulterous, as revealed in her 2018 memoir My Thoughts Exactly.
Soon after her 2020 marriage to David, Lily spoke to The Sunday Times about being monogamous, saying: ‘Erm, yeah. At this point it is. 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.
‘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.’
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, during which she was frequently adulterous (Lily pictured with Sam in 2015)
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.’
The album has stunned fans around the world
