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Tag: Lily Allen

  • Lily Allen opens up about ‘devastating’ divorce from David Harbour

    Lily Allen has spoken candidly about the emotional and physical toll of her divorce from David Harbour, describing the split as “devastating” and admitting it left her unable to sleep, eat – or function normally as a parent. 

    © Getty Images
    Lily Allen at The Hunger Games: On Stage The Global Stage Premiere

    Speaking on her podcast, the singer, 40, reflected on the months following the breakdown of her marriage to the Stranger Things star, which ended in late 2024. Lily, who shares two daughters with her former partner Sam Cooper, said the emotional fallout was so intense it kept her awake at night and “cost a huge amount of money”.

    “I was utterly heartbroken,” she admitted. “I stopped being able to sleep and eat.”

    The impact was most painfully visible in the small, everyday moments with her children. Lily recalled sitting at the breakfast table trying to get her daughters ready for school, only to be confronted with the physical effects of her grief.

    SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE -- Episode 1892 -- Pictured: (l-r) Musical guest Lily Allen and host Josh O'Connor during promos on Thursday, December 11, 2025© Getty Images
    Lily Allen and Josh O’Connor on Saturday Night Live

    “I’d sit down at the breakfast table and try and get the girls to have their breakfast before school,” she said. “And they’d go, ‘Mummy, your arms look so thin.’”

    The singer has previously been open about the challenges of navigating motherhood alongside public scrutiny, but this latest admission offers a rare insight into how deeply the separation affected her behind closed doors.

    David has remained quiet about ex-wife Lily's new album© WireImage
    Lily with David Harbour in 2024

    Lily’s new album, West End Girl, charts her gradual recovery from the breakup and does not shy away from the darker chapters of that period. The record alludes to betrayal and emotional fallout, with several tracks referencing infidelity – themes that have fuelled fan speculation about what went wrong in her marriage.

    Alongside discussing the divorce, Lily also addressed her decision to undergo cosmetic surgery earlier this year, confirming she had a breast augmentation just weeks after leaving a trauma centre. While she initially framed the decision as a “glow up”, she has since offered a more nuanced explanation.

    Lily with rumored beau Jonah Freud and Marco Capaldo © Dave Benett/Getty Images for Str
    Lily with rumored beau Jonah Freud and Marco Capaldo

    In an interview with The Observer, Lily said the surgery was prompted by the dramatic weight loss she experienced after the split – and fears about how her body might change as she recovered.

    “Because I’ve always been really small up top, I was worried about becoming really bottom-heavy,” she explained. “This is how I talk to myself! I felt like if I got boobs, it would make me feel better about gaining weight. So that was my reasoning.”

    Lily recently hosted a Christmas party at strip club Stringfellows, belting out hits, having fun with friends and posing with the London Gay Men’s Chorus. She stole the spotlight in a sexy red mini dress trimmed with fluffy white faux fur, paired with thigh-high stockings and sleek heels. 

    The appearance comes amid reports that Lily has been spending time with writer Jonah Freud, with TMZ sharing photos of the pair sharing a kiss at the party.

    Nicola Conville

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  • Josh O’Connor May Be An Internet-Favorite “Soft Boy,” But ‘SNL’ Doesn’t Know How To Harness His Charms

    For someone whose nerves were at a self-described 10 out of 10 in the week leading up to his Saturday Night Live debut, first-time host Josh O’Connor began his Studio 8H debut about as smoothly as possible: In his monologue, the Wake Up Dead Man star glided easily from self-effacing jokes — “No, I am not the mouse from Flushed Away” — ripped from the digital zeitgeist to cheekily leaning into his public persona as a “soft boy,” otherwise known as an “average 65-year-old woman” who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens.

    The tight 3-minute opener took a delightful turn when O’Connor addressed fans pitching him to play Alfredo Linguini in a live-action remake of Walt Disney/Pixar Animation’s beloved Ratatouille (a film he has espoused affection for more than once) and chief creative officer Pete Docter’s subsequent rebuke of such a project. “Do you know how it feels to be publicly rejected from a job I didn’t even want? For the record, I don’t even want a live-action Ratatouille,” he said, before eventually interrupting his own thoughts to pivot: “Sorry, sorry, for what it’s worth: I would kill as Linguini.”

    Unfortunately, similar to the (albeit heartwarming) tale between a restaurant garbage boy and Remy the rat, O’Connor — much like Linguini — was stuck playing second fiddle tonight on SNL, puppeted to and fro from sketch to sketch that sidelined his comedic talents. The late-night mainstay struggled to bottle up O’Connor’s distinct whimsical charms (ones showcased in Emma and The Mastermind, for example) via skits that didn’t play to his strengths as a deft performer, and often didn’t know how to utilize him entirely.

    In early sketch “Let’s Find Love,” O’Connor is a boyish dating show contestant who, when presented with three potential romantic partners in a blind format, is almost immediately upstaged by an 84-year-old, scooter-riding Ashley Padilla, whose blatant disregard of reality TV (and social) norms gets big laughs early on, but eventually peters out due to repetitiveness.

    Similar problems abound in a later sketch concerning deleted scenes from The Wizard of Oz, which features Dorothy (Sarah Sherman), the Wizard (Bowen Yang) and her ragtag group (Andrew Dismukes as the Scarecrow, Kenan Thompson as the Cowardly Lion and O’Connor as the Tin Man). When Thompson’s Lion is revealed to have wished for a “big ole thing” rather than bravery, the other two male characters hop on the bandwagon to wish for the same thing. Not only is O’Connor given a few middling lines, but the skit itself can only go so far as a dick joke can carry you. (As the naughty refrain goes, it’s not the size that matters, but how you use it; in this case, not the content of the sketch, but how it’s executed.)

    Meanwhile, the night’s closing brunch sketch didn’t feature O’Connor until the latter half; playing an awkward and intruding dad whose presence is clearly unwelcome, the sketch careens through a cast of characters who take turns breaking the fourth wall via song to comment on the “quite strange” nature of their outing. It is as overstuffed as Veronika Slowikowska’s character finds Chloe Fineman’s to be, after the latter character commits a mathematical faux pas by grabbing an extra slice of flatbread.

    In one solid, pre-taped sketch spoofing Spotify’s beloved wrapped playlist, O’Connor doesn’t show up at all. Perhaps this was a scheduling conflict, and certainly, not every host has been in every sketch, but it does seem to be a glaring oversight to not include O’Connor in one of the best of the night.

    The strongest outing of the night was, without a doubt, “Bachelorette Party Strippers,” with Ben Marshall and O’Connor as the “most sensitive strippers in all of the Catskills.” With A Little Life in tow, beanies hanging loosely on their perfectly rumpled heads and multiple layers of clothing, the sketch’s golden moments include a lo-fi version of Ginuwine’s “Pony” and line readings of “You are enough” and “You have to forgive yourself,” all of which gets Padilla’s bride-to-be more than hot and bothered — though the real steamy will-they-won’t-they is found in the undeclared romance between Marshall and O’Connor’s Augie and Remington.

    And while SNL opted for resurrections this episode, it did so with varying levels of success. Another run at Yang’s Dr. Please character, first originated triumphantly during Ryan Gosling’s hosting stint last year, fizzled out quickly: O’Connor portrays an intern with little to do, especially as Padilla’s repartee with the doctor upstages everything else (“Doctor, your car…” she begins, “Was towed?” Yang asks. “No, was left at the scene of a crime,” she answers. “Just like I left it,” he concludes.) There was also round two of Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell’s animated short, “Brad and His Dad,” first introduced during Nikki Glaser’s run earlier this season, the holiday-themed No. 2 installment of which felt like little more than filler tonight.

    As for Weekend Update, there were decent jabs at President Donald Trump (“In a new interview, President Trump said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ‘days are numbered.’ As opposed to Trump, whose days are lettered,” co-anchor Colin Jost quipped, as the screen flashed with the image of a weekly pill organizer. “Trump also said that the proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery ‘could be a problem,’ adding ‘Bribe!’ In response, Netflix is offering Trump one night with the [KPop] Demon Hunters.”

    But perhaps the best aspect of Update was the return of Jane Wickline’s offbeat keyboard ditties. Addressing the “greatest threat to humanity right now” via song, Wickline’s ode initially presented as a foreboding warning against AI, before the track abruptly switched gears to discuss the child stars of Stranger Things. With lines like “They’re adults, we have to destroy them before they destroy everything / AI is just a distraction / The real threat here is Sadie Sink and her child co-stars on Stranger Things,” “Stranger Things is ending / They’ll have so much free time / What if they grow self aware / We need to keep them occupied / They’ll mobilize their followers, 60 million followers / We need to keep them occupied” and “Finn Wolfhard is the devil to me / The six of them are in a room right now preparing to seize the next election / And for these reasons, I stand with Vecna,” Wickline cautions the cast could go by way of Joe Rogan who “used to make people eat bugs [on Fear Factor], and now he’s President of the United States.”

    And, in what has become a bit of trend in recent years at SNL, especially this season, Lily Allen‘s second performance — the West End Girl single “Madeline” — featured a surprise appearance by Dakota Johnson, who was revealed to be the woman performing the spoken lines in the song, hidden behind a sheer curtain. The Materialists star made her grand entrance as Allen wrapped up the track, greeting the musician with a hug and kiss on the cheek.

    Natalie Oganesyan

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  • David Harbour’s Alleged Reaction to Lily Allen’s Cheating Claims Revealed as Sources Divulge if He Could Sue Her For Her ‘Revenge’ Album

    Divorces in Hollywood are more common than marriages that last. That means that, when the news broke that Stranger Things star David Harbour and singer Lily Allen were separating, no one was really surprised. Even the cheating allegations about Harbour weren’t really all that shocking. But then came Allen’s latest album and, well…singers process in songs. So, there was a lot to break down.

    And of course, there was a question. What does Harbour think about the songs that are clearly about him? Lily Allen had an answer. During a chat with Interview, the singer was asked how Harbour would react to the album. “It’s not a cruel album,” Allen said of West End Girl, which was released Oct. 24. “I don’t feel like I’m being mean. It was just the feelings I was processing at the time.”

    Related: Here’s a timeline of what went wrong with Lily Allen and David Harbour

    The album was written and recorded over 10 days in December 2024, right after the two separated after four years of marriage.

    “I feel very differently about the whole situation now,” Allen added. “We all go through breakups, and it’s always f–king brutal. But I don’t think it’s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you’re in it.”

    West End Girl has been called a revenge album, but Allen doesn’t see it that way. “That’s what’s fun about this record; it’s viscerally like going through the motions,” she explained. “At the time, I was really trying to process things, and that’s great in terms of the album, but I don’t feel confused or angry now.”

    As for how Harbour may have reacted to the new album, Allen did not want to speculate. “I try not to think about that,” she said. Instead, she wants the album to “feel brutal and tragic but also empowering.”

    The album, which Allen says was only “inspired” by the moment and her marriage to Harbour, doesn’t exactly paint Harbour in the best light. It’s bad enough that there has been speculation about whether Harbour could bring forward a defamation suit against Allen and her production company.

    Louise Lambert, co-CEO of Reviewed and Cleared, a specialist media law firm, told Cosmopolitan that even though it is defamatory to call someone a cheater, the “truth is a complete defence to defamation.” She also added that “in the event of a claim, the person making the allegation would need to provide evidence of cheating in order to rely on this defence.” Since the lyrics don’t specifically mention Harbour, any possible suit would also have to go into the meanings of the lyrics.

    “The same [defamation] laws govern both [music and journalists] but, as an artistic work, there is perhaps more leeway in terms of what a song actually means. Allen has indicated herself that it’s not all necessarily true,” Lambert also said, which is probably an answer in and of itself. After all, let us remember that Drake’s defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us was recently dismissed by a judge, who ruled that Lamar’s lyrics were “nonactionable opinion.”

    So yes, this split is messy, but it’s probably not going to end in a lawsuit. Whether Harbour actually comments on it—he will start doing press for Stranger Things Season 5 soon—remains to be seen.

    Lizzie Lanuza

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  • Who Is ‘Madeline’? David Harbour’s Alleged Mistress Reacts to Lily Allen’s Song About His Secret Affair



    Who’s Madeline in Lily Allen’s West End Girl & Is She Madeline Tippett?




























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    Lea Veloso

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  • Lily Allen’s Brutal Breakup Album Centers on Heartache at Her Brooklyn Brownstone

    A FaceTime call featured in the album’s opening track sets the scene for a shift in Allen’s personal life. Her husband wants to open their marriage, and by track four, “Tennis,” he seems to be engaged in an affair with a woman the couple knows. “Who the fuck is Madeline?” Allen repeatedly cries, a question she answers on the following song of the same name. On “Madeline,” she sings about messaging a woman her husband has been sleeping with: “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.” In an interview with The Times, Allen insisted that Madeline was “a fictional character,” but a costume designer named Natalie Tippett has claimed in an interview with The Mail On Sunday that she is the mystery woman in question.

    Allen, who has been sober since 2019, admits she struggled with feeling the “need to be numb” in “Relapse.” On another track, “Dallas Major,” she playfully croons about DM’ing other men under an alias in an effort to appease her husband’s arrangement: “So I go by Dallas Major but that’s not really my name / You know I used to be quite famous, that was way back in the day / Yes I’m here for validation and I probably should explain / How my marriage has been opened since my husband went astray.”

    Some of the most pointed accusations arrive in the song “Pussy Palace,” in which Allen sings about taking some of her partner’s things to the couple’s West Village apartment, where her husband stayed for a period. While there, she discovered a plastic Duane Reade bag, “with the handles tied / sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside.” Upon finding Pandora’s box, Allen wonders aloud, “am I looking at a sex addict?”

    Savannah Walsh

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  • Lily Allen’s ‘West End Girl’ Is a Stunner — A Divorce Album That Feels Like a Stage Drama Unfolding in Real Time, but With Bops: Album Review

    Out of the many thousands — surely tens of thousands — of albums I’ve listened to in my time, I can’t recall one that had me on the edge of my seat from the first moments to the last on first listen the way Lily Allen’s new “West End Girl” did, almost as if it were a suspense movie. The tension doesn’t come in wondering about where the record’s narrative is ultimately headed; as you may have heard, this is a divorce record with a capital D. My inability to sit back in my chair came from just savoring every confessional line and wondering what the hell she was going to tell us in the next one to top it. It’s the pleasure of listening to a master storyteller who makes your jaw drop by seeming to have spilled all the tea almost at the outset, and then the tea just keeps on coming. Not since Boston in 1773, maybe, has anyone dumped it this massively, or this fulfillingly.

    If that sounds a little hyperbolic, well, sure. But “West End Girl” is the kind of record that can inspire crazy superlatives. It’s not solely about the candor — although if all Allen did was read like-minded passages of her diary aloud, you’d still have to give the album some points. It’s not just what she says from moment to moment but how she says it that keeps you riveted. And that applies on fifth, sixth and seventh listen, too, however well you’ve absorbed the story beats. The level of pop craftsmanship remains superb throughout, too, in 14 songs that somehow manage to keep the emotions feeling utterly raw at every turn, even as the music itself is anything but.

    So: Come for the shock value, and stay for the high level of craftsmanship. Then stay even longer for how cannily the album sustains its mix of droll delivery and pure heartbreak. It’s a place you’ll probably want to linger.

    There have been a lot of powerful divorce albums in recent years: Already in 2025, we had Jason Isbell’s and Amanda Shires’ both-sides-now releases, plus Maren Morris’ roman-a-clef set. Going back further, we’ve had Adele’s “30,” Kacey Musgraves’ “Star Crossed” and the Chicks’ “Gaslighter,” and the divorce-court near-miss that was Beyonce’s “Lemonade,” not to mention non-marital laments like Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department.” What all those albums had in common was how those artists offered at least occasional time-outs from the trauma. Usually the artist will feel obligated to give the audience a breather with at least a couple songs that deal with something other than the central rupture, or which flash forward to assure everyone that the singer is doing all right and healing up, thank you, post-split.

    But there will be no such commercial breaks or reassurances about time’s healing power for Allen. These 14 songs never offer the slightest relief from the intense emotionality of the breakdown of her relationship. But they’re so uniformly good, the fact that she doesn’t stray for a second from the subject of straying and its effects, but holds onto it like a dog with a bone, is… well, it’s a relief, actually. Allen has been working as a stage actress lately, on London’s West End (hence the title), and listening to the album one fell swoop at a time is like immersing yourself in a terrific one-woman show, where she’s running through the demise of a dream marriage in something that feels like real time. If you’re not riveted by all of this, you may not even be rivet-able.

    Released with only a few days’ warning, “West End Girl” has already prompted scores of headlines in the U.K., where Allen remains a paparazzi-attracting A-lister, and just a few less in the U.S., where she is revered by most of the pop intellgentsia but has been known to walk down the street unaccosted. It doesn’t hurt, as far as intense public curiosity goes, that she was just divorced from “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour, after five years of marriage that apparently started as a fairy-tale romance for her and ended in the devastation strewn throughout every track on the album. We say “apparently” because Allen did suggest in a British Vogue interview that there’s at least a little fiction mixed in with the blatant autobiography. But every lyrical detail is so vividly delineated — in a “she probably wouldn’t make this up” way — that, rightly or wrongly, you’re likely to walk away thinking that possibly the only thing fabricated from whole cloth is the pseudonym she came up with for the story’s principal mistress (“Madeline”).

    The album gets off to a blithe enough start… for a couple of verses. The title track is styled initially as a kind of samba, with Allen breathlessly reeling off how she and her husband moved to a brownstone in New York: “Found ourselves a good mortgage / Billy Cotton got sorted.” (Cotton is the designer who made the couple’s new digs worthy of a much-talked-about home-tour profile in Architectural Digest in 2023.) All is bliss until Allen tells her husband in the tune that she had just landed a leading role in a London play, presumably referencing her award-nominated breakout role in “2:22 – A Ghost Story.” (She subsequently starred on the West End again this year, in “Hedda.”) “That’s when your demeanour started to change,” she sings. “You said I’d have to audition / I said, ‘You’re deranged’ / And I thought that that was quite strange.” And there, two minutes in, with 42 left to go, end the sum total of the album’s sunny moments. Halfway through this title track, the music suddenly changes, turning to a creepily underwater-sounding version of that electro-samba, as the backdrop to a phone call we hear only Allen’s side of, in which her partner delivers some unknown bad news from the other side of the pond. It’s up to the listener to imagine what’s being said on the other end of the line: Is he telling her he’s moving out for good? Or just moving to another state, or getting his own flat in town (all of which will factor in in songs that come later)? All she can think of to say back is a dumbstuck “It makes me really sad but… I’m fine, I just want you to be happy… I love you.” And with that, the dream is over. Even though the album is just getting started.

    She saves the discovery of infidelity for track 2, “Ruminating” (and practically every track thereafter). This one is a delectable slice of hyperpop, paced to keep up with the racing thoughts that keep our heroine awake at 4 a.m.: “I’m not hateful but you make me hate her / She gets to sleep next to my medicator… / And I can’t shake the image of her naked / On top of you, and I’m disassociated.” She repeats a statement of her partner’s — “If it (casual sex) has to happen, baby, do you want to know?” —answering back, ad nauseum, “What a fucking line, line, line,” repeated endlessly in a lovely, profane, Autotune-enhanced vocal cascade.

    “Sleepwalking” brings some sweetness back to the album, but only in the ironic music, which uses the cadences of a sweet girl-group ballad from the ‘50s or early ‘60s top underscore a bitter lyric that says: “Who said romance isn’t dead? / Been no romance since we wed / ‘Why aren’t we fucking 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.” Allen says she’s become the madonna in her marriage when she’d eagerly play whore, if only. (Freud’s interpolation there goes uncredited.)

    In “Tennis,” deceptively cheerful couplets that are divided up by light banging on a single piano key, she sings about how his abrupt grabbing back of his phone caused her to take a look at his texts, revealing that he’s been exchanging volleys on the court with a mystery woman, which in her mind may count as the more unforgivable infidelity: “If it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous / (But) you won’t play with me,” she sings — and then the music drops out for a blunt spoken-word inquiry: “And who’s Madeline?” (Soon to be drolly repeated and amended as: “Who the fuck is Madeline?”) In one of the great segues of our time, the next number is actually titled “Madeline,” and it’s there that Allen gathers the moxy to text the pseudonymous woman — and, for our listening pleasure, recites the answers that get texted back to her in an amusinglyu authentic American accent. (Whether she’s quoting real-life texts verbatim or paraphrasing for comedic effect is hard to know, but the end result is a dialogue that feels satirical and real at the same time.)

    It’s so easy to become wrapped up in what’s actually being sung and said in “Madeline” that you might miss what’s happening musically, on first listen. The instrumental bed for this track focuses on a kind of acoustic guitar strumming that feels faintly redolent of a Marty Robbins ballad about Western gunslingers in a showdown — and yeah, that does become a bit more obvious when a couple of actual gunshot sound effects are eventually thrown into the mix.

    It’s not the only time stylistic pastiche is employed for humor. It happens again, for instance, in “Dallas Major,” a song about Allen reentering the dating scene against her better judgment. That one brings in a light R&B groove that is meant to confer a surface sexiness, even as Allen warns a possible suitor, “I’m almost nearly 40 / I’m just shy of five-foot-two / I’m a mum to teenage children / Does that sound like fun to you?” Well, it does, kind of, but only because primary producer Blue May and his cohorts are adding bits of funk guitar, ‘70s-style keyboards and even some ‘80s-style scratching, while Allen conversely laments, over and over: “I hate it here.” If you don’t notice all these fairly subtle arrangement touchs on the first couple of listens, it’s understandable — you are busy being hit by a 2-by-4, which is to say, the accumulative effect of Allen’s jaw-dropper divulgements.

    In “Madeline,” the “it’s complicated” part of the story really starts to take effect. There we learn the rules of the game of the marriage: It’s an open one, but Allen posits that she’s only agreeing to that to keep the embers of her former fairy-tale union alive. It’s here that she may lose some listeners who would otherwise be down to empathize with a straightforward divorce album: If you agreed to an open marriage, why are you so outraged he had sex with other women? The singer establishes there were boundaries set: “We had an arrangement / Be discreet, and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers… [Dramatic pause.] But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.”

    The magnitude of the extramarital exploits is stressed in an unforgettable sing-along that soon follows, “Pussy Palace.” In this one, the narrator goes to drop off medication at the West Village apartment her husband is keeping on his own, to discover a shoebox of love letters from serial lovers and a “Duane Reade bag with the handles tied / Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside / Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken / How’d I get caught up in your double life?” If that sounds stressful, know that the chorus is actually the kind of earworm you may spend the fall singing out loud — “I didn’t know it was your pussy palace (x4) / I always thought it was a dojo (x3) / So am I looking at a sex addict (x4)?” (It’s pretty much guaranteed, by the way, that with this album Merriam-Webster look-ups on dojo just went up 10,000%.)

    The musical dynamics of the record are fairly spectacular. At its tenderest, there is “Just Enough,” a ballad with finger-picking guitar and orchestra that has Allen caught up in seeing herself as a hag: “Look at my reflection / I feel so drawn, so old / I booked myself a facelift / Wondering how long it might hold / I gave you all my power / How I’m seen through your eyes…” It’s one of the few songs on the album that is universal enough that many women will presumably relate — although, again, she can’t resist bringing it home to some triggering specifics when she asks aloud: “Why are we here talking about vasectomies?”

    Contrast that with the wildly up-tempo tune that immediately precedes it, “Nonmonogamummy.” (Best tongue-twister of a title for a great pop song since “Femininomenon.”) In this one, Allen has reluctantly given in to keeping her side of the marriage open and is working the apps herself, in frustration. Her date for the evening is a British DJ named Specialist Moss, who raps, “I look at your eyes, you say your heart is broken,” while Allen can’t stop thinking about her husband: “I don’t want to fuck with anyone else / I know that’s all you want to do / I’m so committed that I’d lose myself / Because I don’t want to lose you.” The date goes badly, but the song goes spectacularly. An irresistible electric guitar line and an unbeatably furious beat help Allen and Blue May make “Nonmonogamummy” into what may be the most brilliant banger of the year.

    Much respect, also, for “Relapse,” in which Allen, who is apparently about five years sober, writes about how the breakdown of her personal life and dreams is driving her to want to drink, or drug — but expresses this hunger not as some kind of slog but as a delicious piece of dubstep.

    For an album that proceeds quite deliberately as a narrative, “West End Girl” doesn’t have a terribly definitive wrap-up. In the finale, “Fruityloop” (seemingly named for her ex’s choice of cereal, as well as the snare-drum loop that underlies the track), Allen brings the fatal attraction down to unresolved parental-neglect issues: “You’re just a little boy, looking for his mummy… / Playing with his toys, he just wants attention / He can’t really do attachment, scared he’s gonna be abandoned.” For herself, “I’m just a little girl, looking for a daddy / Thought that we could break the cycle.” If that sounds like pretty reasonable, even high-minded after all that has preceded it, rest assured that Allen is not quite done with the tough talk yet. “You’re a mess, I’m a bitch,” she proclaims. Magnanimous, sort of, but then she can’t help finally quoting the sage that was Lily Allen, circa 2008: “It’s not me, it’s you.”

    If her deep woundedness comes as a bit of a surprise on this album, it may be because cockier older songs like “F— You” gave her the image of a tough broad, or because she already had one divorce album, 2017’s “No Shame,” in which she seemed to take a lot of responsibility for her first marriage’s failure. So among the many things that feel shocking here is just how submissive she seems to her mate’s will and wishes, up to a breaking point. The picture painted is of a wife who’s a true lovestruck romantic, and maybe even,  aspirationally, a tradwife. There’s an interesting contrast here, between the Allen who might be seen by some as a ball-buster for how candidly she’s laying out her anger for the world to see here, and the Lily who is — like a globetrotting woman before her — just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. For all of the avenging spirit that animates a good part of this album, it’s tremendously touching, when she’s not turning up the pyro, or even when she is.

    For now, it’s enough that we have her back with an album-of-the-year contender. (Extra kudos to Blue May, who is not really a famous name among producers yet, but is probably about to become one, based on this.) But is this the beginning of a renaissance — a Lily-sance? — after she spent eight years off the recording scene? It’s not as if whole generations of women haven’t followed in the footsteps she set down more than 20 years ago, yet it still feels like we need her now more than ever.

    Allen has said she was indeed recording prolifically in the lead-up to the domestic drama detailed here, but not releasing those tracks because she felt she was writing too impersonally, putting down her thoughts about the internet and stuff like that. You’d hate to think it would take this much trauma for her to follow up with another great album. (Here’s betting those unreleased songs about the worldwide web are not as bad as she thinks they are, right?) Anyway, we are just a world, standing in front of a girl, asking her to make more records.

    Chris Willman

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  • The Most Thorough Breakup Album in the History of Breakup Albums: Lily Allen’s West End Girl

    In what is arguably the Pet Shop Boys’ most signature song, “West End Girls,” Neil Tennant commences with the verse, “Sometimes you’re better off dead/There’s a gun in your hand it’s pointing at your head.” Released in 1985 (at least the version most have come to know), the year Lily Allen was born, it applies only too well to the relationship scenario presented on Allen’s fifth album (and her first in seven years), called, what else, West End Girl. The title works on manifold levels. For a start, it is Allen defiantly declaring her return to London, even if only “emotionally,” after years spent in New York. A move that, as the title and intro track explains, was largely due to accommodating her ex-husband, David Harbour. As it would turn out, a move to the U.S. wasn’t to be the only way in which she would do her best to “accommodate.” For, as the album unfolds, Allen effectively confirms all the rumors about Harbour’s infidelity. Worse still, a kind of infidelity that was made to seem “legitimate” by way of him telling Allen, after their marriage, that he wanted an open relationship.

    The signs of Allen’s dissatisfaction throughout the marriage were peppered throughout her podcast with Miquita Oliver, Miss Me? (on which Harbour served as a stand-in for Allen on two episodes while she went on a solo trip [also telling] in August of 2024). It was in little details, like mentioning that she was reading More: A Memoir of Open Marriage by Molly Roden Winter. Or that Harbour was off living in Atlanta, with their time spent mostly apart, or that she couldn’t meet some of Harbour’s more incongruous bedroom requests. The kind of requests, apparently, that he took to other women to fulfill. Even if, at the outset of the marriage, Harbour seemed determined to make it all as “fairy tale” as possible. This included, believe it or not their Las Vegas wedding on September 7, 2020, at a still-height of the pandemic (hence, Allen being pictured wearing a mask in certain photos). “Catered” by In-N-Out and officiated by an Elvis impersonator, Allen’s two daughters, Ethel and Marnie, were also in attendance, signaling how Harbour would be fully embracing his role as “stepdad.”

    Alas, as “West End Girl” describes, in its ominous, slow-burn kind of way, that wouldn’t really turn out to be the case. Starting out with a sunny, la-di-da sound (courtesy of co-production from Allen, Alessandro Buccellati, Blue Ma, Kito, Seb Chew, Hayley Gene Penner, Leon Vynehall and Leroy Clampitt), Allen, in her usual “telling a story” manner, paints the picture, “And now we’re all here/We’ve moved to New York/We found a nice little rental/Near a sweet little school/Now I’m looking at houses/With four or five floors/And you found us a brownstone/Said, ‘You want it? It’s yours’/So we went ahead and we bought it.” Soon, however, the tone gets darker as Allen describes the underlying jealousy and lack of support from Harbour after she announced that she got the lead in a West End play. That would’ve been back in 2021 for her theater debut, 2:22 A Ghost Story.

    The work offer seemed to come at an opportune moment for Allen, who makes it clear that her and Harbour’s wage disparity was just one of the many things that would make her uncomfortable, as elucidated by the lines, “I said, ‘I got some good news/I got the lead in a play’/That’s when your demeanor started to change/You said I’d have to audition/I said, ‘You’re deranged’ [a word that gets used a lot on this record]/And I thought/I thought that was quite strange.”

    In other words, a very unsettling feeling started to descend upon Allen. One that perhaps made her wonder if she should have dated Harbour for longer than a year before marrying him. But, naturally, she tried to push her sense of unease aside, admitting, “So very strange/But I ignored it/Went ahead and I bought it [“buying it” referring to both “the image” Harbour was selling and their brownstone in Carroll Gardens].” She also went ahead and accepted the part in the play (later getting nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress and winning Best Actress at the WhatsOnStage Awards), telling it half in the present and past tense when she says, “Got a flight and I boarded/I’m on my way/Now I’m in London/I’m on my own/I’m in a hotel room/I’m on my own/And now I’m in London/And I’m all alone.” Thus, while the “high” of being a “West End Girl” should feel nice, the lingering low of it all is, ultimately, the similarity to her first marriage, which she discusses in her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly. And while the specifics are different, it still results in Allen being alone (and feeling lonely) in a hotel room by herself. Back in 2014, that translated to calling up female escorts to “keep her company”—yes, that means having sex with them.

    Of course, the cuntier ilk might posit that perhaps Harbour is Allen’s “karma” for being the cheating cad in her first marriage to Sam Cooper (whose last name she keeps for all the writing credits on this album; so she’s “Lily Cooper” instead of Lily Allen, perhaps another subtle dig at Harbour). He being a modest “everyman” (that’s right, Allen married a “normal” before Lana Del Rey) who served as the one with the wage disparity in their marriage. Ergo, inspiring such No Shame lyrics (via “Apples”) as, “I felt like I was only good for writing the checks” and (via “Family Man”) “It’s not always easy/Being a family man [she being the ‘man’ in this iteration]/Baby, don’t leave me/I’m just doing what I can/To get by” and “I’ve come to the land of the free/I’ve let loose, I’m faithless/I am lost and shameless.” During her second marriage, Harbour would embody the traits conveyed in these lyrics.

    Being that West End Girl unfurls like chapters in a book about a dissolving marriage, the title track concludes with a one-sided conversation (in that we can only hear Allen’s part of the dialogue) as Allen reenacts a FaceTime chat from when she was away working on 2:22. It goes, “Hi! How are you? I miss you. Yeah. Huh? Yeah.” Her tone grows increasingly distressed as she continues to reply, “Alright. Um… Okay. Well, I mean it doesn’t make me feel great. If that’s what you need to do, then… I guess. How will it work? Right. I mean it makes me really sad, but… Mhmm. Mhmm. No, I’m fine, I’m fine. I just, I want you to be happy. Okay. Okay, I’ll speak to you later. I love you. Bye.”

    This leads seamlessly into the more up-tempo “Ruminating,” which finds Allen dissecting the nature of that call—the one in which Harbour sprung his true nature upon her, for it was no secret to anyone else that he was the type who “needed” to have sex with lots of different women. The more she thinks about it, the less okay she is with what went down, realizing that she only so readily agreed because of the initial shock of what he told her. But now that she’s “ruminating, ruminating, ruminating, ruminating,” as she repeats throughout the song, none of this is “gelling” for her. This much she makes even clearer when she sings, “Ruminating, ruminating/All the things you said/Why can’t you wait for me to come home?/This convеrsation’s too big for a phone call/Ruminating, ruminating/I’ve been up all night/Did you kiss her on thе lips and look into her eyes?/Did you have fun/Now that it’s done?/Baby, won’t you tell me that I’m still your number one?” But the most tragic addition to this question is Allen admitting that, even after everything, she wants to be his “number one” “‘cause you’re my number one.”

    Sadness gives way to numbness on “Sleepwalking.” Though, of course, that numbness is infused with anger and depression, as she’s sure to mention in the verse, “Course I’m angry/Course I’m hurt/Looking back, it’s so absurd/Course I trusted you/And took you at your worst/Who said romance isn’t dead?/Been no romance since we wed/‘Why aren’t we fucking 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.” This retelling is what lays out the conditions during which Harbour was able to “master manipulate” her, all leading Allen to realize, “You don’t stop talking and I’m just sleepwalking/See your thoughts forming/Baby, stop it, it’s three in the morning [in ‘Ruminating,’ it’s “four in the morning”—the point being that Allen can never again say ‘five o’clock in the morning’]/And I don’t know if you do it intentionally/Somehow you make it my fault.”

    It’s during the bridge of “Sleepwalking” that Allen has her Charlotte York moment by telling him, “I know you’ve made me your Madonna/I wanna be your whore/Baby, it would be my honor/Please, sir, can I have some morе?/I could preserve all of your fantasies/If only you could act them all out with me.” Alas, Harbour simply would not do that, landing the marriage in a stalemate for, as Allen says, “You won’t love me/You won’t leave me.”

    The melancholic tone of “Sleepwalking” then breaks into Allen’s signature sunny voice and musical timbre on “Tennis.” Possessing a sound that belies the rage beneath it, or as Allen described it to British Vogue, she makes “music [that] sounds really pretty and it’s not.” No, indeed. It instead shows all the ugliness just beneath the veneer of “civility.” And “Tennis” does an “everything’s just wonderful” job of conveying that as Allen recounts how “Daddy’s home/For the first time in weeks.” While she might be calling him that from the perspective of telling her kids about his return, there’s no denying Allen married him, in part, to once again try to fill the void where her own father failed her, later bringing it up on “Fruityloop” with the line, “I’m just a little girl/Looking for a daddy.”

    Instead, she found the same kind of toxic father figure she was trying to substitute with a better, more wholesome one. The sort of man for whom she would want to make dinners and wait for by the door. Something she describes doing with, “Got the dinner on the table/Tell the kids it’s time to eat/And I made my baby’s favorite/But he didn’t seem to care/I just tell myself he’s jet-lagged/And I’m glad to have him here.” In many regards, the song echoes Taylor Swift’s “tolerate it,” during which she laments, “I wait by the door like I’m just a kid/Use my best colors for your portrait/Lay the table with the fancy shit/And watch you tolerate it/If it’s all in my head, tell me now/Tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow/I know my love should be celebrated/But you tolerate it.” Allen definitely seems to be experiencing the same phenomenon as she tries to welcome her ever-more (no Swift pun intended) distant husband back.

    On a side note, Allen has repeatedly made her respect and “fanship” of Swift known on Miss Me?, and yet, Swift could never come up with the kind of truly unvarnished lines about a breakup that Allen does, particularly on this record. In point of fact, Swift ought to take some lessons from Allen on that front, especially after the atrocious lyrical offerings on The Life of a Showgirl. But then, in Swift’s “defense,” she should have known better to release an album when she was happy (for, as Allen herself told Perfect magazine, “I’m not really interested in listening to an album of somebody telling me how happy they are”).

    In any case, things start to crumble quickly on “Tennis” (in the same devolving fashion that they do on “West End Girl”), with Allen continuing, “Then you showed me a photo/On Instagram/It was how you grabbed your phone back/Right out of my hands/So 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?” This being a question that Allen won’t rest on as the track continues. But before she keeps demanding to know who that is, Allen points out the injustice, “But you moved the goalposts/You’ve broken the rules/I tried to accommodate.”

    Having mentioned “Madeline” more than a few times in “Tennis,” it’s only natural that the following song should be called, well, “Madeline.” The proverbial “Becky with the good hair” in Allen’s world—an ironic reference considering all the drama that surrounded Allen after she commented on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album on Miss Me? back in 2024. And, funnily enough, “Madeline” does have a certain country vibe to it, with a musical backing that channels a sweeping Western, with the hero(ine) blowing into town to save it from the nefarious harlot in question: Madeline. At one point, there’s ever a gunslingin’ shot fired in the background as Allen warns, “Lie to me, babe, and I’ll end you.”

    Except, unlike Beyoncé, Allen confronts her Becky with a text of her own, commencing with, “I know this is none of your fault/Messaging you feels kind of assault-ive/Saw your texts, that’s how I found out/Tell me the truth and his motives/I can’t trust anything that/Comes out of his mouth.” And yet, talking to Madeline does little to soothe her either, especially not with that Valley Girl lilt of hers (something Allen is deft at imitating) as she assures, “I hate that you’re in so much pain right now I really don’t wanna be the cause of any upset. He told me you were aware this was going on and that he had your full consent. If he’s lying about that, then please let me know. Because I have my own feelings about dishonesty. Lies are not something that I want to get caught up in. You can reach out to me any time, by the way. If you need any more details or you just need to vent or anything. Love and light, Madeline.”

    But there is no “love and light” for Allen, whose spiral about the many ways in which her husband broke their accords—accords she was strong-armed into in the first place—is at its most crystallized when she says, “We had an arrangement/Be discreet and don’t be blatant/And there had to be payment/It had to be with strangers/But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.” All these revelations hitting her at once is enough to make her want to “Relapse,” a track that serves as the next logical progression in this love tragedy.

    Anyone who is aware of Allen’s history with drugs and alcohol is, of course, also aware of the herculean effort it took for her to get sober. And the perilousness of such sobriety when an emotional nadir arrives. Something Allen acknowledged to British Vogue when she remarked, “The feelings of despair that I was experiencing were so strong. The last time that I felt anything like that, drugs and alcohol were my way out, so it was excruciating to sit with those [feelings] and not use them.” Thus, yet another reason that “making art” seemed perhaps more important than ever. But before arriving to that conclusion, Allen instead thought, “The ground is gone beneath me/You pulled the safety net/I moved across an ocean/Fom my family, from my friends/The foundation is shattered/You’ve made such a fucking mess/I tried to be your modern wife/But the child in me protests.” As for mentioning trying to be a “modern wife,” Allen is of course referring to her openness to, well, having an open marriage. Even though she wasn’t informed of Harbour’s desires to have one prior to being led down the primrose path of not so holy matrimony.

    So is it any wonder that the inner addict waiting to burst forth inside of Allen declares, “I need a drink/I need a Valium/You pushed me this far, and I just need to be numb/If I relapse/I know I stand to lose it all/Can you bring me back/When I’m climbing up the walls?” The saddest part of that question being that she’s still looking to her duplicitous husband to be her “rock,” even though he’s the one that caused her to disintegrate. A disintegration that reaches a new level on “Pussy Palace”—and no, Sabrina Carpenter’s “House Tour” has nothing on this: a tour of her husband’s second abode in the West Village. And one that finds her trying to drop off some of his things there (because she’s too pissed to allow him back into “their” bed), only to realize, “Something don’t feel right/I didn’t know it was your pussy palace/Pussy palace/Pussy palace/Pussy palace/I always thought it was a dojo/Dojo/Dojo/So am I looking at a sex addict?/Sex addict?/Sex addict?/Sex addict?” Made to feel like even more of a fool than she did before, the, er, blows keep coming when she notices the “Duane Reade bag with the handles tied/Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside/Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken/How’d I get caught up in your double life?”

    Naturally, Allen is quick to assert that this isn’t “her” or “Harbour,” per se, on the album. That it can be read as a kind of “autofiction.” One that she created “in December 2024 and it was a way for me to process what was happening in my life.” She’s also certain to emphasize, “There are things that are on the record that I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel.” Even so, there are plenty who will take “4chan Stan,” this album’s edition of “URL Badman,” as just that. Throughout the song, Allen alludes to Harbour’s philandering ways continuing to escalate and, in accordance with that, so, too does her escalation of snooping—only to wish she hadn’t tried pulling back the curtain at all to see the truth. Or, in this case, opening the drawer to do it. For that’s how the song begins, with Allen once again telling a story when she recounts, “I went through your bedside drawer/You know I’ve never been inclined to do that before.” This echoing how her suspicions also prompted her to do something she never would have done before on “Tennis” when she talks about how it was the way he “grabbed [his] phone back” from her that made her read his texts.

    The “kitchen sink drama” sort of backing track (in the style of something that both Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell [RIP Dave Ball] would approve of) on “4chan Stan” only adds to the melodrama (on a related note, Allen reposted someone’s assessment of her record as Lorde’s Melodrama for divorced women). In addition to being yet another example of how Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” is sort of a thematic through-line on this album. But particularly with “4stan Chan” and the revelations, “Never been Bergdorf’s/But you took someone shopping there in May ‘24/You bought her a handbag/It wasn’t cheap.” A verse that recalls Houston’s own appraisal of a receipt, “If six of y’all went out, ah/Then four of you were really cheap, yeah/‘Cause only two of you had dinner/I found your credit card receipt.”

    To further complicate her husband’s infidelity, Allen speculates that the reason he won’t tell her the woman’s name is because she’s famous (“Why won’t you tell me what her name is?/This is outrageous/What, is she famous?”). And also because he hasn’t been honest with the other woman either, in terms of telling her that Allen was not “open” to this when she agreed to an open marriage (“I think you’re sinking/You’re protecting a lie/We don’t want her thinking/That you cheat on your wife”). So it is that Allen must finally appraise his cowardice as follows: “What a sad, sad man/It’s giving 4chan stan.” Of course, Allen would have probably preferred if Harbour did have difficulty finding women to fuck him (which is what Reddit’s 4chan heavily attacts: incels…and white supremacists). Even though she brands him as “not even cute” when she says, “You love all the power/But you’re not even cute.”

    Alas, just look at someone like Kevin Federline, able to “snag” Britney Spears at the height of her own powers (and still haunting her as a result of that to this day). But then, it’s no secret that a man doesn’t need to be cute, just charming. Federline and Harbour have both proven that—and maybe it’s no coincidence that there was a time circa the It’s Not Me, It’s You Tour that Allen would cover Spears’ “Womanizer”—a track inspired by Federline’s own philandering behavior after Spears married him (though, in recent years, fans have speculated that the track is really about her father, Jamie, even though no songwriting credit is attributed to Britney).

    Whoever it’s really about, Allen seemed to foreshadow her own second marriage by singing such lyrics as, “Superstar, where you from?/How’s it goin’?/I know you, got a clue what you’re doin’/You can play brand new to all the other chicks out here/But I know what you are, what you are, baby/Look at you, gettin’ more than just a re-up/Baby, you got all the puppets with their strings up/Fakin’ like a good one, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em/I know what you are, what you are, baby/Womanizer, woman-womanizer, you’re a womanizer/Oh, womanizer, oh, you’re a womanizer, baby.” And that is something Allen would now like everyone to know about Harbour, regardless of her calling it “autofiction” or not.

    That much also shines through on the scathing “Nonmonogamummy” featuring Specialist Moss. It’s the latter’s presence on the track that helps Allen return to her ska/reggae/drum ‘n’ bass “roots,” the ones that were so prominent on Alright, Still. Coming right out the gate with, “I don’t want to fuck with anyone else/I know that’s all you wanna do/I’m so committed that I’d lose myself/‘Cause I don’t wanna lose you,” she establishes that a large reason behind why she put up with the behavior for so long was because she wanted the marriage to work out so badly. Almost at any cost.

    Allen then delivers several coups de grâce aimed at Harbour when she hurls such casual “how could you?” instances as, “I changed my immigration status/For you to treat me like a stranger” and “A life with you looked good on paper/I’ve been trying to be open/I just want to meet your needs/And for some reason/I revert to people pleasing/I’ll be your nonmonogamummy.” Of course, everyone saw how Allen’s attempt at “people pleasing” turned out here. Though, obviously, if one wants to “see the silver lining,” that wreckage prompted lyrical spun gold for what would become West End Girl.

    The upbeat sound and rhythm of “Nonmonogamummy” shifts to a downbeat “ballad,” of sorts, called “Just Enough.” A track that finds Allen exploring, among other things, her low self-esteem as it relates to her appearance. Which correlates to what happened in her marriage in that, as she mentioned to Perfect, “I don’t think that my previous relationship has helped me with [self-worth].” On “Just Enough,” it isn’t the first time Allen has alluded to feeling “old” on the record. On “Madeline,” she also pronounces, “I’ve gotten old, gotten ugly.” The same sentiment is parroted on “Just Enough” when she concedes, “Look at my reflection/I feel so drawn, so old/I booked myself a facelift/Wondering how long it might hold.” Indeed, Allen has talked about being more than okay with getting a facelift on Miss Me? and, yes, going as far as the consultation to see what it’s all about. This in addition to recently going “all the way” on paying good money for a tit job (which Allen has no shame—to use one of her album title’s phrases—discussing freely). And perhaps it can be assumed that Allen might have retained the services of a good lawyer after retaining the services of a good surgeon. You know, just in case Harbour is as nasty as he’s made to sound on the record and tries to come for Allen as a result of his own gaping insecurities. Ones that are paraded in such “Just Enough” lines as, “Why are we talking about vasectomies?/Did you get someone pregnant?” Despite these horrifying exchanges, Allen maintains, “You give me just enough/Hope to hold on to” before then adding, “Nothing.”

    But a woman can hold on to hope no matter how nonexistent it is. Which is why she’ll resort to creating an alter ego on dating apps named “Dallas Major” in order to “comply” with her husband’s “need” for an open marriage. As track eleven on West End Girl, it ups the ante on Allen’s emotional journey (or rollercoaster), going from totally bereft and heartbroken to sardonic and “whatever” as she quips, “I’m almost nearly forty/I’m just shy of five-foot-two/I’m a mum to teenage children/Does that sound like fun to you?” Continuing to repeat, “I hate it here”—as in “on the apps” she’s been forced to resort to for the sake of playing along with “openness”—Allen further explains that’s why she goes by “Dallas Major/But that’s not really my name/You know I used to be quite famous/That was way back in the day/Yes, I’m here for validation/And I probably should explain/How my marriage has been opened/Since my husband went astray.” With her litany of self-deprecations, Allen switches to the third person at the end of the track, as if to indicate that she no longer “identifies with herself,” having dissociated, floated up above her body and decided to observe the shitshow from afar.

    As for the line about being “here for validation,” she can admit such a craving applies to broadcasting the nitty-gritty details of her divorce (in a way that even Ariana Grande couldn’t on Eternal Sunshine) on what is now an immortal album. For British Vogue, Allen explained, “I want to feel validated. I want to feel like it’s okay to feel the things that I’m feeling and to be angry about the things that I’m angry about. I want someone to go, ‘Yeah, that is fucking confusing!’” For Perfect, she went into even more depth about how needing validation plays into making her personal life quite public in her music, stating, “I am excited about the possibility of [this album] helping me to move on. And I’m trying not to feel shame around that, because there is a part of me that feels guilt and shame that I have to be able to share things on such a grand scale in order to process them. Like there’s a grandiosity or almost a sociopathic element to that. But that’s what I do! I do it on my podcasts, I did it in my book. I had a childhood where I felt completely invisible and in my adult life, for whatever reason, I’ve decided to be incredibly visible. And I guess I am a ‘character’ in lots of ways. And I feel like the character can’t move on until everyone knows the story. Can’t move on to the next chapter.”

    The next chapter after “Just Enough” is “Beg For Me” (in contrast to Charli XCX’s “Beg For You”), which details Allen’s insatiable desire to be loved in a way that Carrie Bradshaw would deem to be “ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love.” Allen takes Bradshaw’s declaration to Aleksandr Petrovsky one step further by announcing, “I want to feel held/I want to be told I’m special and I’m unusual/I want your desire/I want to be spoiled/I want to be told I’m beautiful/Why won’t you beg, beg, beg for me?” Elsewhere in the song, a warped sample of Lumidee’s 2003 hit “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)” takes hold (though, musically, there’s more than a slight hint of Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up”): “If you want me to stay, love endlessly/If you want me to stay, I’ll never leave.” The earnestness of this technically “simple” desire—even if it’s one that a girl, let a lone a grown woman, is never supposed to admit—layers on the tristesse of the relationship failing so spectacularly.

    But Allen is done being sad (or defeated) on “Let You W/In,” which features a sonic opening that recalls No Shame’s “Higher.” A song that, incidentally, also bears the mark of a scorned woman in such lyrics as, “Do me right/You’re lying/It’s in your eyes, don’t try it/No you can’t hide, have your lost your mind?/Did I cross your mind?” On “Let You W/In,” it seems Harbour’s answer to the latter question would be, “Not really,” with Allen accusing, “What is your sacrifice?/I’m protecting you from your secrets/Don’t tell the children, the truth would be brutal/Your reputation’s unstained.” Allen, needless to say, couldn’t let that lack of “staining” stand. And for Harbour to have believed that she wouldn’t write an album about what happened just goes to further show that he really didn’t know who he was tangoing with. And trifling with.

    Moreover, when she kicks off the track with the line, “I’ve become invisible,” it automatically signals her worst fear realized, that abovementioned one about feeling as invisible as she did when she was a child. Hence, this ever-bubbling need to seek the spotlight again as a means of garnering more visibility instead of being “stuck here in my palace [not her ‘pussy palace,’ mind you]/I’m so fucking miserable/In my rabbit hole, yeah, I’m Alice/And I’m expected to be nice/Picking up the pieces.” Evidently, part of picking them up meant acknowledging that, in spite of her best efforts to put pop stardom to bed, the desire is still very much alive and well within her. In fact, her interviewer for Perfect, Alex Bilmes, got straight to that question at the very start of the feature, asking, “You haven’t released any new music in seven years. Was there a period where you thought you might permanently retire from pop stardom?” Allen replied, “Yeah, there was a lot of time where I felt like that.”

    Concurring with Allen’s admission was none other than Miquita Oliver, who has continued to soldier on with Miss Me?, now with Jordan Stephens as her co-host. It was Stephens that she told on the October 23rd episode of the show, “[Lily] did not write music in her marriage… I didn’t think she’d ever make music again.” Both Stephens and Oliver then posited that, in this way, sometimes pain is the only motivator to make art. In point of fact, Allen exorcised the record from herself in a matter of sixteen days (as she told British Vogue, though Perfect was told ten; either way, it was fucking quick)—this after years spent saying she was working on new material. Evidently, all it took was an emotional evisceration to give her the final push she needed. To this end, she also stated to British Vogue that it’s true that all of her albums “have been informed by big traumatic experiences. My first album really was the break-up of my first love. And my second one was—this is going to sound so stupid—but the ‘Trauma of Fame.’”

    Then there was the little-loved (on Allen’s part) Sheezus, which she characterizes as “a mess, because I was a pop star who suddenly had two children and didn’t fit into this world. So actually it’s kind of exactly what it should have been. Then my last album was emerging from the detritus of my first marriage… And we’ll see what happens with these songs!”

    For Allen’s sake, hopefully what will happen is that she’ll get the validation she seeks from releasing them. Even if some, like the grand finale, “Fruityloop,” offer the kind of “parlance” that not “just any old” (or rather “any young”) listener can understand. Though everyone with even a cursory “Psych 101” knowledge can appreciate, “You’re just a little boy/Looking for his mummy/Things have gotten complicated/What with all the fame and money/Playing with his toys/He just wants attention/He can’t really do attachment/Scared he’s gonna be abandoned.” A fear that, ironically enough, also mirrors Allen’s. So it was that, while their wounds might have matched, their attachment styles certainly didn’t. And though Allen can also cop to being “just a little girl/Looking for a daddy, she still maintains (while self-referencing her own sophomore album title), “It’s not me, it’s you.”

    In another moment, she channels her stark revelation from No Shame’s “Apples,” “Now I’m exactly where I didn’t want to be/I’m just like my mommy and daddy.” That is to say: divorced. On “Fruityloop,” she rephrases the “Apples” motif as, “Thought that we could break the cycle/Thought that I could keep you happy.” With the second divorce, however, she’s less inclined to shoulder the bulk of the blame, instead informing Harbour, “You’re stuck inside your fruity loop.” Further shrugging, “It is what is/You’re a mess/I’m a bitch/Wish I could fix all your shit/But all your shit’s yours to fix.” Or, as Tate McRae puts it on “Tit For Tat,” “Fix your fucking self.”

    Even Allen is still trying to do that after years of talk therapy, now veering into EMDR as she keeps trying to “figure it all out” (hence, all the dabbling). Because, at a certain point during Miss Me?, Allen had stated that part of the reason she hesitated about releasing new music again was because 1) not enough people, for her, seemed to care about/react to the majesty of No Shame and 2) she needs and wants lots and lots of people to care (to fill the void of being cared for when it mattered most: during her childhood). One can only hope that, after punishing listeners with her absence for so long, they’ll finally start listening in droves. That maybe she’ll get the same kind of appreciation that Charli XCX suddenly did after Brat. And yes, XCX is just one of the many Allen acolytes, having cited her as a key influence on her own work (in turn, Allen has been an XCX fan to the point of incorporating some of the “brat’s” hallmarks—sped-up sound, vocoder, etc.—onto a track like “Relapse”).  

    But fans and casual listeners alike shouldn’t automatically assume that Allen is back back with this record. Or that she would have the emotional wherewithal to tour it. Though she did make that assurance to Perfect, adding that she’s got some bills to pay, thus, some money to make. “And this is what I do to earn money.” In short, gets her heart broken/generally traumatized and then paid to write about it. So yeah, move over Taylor Swift. Because The Life of Slighted Girl is more compelling than that of a showgirl.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Heartbroken Lily Allen ‘wanted to die’ following David Harbour split: ‘The feelings of despair were so strong’

    Singer Lily Allen opened up about her struggles during her divorce from ex-husband David Harbour in a new interview.

    The Smile hitmaker married Stranger Things actor David in 2020 in a Las Vegas wedding. Lily was previously married to her first husband, Sam Cooper, with whom she shares two daughters, Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12.

    In December, headlines suggested Lily and David had split, which was later confirmed to be true. It has been alleged that David had been having a three-year affair with a costume designer.

    Following the news, Lily checked herself into a treatment facility at the beginning of this year.

    Lily and David got married in Las Vegas (Credit: Splashnews.com)

    Lily Allen ‘wanted to die’ following David Harbour split

    In a new interview with British Vogue, Lily sat down with the publication and explained why she decided to seek help.

    “The feelings of despair that I was experiencing were so strong,” she said while explaining that she was the closest she had come to relapsing after six years of being sober.

    “I’ve been into those places before against my will, and I feel like that’s progress in itself,” she added.

    “That’s strength. I knew that the things I was feeling were too extreme to be able to manage, and I was like, ‘I need some time away.’”

    When the BRIT Award winner was asked what made her realise this situation was different from other times, she said: “That I wanted to die.”

    In the same interview, Lily was asked whether David would continue being a stepfather to her two children. However, she insisted that it is a question he needs to answer.

    Lily Allen looking in front
    Lily admitted she felt suicidal following David split (Credit: Splashnews.com)

    What has David said since their split?

    In April, David broke his silence surrounding his split from Lily.

    “I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life,” he told GQ. “There’s no use in that form of engaging [with tabloid news] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”

    He also stated that talking about his and Lily’s split publicly “won’t serve anyone or anything other than encouraging ‘a salacious shitshow of humiliation.’”

    Read more: Lily Allen shows off results from ‘incredible’ boob job

    David Harbour "loves" being a stepdad to Lily Allen's children | Miss Me?

    So what do you think? Tell us on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix.

    Fabio Magnocavallo

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  • Allie X’s “Reunite”: A Plea for Reconciliation—And Also Thematically Aligned With Lily Allen’s “Back to the Start”

    On the heels of releasing the solipsistic anthem, “Is Anybody Out There?,” Allie X has already unleashed the second single from HIGGY a.k.a. Happiness Is Going to Get You. Titled “Reunite,” it is, in its way an appropriate thematic companion to “Is Anybody Out There?” in that after wondering, “Is anybody listening ‘cause I’m not hearing anything/I think I might be in this world alone/Is anybody out there?/I don’t know,” Allie X starts to also question if perhaps she threw away a certain past relationship too prematurely. And, maybe if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t feel quite so lonely.

    A loneliness that comes across in the wistful, “ultra-throwback” musical intro to the track, which is all harpsichord for the first seventeen seconds. This followed by about a two-second pause before leading into the stabbing electro sound that Allie X is known for, achieved in this instance with co-production help from Bastian Langebæk (who also worked with her on “Is Anybody Out There?”). In the accompanying “visualizer,” Allie X is not only once again in her “Infant Marie” guise, but is also “just kind of existing” inside of a giant, transparent cube as she plays the harpsichord for a taxidermied hooded crow (which Allie has nicknamed, what else, “Higgy”).

    Upon completing her “introductory flourish,” however, X ceases to play the instrument (after all, that isn’t the sound of the song anymore—though she will go back to pretending to play the keys later on) in favor of singing along to the beat as she recounts, “Trauma’s complicated/When you went and changed, I disassociated/It was you that I hated, the simple one to blame/When you’re a child in pain, and I/I didn’t mean to hurt you [this recalling John Lennon saying the same on “Jealous Guy”]/I’ve been a maniac/But now I want you back.”

    With this narrative established within the first minute of the song, it instantly recalls one of the strongest lyrical comparisons to “Reunite”: an “obscure” track from Lily Allen’s 2009 album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, called “Back to the Start” (which also features an “esoteric” musical instrument in the form of a glockenspiel). Written for Allen’s half-sister, Sarah Owen, it’s an apology for being, as Allie X, would call it, a bit of a “maniac” toward her, especially during her teenage years. As Allen would describe, “We had a rocky relationship for years and years and years and it was just getting to the point where we just couldn’t argue like teenagers anymore, so I played it to her a long time ago and it’s kinda worked, we’ve sorted a lot of things out.” Perhaps the same can and will happen for Allie X, with whoever she may have written “Reunite” for.

    And while Allie X’s track may or may not be directed at an ex-lover (though it also functions as a “catch-all” kind of an apology track, applicable to a friend or family member), it bears the same general sense of regret over having acted “shit” toward someone you were once close to. Having pushed them away with your deliberately volatile behavior. Something that comes across in earnest via Allie X’s chorus, “And I’m not mad anymore/In fact now I’m doing fine/I’ve gotten wiser with age/Will you let me back into your life?/I know, it wasn’t your fault/And though it might have been mine/We were just doing our best/Maybe you and me can reunite.”

    The hopeful suggestion behind that “maybe” correlates to Allen’s own proposition in her chorus for “Back to the Start,” “I don’t know why I felt the need to keep it up for oh so long/It’s all my fault, I’m sorry, you did absolutely nothing wrong/I don’t know why I felt the need to drag it out for all these years/All the pain I’ve caused you, the constant flowing of your tears/Believe me when I say that I cannot apologize enough/When all you ever wanted from me was a token of my love/And if it’s not too late, could you please find it deep within your heart/To try and go back, go back to the start?”

    Allie X seems to feel a similar way, adding to her spiel/plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, “So many years/I wasted my time/Disconnecting from the simple truth, ooh/I separated myself, body and mind/I should have listened/Should have listened/I should have listened to you.”

    And so it is that within each of these apologies that each respective chanteuse admits not only to their own wrongdoing, but also to the fact that they were actually largely responsible for the rift in question—no small feat when it comes to delivering a meaningful kind of “sorry.” One that even Nancy Downs in The Craft might have trouble (Fairuza) balking at. In Allen’s case, she goes so far as get slightly meta with the assurance, “This is not just a song, I intend to put these words into action/I hope that it sums up the way that I feel to your satisfaction.”

    In the visualizer for “Reunite,” the allure of such a heartfelt apology is further conveyed by the sudden appearance of someone else outside the glass box, dressed in similar “Victorian attire” to Allie X. Someone who was clearly moved enough to materialize out of nowhere and listen to X’s sincere entreaty. However, the fact that the person outside the box (played by X’s “body double,” Rosie Carney), obfuscated and, therefore, “unknowable,” is dressed to look like Allie X also infers that maybe the person she’s asking forgiveness of could even be herself. The younger version that likely didn’t treat her with as much kindness and understanding as the current one does. That there are also moments in the visualizer (which is directed by Cal McIntyre, just like “Is Anybody Out There?”) when Allie X is reflected in the glass further adds to the validity of this theory. One that suggests she would like to reunite/reconnect with a past and inner self that she once acted so cruelly toward.

    Whoever the song is “truly” aimed at, however, is irrelevant. For, just like Allen’s “Back to the Start,” the theme of pleading for someone you did wrong to not only forgive you, but also “reunite” with you is one that many will find resonant. In addition to possibly not getting that desired forgiveness and reignited closeness after asking for it. Because, sadly, the biblical adage, “Ask and you shall receive” is rarely true.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • On Lola Young and Amy Winehouse’s Generational Divide When It Comes to Dealing With Addiction

    While Amy Winehouse might have “glamorized” addiction (in a far less deliberate way than Lana Del Rey “glamorizing abuse”), her proverbial predecessor/the person who is now oft compared to her, Lola Young, has sought to do the opposite in her approach to songwriting about the struggle. Accordingly, her third and most recent album, I’m Only F**king Myself, is the most candid yet in terms of Young exploring her various battles with addiction. Particularly cocaine. A drug of choice that already differentiates her from Winehouse, who famously said in her signature track, “Rehab,” “I love you much/It’s not enough/You love blow and I love puff.” In effect, Winehouse says what Lana Del Rey later would with the “Born to Die” lyrics, “Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough/I don’t know why.”

    Young has slightly less “romantic” thoughts on the matter of l’amour (and drugs) throughout I’m Only F**king Myself, taking a more Lily Allen approach when speaking about her ex-boyfriend(s). For example, “SAD SOB STORY! :),” on which she sings, “But I don’t stalk your Instagram ‘cause I don’t care to know, mate/Who you’ve been sleeping with is no longer my business/And, damn, it feels good, it feels great/I moved on, but I just wanted to say/Best of luck to ya, and I hope you’re happy someday/But keep your sad sob story, ‘cause I won’t read it anyway.” Winehouse, too, had plenty of her own severe “over it” thoughts on exes. Indeed, she could be far more savage than Young—even to a bloke she was still dating. As is the case on 2003’s “Stronger Than Me,” the lead single from Winehouse’s debut, Frank, during which she ribs her then boyfriend, Chris Taylor, “Don’t you know you supposed to be the man?/Not pale in comparison to who you think I am/You always wanna talk it through, I don’t care/I always have to comfort you when I’m there/But that’s what I need you to do, stroke my hair/‘Cause I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy/Feel like a lady and you my ladyboy.”

    Her dissatisfaction with most men only added to the proverbial void inside of her—the very one that prompted her to turn to drugs/have such an “addict’s personality.” Even becoming addicted to people. Most notably, Blake Fielder-Civil. The one who led her even further down a path of drug-addled darkness. This being yet another thing that separates Young from Winehouse: she’s not having her biggest moment yet in the spotlight while still dating someone toxic. A clinger/leech who only becomes more so at the slightest whiff of fame and fortune. Furthermore, in direct contrast to Young, Winehouse patently refused to go to rehab as her fame level soared. Even though going through some kind of “program” at that time might very well have caused her life trajectory to go in a totally different direction. That is to say, she might still be alive today if some early preventative measures had been taken. The same way that Young took them just as “Messy” was blowing her up on the charts in late 2024. While some “pop stars” might have jumped into high-gear promotion mode, this was the precise moment that Young checked in at a facility for her cocaine addiction. One that had been plaguing her for what she deemed “a long time.”

    On the plus side, as she noted to The Guardian, “…it teaches you a lot, being addicted to substances. It makes you more empathetic about other people that have gone through that. It’s just a constant journey.” Alas, Winehouse’s own constant journey came to an abrupt end on July 23, 2011, when she once again turned to alcohol as a substitute for the Class A and B drugs she had been dependent on in the mid-2000s. By 2008, however, when she truly was forced into rehab, Winehouse began to “turn a corner.” At least, in a sense. But just because she kicked the “harder stuff” didn’t mean she wouldn’t still turn to alcohol more than merely “now and again.” Even though she mentioned in a 2010 interview with Glamour UK, “I literally woke up one day and was like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’” (and yes, that is very much a Rihanna lyric).

    Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. A classic binger, Winehouse’s method was to have periods of sobriety followed by getting soused. This being what eventually led to her fatal alcohol poisoning. And, in large part, her inability to seek out the level of help she needed can be chalked up not only to her upbringing, but to her generation. For while millennials might be among the first ilk to truly push back on the general harshness of various “baby boomer philosophies,” many—especially of Winehouse’s “elder millennial” status—were still indoctrinated with the narrow-minded views imparted to them about “how to deal with things.” Especially mental health-related issues. In Winehouse’s case, it wasn’t only a matter of being from a generation that was taught to shove feelings down and/or numb them with substances. She also grew up with parents that largely ignored some of her glaring neuroses early on. Particularly with regard to bulimia. And if they did ignore her issues, it was mostly a result of their own generation’s teachings, instructed never to look too deeply below the surface of things. To just “go along to get along.” Particularly as a woman.

    But Lola Young, as a quintessential Gen Zer (born in 2001 à la Billie Eilish), has an altogether different approach to not only acknowledging her issues in the first place, but also taking them on in a constructive manner. And the number one way that her generation has done so is by seeking the necessary form of medical assistance (yes, usually that means therapy) in order to tackle their demons head-on. Winehouse was never able to fully do that, treating her demons of drugs and alcohol not as something that needed to be tamed, but as the cure itself. Worse still, she did glamorize the rush, the thrill of getting wasted all the time. Of being, as Young would say, messy. Her defiance audible in the chorus of “Rehab” as she declares, “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said, ‘No, no, no.’” The final “no” being particularly emphasized in her vocals.

    In effect, Winehouse would never be the sort of woman to say something like, “I’m a dumb little addict so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake,” as Young does on “Not Like That Anymore.” Instead, she would bill her drinking and drugging lifestyle as the chic explanation for why “you know I’m no good.” Shrugging it off as though it’s her doomed fate. In this regard, too, Young can at least address her awareness of wanting to responsibility-shift and “blame it on the gods,” as it were. This being the line she wields in the first verse of “Spiders,” the one that goes, “Can you take, take it off my hands?/To make me feel like I had something planned/And blame, blame it on the gods/So we don’t feel like we did something wrong.”

    Winehouse’s songwriting, in sharp contrast (though not in terms of how autobiographical it is), is all about the simultaneous acceptance and guilt of being “born bad” (or, as Del Rey says on “Kinda Outta Luck,” “I was born bad, but then I met you/You made me nice for a while/But my dark side’s true”). This shines through on songs like “What Is It About Men,” “You Know I’m No Good,” “Love Is A Losing Game” and “Addicted.” As far as she’s concerned, the die is cast vis-à-vis the outcome of her life. Whether related to matters of romance, family or otherwise. So why not just knock another bottle back and take things as they unavoidably come? There’s no stopping any of it anyway.

    And yet, Gen Z does have this same sort of fatalistic worldview as a result to the very “No Future” vibes that have been further compounded by the inevitability of environmental collapse and/or an AI takeover of the world—whichever comes first. The thing is, they just don’t drink and drug about it as casually and endlessly as millennials like Winehouse. And if they do, they’re sure to take a page from Young’s book (digital though it may be) and seek help before they go down the same (back to) black hole that Winehouse did.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lola Young Continues to Prove Herself to Be the Musical Lovechild of Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen on I’m Only F**king Myself

    In 2016, Lola Young played one of her earliest live gigs at a pub called The Bedford in London. She was sixteen at the time, and had no idea that, while she was singing at that very moment, Nick Shymansky would walk in. As in, the man who became Amy Winehouse’s first manager, shepherding her along for the majority (of the most successful parts) of her career. Young’s comparisons to Winehouse (in addition to Lily Allen [before she was Lily Dabblin’]—for it can be said she’s both British chanteuses rolled into one), both vocally and “emotional rawness”-wise have only added to the uncanniness of Shymansky managing her, and yet, there’s no doubt that one of the reasons he was drawn to her in the first place—having previously insisted he was done with managing—was because he had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t Winehouse herself. At least from an auditory perspective (though she is currently rocking a similar “skunk blonde streaks” look as Winehouse did at one point).

    As for his first impression of Young, he told Anthony Mason of CBS Mornings, “I was completely seduced by Lola’s talent and character.” Enough to take her on as the client that brought him out of retirement. Young, likewise, was insistent that out of all the managers she had met with, Shymansky was the only one she liked, the only one she felt could understand her and her vision. To add to the full-circleness of their partnership, he began managing her when she was sixteen, the same age Winehouse was when Shymansky first entered her life (then nineteen himself—a teenager managing a teenager). Unlike Winehouse, however, it seems that it’s her third album, I’m Only F**king Myself, that’s going to serve as her true international breakthrough (though “Messy,” from 2024’s This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, was the launching pad with “Rehab”-level clout).

    And yes, with three albums already under her belt at just twenty-four, her musical output already outweighs Winehouse’s when she was the same age (Back to Black, her second and final studio album, arrived the same year that Winehouse turned twenty-three). Indeed, perhaps learning from Winehouse’s mistakes, a key theme throughout I’m Only F**king Myself is her recent lifestyle amendment: going sober.

    Which is why choosing to open with an interlude called “how long will it take to walk a mile?” has more than a slight touch of double meaning cachet. Because, often, the struggle to get sober can feel like an endless marathon—even if it’s “only” a mile in other people’s (read: non-addicts) minds. But it isn’t Young who speaks the interlude that kicks off the record; instead, she pulls a bit of an Ariana Grande by employing one of the recorded messages of her friends. In this case, artist Mandisa Apena, who sweetly chirps, “But I’m actually really grateful for life. I’m grateful for you and grateful that I’m here and I’m makin’ art. And I’m grateful that, you know, uh, that there are cows. I’m grateful that the grass is still green here. And that the air is still really clean. And all my friends and family are safe and well. I’m really, really grateful, I’m grateful for you, Lola. So, yeah, this is a bit of blabber but give me a message. How long will it take to walk a mile? Like what, forty-five minutes? I’m gonna walk a mile. Okay, I love you, talk to you soon, bye.”

    From there, Young takes us into the more jarring sound of “F**K EVERYONE,” which she described to Apple Music as a “kind of punky, early-2000s, but heavily alternative with distorted, crunchy guitars.” This sound, produced by Solomonophonic and Manuka, perfectly complements the edge of Young waxing on about her self-destructive need to “fuck guys who don’t like me and don’t mind” and “fuck girls who don’t love me, they don’t mind.” This declaration speaking to her recent “coming out as bisexual” moment (which, in contrast to Billie Eilish, she at least got to do on her own terms, even if only via a cheeky TikTok comment). As for the title of the song, it, too, is ripe with a double meaning (just as the opening interlude and the title of the album itself). And while she might be boning everyone to fuck the pain away, she is also saying “fuck everyone” by refusing to engage beyond a (very) surface level in relationships.

    Singing, “I’ve been right down in the gutter, blood on my knees/And I don’t have a lover, and I don’t need one/I’vе been fucking like no other and I don’t cry,” there’s an obvious tinge of self-preservation to the practice. As though Young is doing this whole nympho bit to “protect her heart,” if you will (or, as she phrased it to The Guardian, “Sex was my way of masking pain and aggression”). Which is also very much in the Lily Allen wheelhouse (hear also: “Everything to Feel Something”). And yes, even in Winehouse’s, as evidenced by her self-admonishment, “I should just be my own best friend/Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.”

    Though this façade is obviously a form of armor, Young reemphasizes her sexual prowess on the Afrobeat-infused “One Thing,” which marked the first single from this album. Subverting the usual adage about how “men only want one thing,” Young not only willingly offers that one thing, but also suggests that she’s the one who only wants that that one thing from a man (“If a man can say he’s only here for one thing, so can I”), confidently declaring, “Break your bed and then the sofa/I wanna pull you closer/Everybody wants to know ya/But me, I only want one thing/I don’t even want your number/Don’t care if you got another/‘Cause tonight, I’m your only lover/And I’ma give you that one thing/I’ma give you that one thing.” Whether or not she’s drunk and high off her tits while making this offer is left to the listener’s discretion. Which brings the listener to the subject of the next track (and third single), “d£aler.” Speaking on her desire to “get away, far from here/Pack my bags, my drugs and disappear,” Young suggests that the only way to really put a stop to her addiction (specifically, cocaine) is to be cut off at the source: her dealer (as though she couldn’t find one in another town).

    So it is that she adds, “Tell you, ‘No,’ make it clear/I’m not comin’ back for fifteen years/I wanna write a note/Leave it with my next door neighbor/Who don’t give a shit/I wanna get away, far from here/Pack my bags and tell my dealer I’ll miss him.” Though, naturally, what she’ll really miss are the drugs he provides. The levity, sound-wise, of the track is in contrast to the fact that, as Young put it, “It’s an uplifting song, but it’s got a sad message. It’s definitely one that goes a bit deeper for me.” The same goes for “Spiders,” the subsequent song (and most recent single)—except there is no “uplifting” note to it. Neither musically, nor lyrically. And as Young grapples with some of her biggest fears, she belts out an admission that a woman isn’t supposed to say out loud anymore, namely, “Make me feel like I’m not incomplete for once/‘Cause I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/And you’re not a man if you don’t have me.”

    This confession to the type of codependency in relationships—particularly for women—that can so easily arise, even to this day, is part of Young’s fear on multiple levels. On the one hand, it speaks to her fear of being vulnerable with another person; on the other, it’s about facing that fear (the “spiders,” so to speak) head-on (hence, the literalism of the accompanying video). In Young’s words, “[The song] encompasses all the pain and fear I have ever felt towards myself, and it’s about wanting someone to love me beyond all of that. Sometimes you want to kill what you’re most scared of in life, but when you actually face up to it, it’s really not as scary as you thought it would be.”

    And neither is creating a “Penny Out of Nothing,” yet another visceral, 90s alt rock-esque type of song (as is “Spiders”)—with a dash of Adele panache on “Set Fire to the Rain” (which makes sense, since Adele [along with Winehouse], like Young, also went to the BRIT School). Though Young insists the track is “a different vibe for me,” it has the same hard edge as some of the previous songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, including “F**K EVERYONE” and “Spiders.” Though she’s not wrong in classifying the chords as “kind of bossa nova, but a bit psychedelic.” Even so, what stands out the most about the track is Young’s casually passionate delivery of the chorus, “So I’ll create a penny outta nothing/Take the bullet out a gun/I’ll make a fool out of a man/I’ll make a man fall out of love/Make an atheist forgive, get on his knees and pray to God/I’ll make him think I’m fine when I’m not.” In short, she’ll spin gold out of straw. Even though, at first, that level of “confidence” isn’t exactly apparent in the opening verse, “Pains under my skin/So where do I begin?/There’s so much I wanna give/But life’s a game and I just can’t win.” Even though, obviously, she’s won big time. This due to, as she says, being able to “create a penny outta nothing.”

    As for the line about making someone think she’s fine when she’s not, well, it ties in nicely to the bridge that repeats, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna cry” (neither does Mariah). But that really is true on the following song, “Walk All Over You,” which once again channels Young’s inner Lily Allen as she takes the piss out of some shithead guy. Indeed, it has shades of Allen’s “Not Big” and “Shame For You” as Young chastises, “I’m quite amazed you think I’m/Just gonna pick your shit up, love you like a dog/When you can’t fix up, go get a life and get a job [how very Billie Eilish on “Lost Cause”]/And do you know the difference between me and you?/Well, you loved me for your ego, I loved you for you/So don’t say you don’t understand/Just ‘cause you’re a man don’t mean you can sit there/And trеat me like shit on your shoes/‘Causе do me wrong, I’ll put ‘em on and then I’ll walk all over you.”

    To that point, of all the “official videos” (not “official visualizers,” mind you—even though that’s exactly the vibe they’re serving) that Young released to accompany the songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, the one for “Walk All Over You” is the most literal. This in terms of Young hovering over the blow-up doll created in her image (you know, the one that’s also featured on the cover)—the POV shot making it look as though she could step on the viewer as much as she could the “doll”—while she warns, “I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you/I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you.”

    Elsewhere in the song, she proves Sabrina Carpenter right on “Tears” by speaking to how “wet” it could make a woman to, as Carpenter says, “just do the dishes, I’ll give you what you, what you want/A little communication, yes, that’s my ideal foreplay/Assemble a chair from IKEA, I’m like, ‘Uh.’” Young has similar feelings beneath her criticism, “You’ve told me plenty of times that I’m needy, and I’m greedy, and I’m unreasonable/So you can stop now and you can clean up the kitchen.” Though, of course, the bloke in question is likely thinking, “As if” to such a suggestion. Hence, Young’s “Post Sex Clarity” (a continuation of “Lily Allen-ness” that even Allen herself couldn’t ignore, posting an image of Young’s album artwork soundtracked to this particular song). That title being another troll of a common sex-related phrase—“post-nut clarity”—by flipping the script on it (much like what she did in the lyrics to “One Thing”). Or, as Young captioned a post about the song, “There is freedom and liberation in flipping the male-centric phrase post-nut clarity.” So it would seem, with Young bringing her blow-up doll into the “official video” for this as well, cradling, er, herself in her arms as she soothes, “When I’m lyin’ in bed, got post-sex clarity/I still love you, and I don’t know why/‘Cause every other man didn’t mеan a goddamn to me/When I finish, it’s not the еnd of you and I.” In effect, Young is, rather than experiencing sex in the “male way” by treating it essentially like a “grooming exercise” (designed for “relief”), presenting it as the very thing that reminds her why she’s so “attached” (because, as Billie Eilish would point out, it’s the oxytocin).

    As “Post Sex Clarity” transitions out in a very “Blur circa 13” kind of way, the song abruptly cuts off before the listener is transported to the dreamier, gentler-sounding “SAD SOB STORY! :).” Of course, Young is anything but gentle as she goads her ex, “And I’m so glad we’re over/No more trying, then fighting, then fighting again/And you can keep the damn sofa/‘Cause I never liked the orange, but you hated the red.” Once again appearing with her blow-up doll in the “official video,” she joins it in a white bed while directing her admonishments at it. Critiques that amount to a lyrical and thematic tincture of Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” and Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me.” Both songs evident in the chorus, “Guess I had to let you go to know that I didn’t need you in the first place/Life’s about learning and it can show you that the hard way/But I don’t stalk your Instagram ‘cause I don’t care to know, mate/Who you’ve been sleeping with is no longer my business/And, damn, it feels good, it feels great, I’ve moved on but I just wanted to say/Best of luck to ya and I hope you’re happy someday/But keep your sad sob story ‘cause I won’t read it anyway.” Ah, if only Amy Winehouse had come to this realization about Blake Fielder-Civil before it was too late.

    Instead, Winehouse chose to ignore the many red flags (generally via copious amounts of drugs, alcohol especially). Something Young also wants to do on the avoidant person’s anthem, “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—which amounts to her version of “Rehab.” This achieved through the themes addressed and lyrical turns of phrase used (though certainly not through the rock-à-la-Soundgarden-oriented sound). As for the first pair of lines, however, it’s all Lily Allen on the mic as Young sets the stage, “I play with fire, kinda like the way I feel when it burns/If I’m bein’ honest, I’ll take anything as long as it hurts.” This once again echoes Allen’s similarly alluded to “pursuits” on No Shame’s “Everything to Feel Something” when she sings, “I’ve tried everything/Everything/Everything/To feel something/But nothing.” However, Winehouse reemerges in the “scene setting” of the next “couplet,” “I need a doctor, got a sickness, and it’s just getting worse/I said, ‘I think I’m dying’ he said, ‘Darling, you’ve been dying since birth.’” This manner of describing a back and forth (with a doctor no less) dialogue also recalls Winehouse on “Rehab” when she sings, “The man said, ‘Why you think you here?’/I said, ‘I got no idea’/I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby/So I always keep a bottle near/He said, ‘I just think you’re depressed’/This me: ‘Yeah, baby, and the rest.’”

    In the accompanying “official video” for “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(,” Young is once again shown in a car with her blow-up doll the way she is in the “d£aler” visualizer. Only this time, she’s the one in the driver’s seat, no longer in the back while she lets the blow-up doll “drive.” This perhaps being a slight metaphor for gradually taking charge of her life.

    Then again, the driving visual is more than likely about Young’s desire to simply run away from her problems, playing into the chorus, “Can we ignore it, baby, even for just one day?/Don’t wanna talk about it, I just put on my face [a very drag queen-meets-twentieth century woman thing to say]/And if you love me like you say, you’ll let me escape.” Of course, that’s the “trick” of the proverbial test she’s giving: seeing if the person who says they love her actually won’t “let” her run away. Even though there’s always that element, in each of these songs, of her actually talking to herself (this notion underscored by Young screaming at the blow-up doll with her face on it in many of the “official videos”).

    Alas, Young’s faith in being “vulnerable” has only been further frayed by being “shut down in therapy, he said there’s people who need real help (I need you to need me, darling)/What a waste of my fucking money, I’ll just do it myself.” Here, too, the Allen influence shines through, with shades of “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she resignedly chirps, “I wanna get a flat, I know I can’t afford it/It’s just the bureaucrats who won’t give me a mortgage/It’s very funny ‘cause I got your fucking money/And I’m never gonna get it just ‘cause of my bad credit/Oh well, I guess I mustn’t grumble/I suppose it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

    Allen stylings win out over Winehouse ones on “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” as well, with the title alone suggesting the influence of the former. In addition to once again alluding to the fact that maybe Young has just been talking to herself all along (beneath the guise of mainly ribbing an ex). For it’s easy to believe that all of her negative internal self-talk could lead her to the question, “Why do I feel better when I hurt you?/Always try to put you in the worst mood” (not unlike JADE singing to herself, “You’re just a glitch/Get out of my head, get out of my fuckin’ skin/You’re telling me lies, telling me how it is/Sick of you talking to me like I’m your bitch/When I’m that bitch” on “Glitch” from That’s Showbiz Baby).

     The themes of “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—a.k.a. the intense desire to ignore glaring issues and realities—also endure in “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” Particularly when Young declares that talking about a problem at hand is so much less pleasant/helpful than just ignoring it. So it is that she reminds of the value of ignoring, “There’s no other way around it/‘Cause I know, when we talk about it/It’s always the worst that we could do/Real love, no, we haven’t found it/Let’s not even talk about it/That’s nearly the worst thing we could do.” In the “official video” for it, Young appears in yet another different “scenario” with her blow-up doll, actually blowing it up from its deflated state (just as she does in the teaser for the album) while wearing a shirt that reads, “I Just Freaking Love Lows.” Because, if nothing else, at least they’re inspiring—allow for something akin to an “emotional breakthrough.” Sort of like the one Charli XCX has on Crash’s (the deluxe edition) “Sorry If I Hurt You” as she comes to terms with her own toxic/abusive behavior by announcing, “I’m sorry if I hurt you/I only make it worse.” As for Young, the lone person she might say that to on this record is herself. Even if only in a roundabout manner that hints at a path toward self-forgiveness, therefore self-love.

    This much is apparent on “Not Like That Anymore” offering the first true taste of the album’s motif (along with establishing what most of all the other “official videos” would look like), which is, in its way, all about “turning a corner” and re-setting herself on a less self-destructive path (something that many wish Winehouse had done before it was too late). Ergo, Young’s “seeing the silver lining” chorus, “And now I’m locked out, got nowhere to go/And my phone got stolen, and my balance is low/But if I look on the bright side/At least I’m not fucking myself anymore, not anymore.” This after referencing her resolve to get sober in the first verse, “I’m a dumb little addict, so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake/I guess life sucks dick, but especially if you sniff it all away.” Such an attempt hardly being the mark of someone who would shruggingly demand, “who f**king cares?” This being the title of the penultimate track on the standard edition of the album (though an “exclusive version” of it concludes with “Blisters,” a track that finds Young bemoaning, “I’ve got the whole world right in my hands/So why does it slip through my fingers?/I just don’t understand why life keeps giving me blisters even in the best pair of shoes that I have”).  

    As the most musically “stripped down” track of I’m Only F**king Myself, it’s fitting that Young should be at her most lyrically frank (which really says something) on “who f**king cares?” Her candor manifest in such lyrics as, “Nowadays, it’s hard to feel alive/When the only way I want to live is to try and slowly die.” What’s more, in addition to having previously channeled lyrical elements of Billie Eilish and Selena Gomez, Young also dips into Olivia Rodrigo territory when she remarks, “In the meantime, I’ll cry to Radiohead, hoping my ex still cares, but/That’s unlikely, he’s probably having great sex/With that girl I knew was an idiot, the one with the bleach blonde hair.” It’s that “coup de grâce” mention of the girl’s blonde hair that especially exudes Olivia Rodrigo on “drivers license” when she (allegedly) shades Sabrina Carpenter with the verse, “You’re probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about.”

    But, as usual, it’s always Winehouse who emerges as the “center of the mood board,” with Young once more singing in the “storytelling through dialogue” style of Winehouse when she adds, “And my doctor said, ‘You’ll get sick again, you can’t mix these meds with white lines.’” Yet another allusion to her hard-to-shake coke habit. At the same time, Allen’s influence continues to vie for attention in terms of Young’s frequent dissection of her insecurities as they relate to her body. Ergo, kicking the track off with, “Nowadays, I don’t really go outside/I don’t even like the way I look, let alone the way I feel behind.” This sentiment recalls Allen’s own body (and emotional) insecurities on “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she laments, “I wanna be able to eat spaghetti Bolognese/And not feel bad about it for days and days and days/In the magazines, they talk about weight loss/If I buy those jeans, I can look like Kate Moss.”

    In the end, however, Young goes back to herself as her “favorite reference” (to quote Charli) with the concluding interlude, which, although spoken once again by someone else (this time, Tia Shek), recalls “Outro” on This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. In this case, Young bills it as an “interlude” rather than an outro, titling it “ur an absolute c word” in reference to Shek (providing the other “bookend” of the record, as it were) being able to so effortlessly come up with something as brilliant as, “To feel is to be open/And not everyone is broken/But I know that the ones that I chose/Sit here with their hearts stolen/To feel is to be present, deep in adolescence/To be betrayed, losin’ trust by a certain age/And if you must you might feel a type of way/I love to feel, but I don’t wanna die/I’m lonely and I’m hurtin’ and sometimes I feel alive.” This being the first portion of Shek’s “interlude.”

    A “positive affirmation” of the kind of self-love motif Young was speaking on during “Outro” when she said, “This album is me discovering and trying to understand/Through my one and only true love that is music/That I can too be my one and only true love/That I can learn to heal alone/I can dance in the mirror and feel seen without being watched by someone/Especially not no ugly man or woman/That I can cry and feel every tear without needing a shoulder/And I haven’t got there yet but I will/And when I do this album will be for me.”

    As it stands, I’m Only F**king Myself is very much not only an album that’s instantly “for” Young, but also for anyone else who has struggled with that seemingly cornball concept of self-love and, as a result, had it affect the relationships they found themselves in or the addictions they ended up falling down the rabbit hole of. So it is that Young once again conveys and holds tight to this message she had already imparted by the conclusion of This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. But, of course, it’s a message worth reiterating. Besides, it’s not like Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen are really “around” to do it anymore.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lily Dabblin’: On Allen’s Departure from Miss Me?

    Ever since Lily Allen “unofficially” stopped making music on a consistent basis in 2014, with the release of her third album, Sheezus (a title that now forever associates her with the ilk that once thought Kanye was god), she’s most definitely become what can be described as a dabbler. Not to say that Allen had yet fully indicated a complete “step back” from music at that time. However, the fact that it took her another four years to release the next album, 2018’s No Shame, began to infer a certain “lapse.” Or lack of interest. Not just in music, but in the industry surrounding it, especially as Allen began to realize how crushingly lonely it could be (particularly while on tour).

    As for the name of that album she now released seven years ago, No Shame, it appears to be a title that has taken on new meaning in the years to follow, in terms of indicating that, indeed, Allen has had no shame when it comes to doing whatever she wants. Career pursuit-wise. And the one thing she seemed not to want to do anymore was music. Not just because, as she’s mentioned on Miss Me?, she feels that No Shame didn’t get the kind of attention and success it deserved when it was released (though it did get nominated for a Mercury Prize). But also because of her conscious decision to recoil from the rigors of pop star life (particularly touring) for the sake of raising her two daughters, Ethel and Marnie. The children from her first marriage to Sam Cooper, a “normal” (a.k.a. a builder and decorator) who served as the primary inspiration for Allen’s No Shame. In addition to serving as “material” in her autobiography, My Thoughts Exactly, which would come out later that year. To be sure, 2018 was the last truly “big” year for Allen in terms of “output” on the tangible release front.

    Though, when it came to participating in theater and other acting endeavors (e.g., a short-lived TV series called Dreamland), Allen became rather prolific starting in 2021, when she took on her first West End play, 2:22: A Ghost Story. Then would come her mostly panned performance in a revival of Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play, The Pillowman, followed by this year’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, renamed to just Hedda and once again directed by Matthew Dunster (who also directed Allen in The Pillowman). Going even more “esoteric,” the play was put on for an extremely limited run in Bath—so yes, it was a peak example of Allen aiming to attract only the nichest of the niche in her already niche audience. Which is becoming even more so by all this dabbling (complete with her OnlyFans feet account).

    In order to “focus” on getting ready for Hedda (in other words, memorizing her lines), Allen took what can best be categorized as her umpteenth break from Miss Me?, the podcast she had started with her long-time friend, Miquita Oliver, in early 2024. In point of fact, it’s usually been Oliver that’s carried the show on her back every time Allen decided she needed to dip out. Something that didn’t only happen when she went through a bad breakup/divorce with David Harbour (a marriage itself that was a bit of a “dabble” for her), but also when she felt obliged to tap out for various trips. All the while, the only times Oliver “checked out” was when she had surgery for her fibroids and a couple of times for some trips of her own. This lopsidedness in devotion throughout Miss Me? seemed to signal some inevitable form of doom (at least for Oliver). And, in truth, it’s a wonder Allen endured as long as she did (at a whopping year and a half) without “bowing out” sooner. After all, despite the general success of the podcast, Allen faced a backlash after many of the episodes, whether it was her take on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, her (lack of) will to keep a misbehaving rescue puppy or, more recently, her comments on not being able to recall how many abortions she’s had. Save for the puppy backlash, most of her podcast regaling was taken out of context and overblown. As is the way of the media (especially the British media).

    But, of course, nothing Oliver said ever made headlines. A further testament to their discrepancy in fame levels. Which is also why something about Allen’s seemingly abrupt decision to bounce feels all the more reckless in terms of leaving Oliver in the lurch as she scrambles to take the helm of the show herself. Not that she hasn’t been doing this for the most part already, having invited such guests as Jordan Stephens and Zawe Ashton on during Allen’s noticeably numerous absences. However, the BBC must have some faith in her (perhaps after monitoring the ratings she pulled in after Allen’s “tap outs”) to even consider letting her continue to do Miss Me? when the entire show was founded on the concept of them, specifically, “chatting shit.” In effect, the entire premise is centered on their friendship/rapport.

    And, yes, because they’re such good friends, Oliver was nothing but supportive when Allen publicly made the announcement on the September 11th (how fitting) episode, “Exodus.” The first show in many weeks since the two had been reunited, between Allen’s Hedda gig and Oliver going on a little vacay (no doubt, in part, to process losing her partner in crime on the podcast). And so, to come at the audience with that for their reunion was a bit…much.

    As for Allen’s explanation, it was sort of the usual. In a nutshell/to paraphrase: “I just need time to focus on other things.” Further adding/emphasizing that the podcast actually is quite a lot of work. Chiefly, the time and effort to record and edit it, not to mention its frequency (twice a week)—no radio pun intended. As for the “other things” she might be referring to, naturally, the remaining devotees of Allen’s music career were quick to speculate that her newfound commitment to finishing an album (one she’s talked about [on the podcast] being in the vague process of making) has at last taken top priority after so many years of dabbling in everything else. Having her hands in a lot of different pies (and not just the ones she’s been making at home), as it were.

    While this may or may not be the case, there are those who are clearly gunning for a “breakup album” (that at last confirms what really went down with Harbour). Though they’ll certainly take whatever they can get from Allen at this point. Even an Alright, Still re-release/anniversary tour in ‘26 (this, too, being something Oliver has encouraged her to do on Miss Me?). Just as long as she’s done dabbling in other things for a while (including her input into the creation of a line of vibrators). Because, honestly, what except going back to music, could be worth casually jettisoning a podcast with your (alleged) best friend?

    As for the fact that both Allen and Oliver are Tauruses, well, let’s just say that only one of them fits the conventional stereotype about how consistent and reliable that sign is supposed to be.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • How The Hell Is Emily Going To Rome?

    How The Hell Is Emily Going To Rome?

    It’s been enough time since Part 2 of Emily in Paris Season 4 has graced our televisions and screens…so if you’re reading this, you should be caught up by now. If not, there are spoilers ahead. And you probably already caught on from the title. Sorry.

    Four seasons in, and it’s Christmas in Paris, finally…a harrowing reminder that this arduous production starring Lily Collins has stretched out every possible moment and only covered
    four months in Emily-time.

    But actually, this was
    Emily in Paris Season 4, Part 2 jumping forward in time…so we’ve only technically covered like two months so far. From fall to Christmas, everyone’s lives seem to change drastically. And since there are a million different plots going on all at once, it seems like no one has it together.

    Unfortunately, I tuned into
    Netflix again. I know you all must hate this by now, I’m like a broken record. But, like any tragic accident, you can’t look away.

    Emily in Paris Season 4 Part 2 Recap

    If you recall from Part 1, Emily ends her relationship with chef (and client) Gabriel on a mountaintop because she’ll never come first over Camille. Camille has a secret of her own of course, because she’s
    not pregnant with Gabriel’s baby.

    So, as we head into the second part of the season, I’m already tense. Emily is now (A) single and (B) not going to do well at her job for a multitude of reasons…
    again. Meanwhile, her boss Sylvie and boytoy, Laurent, have shacked up in Sylvie’s lavish apartment and all seems to be going well…

    That is, until Laurent’s daughter, Geneviève , is arriving from the States to pursue a career in fashion…and Sylvie offers to get her a job with her competitor (who says no), so Sylvie ultimately decides to have her intern at her own company alongside painfully American Emily.

    By working together, Sylvie learns that Laurent
    may be seeing other people (cough-cough, his ex wife). So, in total French fashion, she starts seeing someone else on the side, too. But this isn’t Sylvie in Paris, back to Emily Dearest.

    We see Emily struggle to get over Gabriel. One of their clients even proposes a baby rattle perfume bottle, which she gives to Camille as a peace offering. However, Camille then dishes
    finally that she’s not actually knocked up and she thought she loved the idea of the life she and Gabriel could have had.

    So, obviously Emily feels dumb, and what would be the correct thing to do here? Go to Rome. Exactly.

    Meanwhile, Laurent’s daughter Geneviève starts doing everything that Emily is unable to: get through to Gabriel, be there for him in general, and yes, she even pulls a few moves on him. He gets his Michelin star, Laurent’s daughter tries to plant a smooch on him, and he realizes he misses Emily.

    But Emily’s in Rome!! Yapping it up with a new rich guy and making someone else fall in love with her somehow. After returning from a whirlwind romance with some guy whose name is currently escaping me, and honestly, does it even matter?…the team sits down for a meeting.

    Sylvie reveals that they will have to spearhead a permanent Rome office…and she wants it to be
    Emily who goes.

    Yes,
    EMILY the American who actually is the least qualified of them all. Is going to lead their Rome team. And now she gets this hot new rich guy, too.

    How Can Emily Go To Rome?

    @elisabettaab Did you catch this Emily in Paris Season 4 finale moment? Thanks to Lily Collins. #emilyinparis #netflix #lilycollins #paris #rome #tv #fyp ♬ original sound – Elisabetta B

    As we’ve noted, it’s only been four short months in Paris for Emily the Midwesterner. Now, after barely learning the language and culture,
    somehow she’s relocating to a totally different European country. My suspension of disbelief is utterly broken.

    The clear take away from most of Part 2 is that Emily is not prepared to lead anyone. If I made this many rash decisions that crazily, whackily,
    luckily work out, I’d be fired. Not only does Emily quickly think she runs the place, but now…she actually does.

    And, of course, this leaves Gabriel in the dust. Which honestly doesn’t bother me whatsoever. I feel absolutely nothing towards him. It’s all about Alfie for me.

    Anywho, Emily will indeed trek to Rome for the next season of
    Emily in Paris…which has indeed already been confirmed. To my delight (or horror?) we get to see yet another man fall in love with Emily in a foreign country known for its art, culture, cuisine, and fashion. Awesome.

    Jai Phillips

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  • A Timeline of Lily Allen and the Puppy Backlash

    A Timeline of Lily Allen and the Puppy Backlash

    It all began, as most of Lily Allen’s controversies of late, with a glib comment on a podcast. More specifically, Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver’s podcast, Miss Me? And while it’s true that Allen has often claimed the defense of “these quotes were taken out of context” (like her assessment of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album—for which, to be fair, she did have the cojones to critique rather than blindly praise), there really wasn’t much to be taken out of context with her latest snafu.

    The stage was set for the incident at the end of the podcast’s August 19th episode, “School of Lyf,” during which Allen and Oliver forewarned that the latter would be absent the following week (which was only just, considering Allen was absent for two episodes’ worth of the show, getting her husband, David Harbour, to sub in for her while she jetted off to British Columbia, one of many locales visited during her summer break). And then, as though to seal Allen’s fate of doom, Oliver said at the end of the episode, “Good luck next week, you’ll be great.” Foreshadowing indeed. For in the episode that followed (August 22nd’s “Duck, Duck, Pigeon”), Allen managed to do the exact opposite, biffing the whole show in Oliver’s absence by bringing up that she and “the girls” (her two children, Marnie and Ethel) were thinking of getting a new puppy and naming it Jude Bellingham. Choosing a footballer’s name for a puppy was how Allen brought up the subject in the first place, telling the guest co-host, Steve Jones (a former fellow presenter of Oliver’s for T4), that she and her husband don’t know the names of any sports players. And so it was that the topic of conversation leading to the mention of a new puppy potentially being named after the one sports player whose name she does know secured her ruin.

    And yes, as she soon found out, the only thing worse (in terms of public backlash) than denouncing Beyoncé is flippantly denouncing a dog. This by mentioning that even before the thought of getting another new puppy, Allen had already tried her hand at adopting a rescue during the pandemic era. And, per her account, it ultimately failed because the dog ate her passport. Which also came up only by coincidence when Jones jokingly mentioned what a big commitment getting a dog with Harbour is, despite the two already being married. In response, Allen said, “You know what? We actually did adopt a dog together already, but then it ate my passport and so I took her back to the home.” Yes, it was said that nonchalantly, with a little chuckle at the end.

    When PETA called out Allen for that chuckle (among other issues with her handling of the dog), Allen hit back with, “People laugh when they talk about painful things all the time, it’s quite normal.” And while, sure, that’s not untrue, the way Allen delivered the anecdote was utterly icy, as though it was just another “crazy story” to tell. More “fodder” for a podcast.

    Jones, perhaps not wanting to go against his co-host’s “vibe,” answered with, “Ate your passport? That’s a hungry dog.” Of course, there was no mention of where the passports were being stored that might have made them a little too accessible to a new puppy with monster chewing predilections. In that regard, Allen also came across as entitled, as though the onus wasn’t at all on her to secure the passports in a place that would be inaccessible to a dog (e.g., a safe deposit box). Nonetheless, Allen blamed only the dog as she recounted, “[Mary] ate all three of our passports, and they had our visas in [them] and I cannot tell you how much money it cost me to get everything replaced [maybe because if she did say the amount out loud, it would sound ridiculous, as her money plus Harbour’s Marvel money equals no amount is that high] ‘cause it was in Covid, and so it was just an absolute logistical nightmare. And because my, the father of my children lives in England, I couldn’t get them back to see their dad for, like, four months, five months because this fucking dog had eaten the passports. And I just couldn’t look at her, I was like, ‘You’ve ruined my life.’”

    Everything about the way she describes it sounds not only Cruella-esque (except that, nefarious purpose aside, Cruella actually wanted dogs), but, basically, like a minorly inconvenienced rich person’s viewpoint. Worse still, a rich person who doesn’t even know how to spend her money in a way that could easily have accommodated the dog staying in her home. What’s more, for someone of affluence, who can simply pay to have their problems solved, a passport being chewed is not “life-ruining” so much as inopportune. In point of fact, saying the dog ruined her life is a peak example of hyperbole. Rich white person’s hyperbole.

    Even so, Allen perhaps sensed she ought to pad the anecdote with a better reason, adding, “She was also, like…passports weren’t the only thing she ate, she was a very badly behaved dog and I really tried very hard with her, but it just didn’t work out. And the passports was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.”

    Jones then finally steered the conversation away from Lily Allen and dog ownership by asking her what last name she uses on her passport (in other words, if she ended up taking Harbour’s last name—the answer being: no). But the damage had been done. And of all the things Allen has said, this might be her most damning. The thing that revealed her to be the very type of person she claims not to be: a privileged nepo baby with no concept of how “rich white lady” she comes across. In letting the mask “slip,” as it were, Allen invoked the wrath of dog lovers the world over, with hundreds of comments flooding into her various tweets about the backlash, including, “This kind of didn’t seem like a people laugh when they’re sad situation though. It seems like you put it out there not expecting the kickback you’d get for saying it and now you’re trying to dig yourself out of a massive crater sized hole!,” “It wasn’t about the dog’s welfare though, was it? It was you screwing up and then blaming the dog. What happens if the replacement chews stuff? Do you have another home already lined up?” and “Narcissism run rampant. Lily can’t shut her mouth. She is an awful person. She’s enjoying this, @peta. Leave her be to go hang out with Lena Dunham.”

    Because yes, PETA did put Allen on blast with their tweet, “As someone high profile with a platform, what you say matters. Laughing about this ‘f******’ dog being sent back sends a dangerous message. Every move is traumatic to a homeless dog who then can never expect this home is forever.” Allen then bit back sarcastically with, “Also thank you to @peta for adding fuel to the fire. Very responsible of you.” (It reeks of Lana Del Rey saying, “…thanks for the Karen comments tho. V helpful” when she had her own unique backlash in 2020.) Few were wont to let Allen pivot the blame for the backlash on PETA, with one user replying, “What added fuel to the fire was telling the story of returning your dog to the shelter whilst having a little giggle over it.”

    Allen also attempted to paint the headlines about her comments as a “distortion” when, in fact, all the quotes from the podcast were featured in most of the ink spilled about it. It was only when she further detailed her issues with Mary on Twitter that she might have given better insight into her difficulties beyond mere passport chewing. Part of that explanation went as follows: “…she developed pretty severe separation anxiety and would act out in all manner of ways. She couldn’t be left alone for more than 10 mins, she had 3 long walks a day 2 by us and 1 with a local dog walker and several other dogs, we worked with the shelter that we rescued her from and they referred us to a behavioral specialist and a professional trainer, it was a volunteer from the shelter who would come and dog sit her when we were away, and after many months and much deliberation everyone was in agreement that our home wasn’t the best fit for Mary.” Emphasis on the word months, as in: Mary didn’t last very long at the Allen-Harbour abode. Which does make one wonder if, had she been given a little more time, there might have been a breakthrough.

    In any case, if Allen thought the dog had “ruined her life” before this metaphorical flogging, she’s surely convinced of it now. As for the Miss Me? episodes that followed “Duck, Duck, Pigeon,” another one, “Rage Against the Washing Machine,” with Jones continuing to sub in for Oliver, aired sans Allen mentioning the rage against her. This was followed by a “best of” episode called, “The Queen of MySpace,” wherein Oliver explains of Allen’s absence, “Everyone’s had quite heady summers, including Lily and I. We’ve been all around the world and we’ve been bringing you Miss Me? from wherever we’ve been and I feel we’ve done a pretty good job. But Lily Allen has finally got to a part of Italy that is so deep and rural that there is no wi-fi.” In other words, Allen needed to retreat from the noise of her detractors post-puppygate. A luxury that, yes, a rich lady can enjoy—as much as she can enjoy effectively training and acclimating a difficult/needy rescue dog… That is, if she really wanted to.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Not Exactly Dying Over Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile”

    Not Exactly Dying Over Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile”

    In keeping with the motif of the world’s inevitable apocalypse (at the rate things are going), Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars have seen fit to release a song befitting of such a foregone conclusion. Called “Die With A Smile,” the track is a mawkish love song that finds each singer professing that, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you” (too bad the single wasn’t out when Lorene Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was released in 2012—you know, the year the world really ended). It would be sweet if it wasn’t so utterly depressing. Not just because it seems to take the world “ending” for people to fully understand what they mean to one another, but because, more and more, people seem to be surrendering to the world’s end (for humans, anyway) rather than doing anything that might combat it (like, say, ceasing to support businesses such as Shein).

    Nor does anyone appear to want to combat the “trend” of country taking hold of 2024. For, in what marks yet another instance of the music industry “going country” (as Lana Del Rey decreed earlier this year), the accompanying video, co-directed by Daniel Ramos and Bruno Mars, finds the duo attired in Western wear. While the song itself isn’t exactly country apart from its Patsy Cline-esque sentiments, the aesthetic borrows heavily from the genre, right down to stylizing the video as a “performance” on a 1960s-looking variety show. Sort of like what Lily Allen already did in 2009’s “Not Fair” video (granted, “Not Fair” had a much twangier musical sound to warrant having a country theme for its visual).

    Here, too, Gaga and Mars sing as though before a live studio audience (though there’s no audience to be seen), with Mars opening the track by painting the picture, “I, I just woke up from a dream/Where you and I had to say goodbye/And I don’t know what it all means/But since I survived, I realized/Wherever you go, that’s where I’ll follow.” That last line, of course, is a familiar one, said (in some variation or another) in everything from Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him” to The Calling’s “Wherever You Will Go.”

    As for whether or not this is “Bruno Mars’” song or “Lady Gaga’s” song (with both rumored to have new albums coming out imminently) depends on who the listener is a fan of. On the one hand, Lady Gaga gets top billing with her name put before Mars’, but, on the other, Mars sings the majority of the verses. Not only that, but he’s standing front and center with the microphone in the video, while Gaga sits off to the side on her piano, looking like Natasha Lyonne (complete with a stoic expression) with a cigarette protruding from her mouth.

    To boot (no cowboy pun intended), Gaga never gets to sing any of the verses without Mars. In some ways, though, it actually does feel more like a Gaga endeavor, not just tone-wise and in terms of Gaga constantly flip-flopping her musical styles with each new “era,” but also based on the single’s release date. For it’s on-brand that Lady G would choose to sanction a new song being put out on Madonna’s birthday, August 16th—though that might not necessarily be a good omen for her (especially as it’s Madonna’s “Satan year”). It’s almost as dick swinging as Britney Spears sporting an updated version of her Versace butterfly dress after Blake Lively wore the original version to the It Ends With Us movie premiere.

    In any case, Gaga only deigns to get up from her piano during the guitar breakdown of the song toward the three-minute mark, swaying to and fro as she parades the full extent of her very obvious wig styled into a beehive—and yes, the overall effect, cigarette and all, makes one remember why Gaga chose to dye her hair blonde in the early days of her career: so as to avoid comparisons to Amy Winehouse.

    Indeed, apart from still harboring makeup-inspired traces of Harley Quinn (being fresh off her Joker: Folie à Deux stint), Gaga majorly channels Winehouse’s (not Dolly Parton’s) look in this video (perhaps the next time another biopic is made, she can be the one to occupy the lead role—for it couldn’t be any worse than Back to Black). Unfortunately, the channeling only comes from a visual standpoint. For, although the song is all about yearning and burning for a loved one (but only in the event of an apocalyptic situation, mind you), it doesn’t convey even one iota of the same emotions expressed in any Winehouse song.

    In fact, Winehouse was unapologetic about genuinely wearing her heart on her sleeve when it came to the lyrics she wrote, famously stating, “So much music nowadays is so like, ‘You don’t know me, I don’t need you’ and all the music then [in the 60s] was kinda like, ‘I don’t care if you don’t love me. I will lie down in the road, pull my heart out and show it to you.’ You know what I mean?” Clearly, many musicians of the moment do not. This extends not just to Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, but also the often ersatz emotionalism of, say, Taylor Swift. Then there is the penchant for outright froth from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Sabrina Carpenter and, oy vey, Katy Perry (currently trying to stage a very catastrophic “comeback”). Things on the rap/hip hop front aren’t much better of late either, with both Megan Thee Stallion and Ice Spice continuing to promote “money is the anthem” messages with the highest degree of grotesqueness.

    In effect, when a musician does say something that at least sounds meaningful in a song, it’s very easy for listeners to be taken in by it. To practically swoon over it. Which is precisely what seems to be happening with “Die With A Smile.” Especially with the maudlin chorus, “If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you/If the party was over/And our time on Earth was through/I’d wanna hold you just for a while/And die with a smile/If the world was ending/I’d wanna be next to you.” While it might come across as romantic to some, to others, it simply reads like it would take a cataclysm to treat someone with the sort of effusive romanticness they deserve every day. Not just with the threat of imminent death. So no, not exactly “dying” over “Die With A Smile.”

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lily Allen and the “I Can’t Be An Artist Because I’m A Mother” Backlash

    Lily Allen and the “I Can’t Be An Artist Because I’m A Mother” Backlash

    The topic of being a mother and the sacrifices that come with it is never an easy one to discuss. But it becomes even more of a political hot potato when the additional topic of being an artist is thrown in as well. In more recent years, it’s become a conundrum more philosophically analyzed and scrutinized in literature and pop culture alike. As for the former, Sheila Heti wrote an entire book (title, what else, Motherhood) about her decision not to become a mother precisely due to her fear of compromising her art. Some women truly feel/believe that one cannot exist without sacrificing the other. Lily Allen is clearly one of them—and maybe she’s not wrong. But it still seems that Allen has a bit of resentment/guilt about giving up on a key aspect (nay, the main aspect) of her artistic life: being a musician. That much was made clear during a promo interview for The Radio Times Podcast in honor of her own upcoming podcast (yes, it’s super meta) series, Miss Me?, co-hosted with lifelong friend Miquita Oliver. 

    It was during this amuse-bouche for Miss Me? that Allen remarked, “I never really had a strategy when it comes to career. Uh, but yes—my children ruined my career.” Oliver then looks at her in disbelief over how real she’s being as they both laugh about her decidedly British candor/sense of humor. Allen doubled down by adding “I mean I love them and they complete me [Jerry Maguire much?], but in terms of, like, pop stardom, totally ruined it. Yeah.” Oliver commends Allen’s honesty with, “That is such a good answer. I’m so happy to hear someone say that. Everyone’s like, ‘No, of course not!’” Allen quickly confirmed, “Does not mix. It really annoys me when people say you can have it all because, quite frankly, you can’t. And, you know, some people choose their career over their children and that’s their prerogative, but, you know, my parents were quite absent when I was a kid and I feel like that really left some, like, nasty scars that I’m not willing to, you know, repeat on mine. And so, I chose stepping back and concentrating on them and I’m glad that I’ve done that because I think they’re very well-rounded people.” Of course, when Allen’s children, Ethel and Marnie, grow old enough to hear about this little pull quote, it might leave its own nasty scar on them—realizing they were the direct cause of stifling their mother’s musical freedom and depriving the world of more Lily Allen records. 

    Then again, Allen hasn’t “full-stop” quit, with hints at her return coming as recently as this year, when she responded to a comment on Twitter (never to be referred to as X), “Please when are you making a follow-up to your best LP, No Shame?” with “I am making it now, I don’t know how long it will take, but you will be able to hear some things soon.” So clearly, Allen hasn’t “retired” from music if she can still find time to write a new album whilst “focusing on her kids.” Nor has it prevented her from other time-consuming creative endeavors like starring in a West End theater production (both 2:22 and Pillowman) or a TV show (Dreamland). Or, of course, making a podcast series with Oliver. But it would seem these things are more noncommittal than the rigors of putting out an album (Rihanna would appear to feel the same way, having taken a musical hiatus well before her post-children era and seeming to be spurred to maintain that hiatus after giving birth to two kids). Especially when a musician actually chooses to tour it. Yet Allen did do both of these things in 2014, when her daughters were three and one, respectively.

    Maybe, indeed, it was going on the Sheezus Tour that gave Allen a wake-up call about the “artist’s lifestyle” not entirely mixing with motherhood (mind you, this was also the period during which she admitted to having sex with female escorts out of sheer loneliness and depression—having her second child the year before had left her with a bout of postnatal depression, to boot). Because after that, Allen wouldn’t release a record for another four years, 2018’s No Shame. This album, like Sheezus with “Take My Place” (about the stillbirth of her first child with Sam Cooper in 2010), would also explore the complexities and heartbreaks of motherhood, namely on track nine, “Three,” which speaks from the perspective of her daughters as they watch her leave for tour or various other musically-related publicity blitzkriegs. Hence, sadness-filled lyrics like, “You say you love me, then you walk right out the door.”

    It was that line that perhaps provided Allen with the seed of the revelation that would come after touring No Shame in 2018-2019, coming to grips with the idea that maybe she had already missed so much of the early years and it was time to “settle down.” The timing of that epiphany seemed to coincide perfectly with meeting David Harbour in 2019, marrying him in 2020 and becoming a Carroll Gardens mom (second only to the similarly annoying Brooklyn cliche of a Park Slope mom). So it is that we haven’t seen any new music from Allen in six years. For context, her longest break between albums before that was the five-year period it took her to release Sheezus after It’s Not You, It’s Me. 

    And, talking of that sophomore album, her present comments about motherhood (in terms of “being there” in a way her own parents weren’t) and artistry are a sharp about-face from her last interview with Oliver in 2009, as It’s Not Me, It’s You was being released. During it, she told Oliver, “My childhood was tricky, but so is everyone’s I think. So, um, yeah. It affected me and made me the person I am today and I think I’m okay. Now.” If Allen were still to go by that, then perhaps she would keep making music and touring under the conception that absenteeism as a parent builds character. Raises children who are “tough” and imaginative. 

    Her one-eighty stance, alas, caused a backlash that was strong enough for Allen to retweet a defense from Charlotte Elmore saying, “Context for those going wild over a Lily Allen headline ⬇️ Let’s normalise not ✨having it all✨ and take the expectations down a notch?” But this is in direct contrast to everything the “modern woman” has been told, starting somewhere around the era of Baby Boom starring Diane Keaton. Yet, by the end of that film, viewers are ultimately left with the impression that “having it all” still requires some significant sacrifice/compromise (not to mention a boyfriend or husband). In short, a total reassessment of priorities.

    Then there was someone like Madonna, who actually leveled up after having her first child, releasing an album (arguably still her best: Ray of Light) inspired by the occurrence of transmogrifying into “Mother” (beyond just the gay definition of that word). And in a recent interview with Mary Gabriel about the biography she wrote on the Queen of Pop, the author argues that part of what makes Madonna so unique, so punk rock (when she’s not appearing in bank commercials) is her continued ability to be unapologetically an artist after becoming a mother. Specifically, she told MadonnaTribe, “When Madonna became a mother, she rescued older women from the exile that motherhood often imposes upon them. In 2000 when she wore her shirt with Rocco on the front and Lola on the back, she showed what a forty-something mother looked like. Jumping around the stage at the Brixton Academy, she exploded the idea that a woman of a certain age—especially a mother of a certain age—couldn’t be gorgeous, fun, sexy, strong and enjoying a career. At a time when companies didn’t promote women with children because they feared the woman would be too distracted, Madonna showed motherhood wasn’t a distraction, it was empowering.”

    Of course, here it bears noting that Madonna undeniably had plenty of hired help to aid in this process (speaking on that reality frankly with the “American Life” rap, “I got a lawyer and a manager, an agent and a chef/Three nannies, an assistant, and a driver and a jet/A trainer and a butler and a bodyguard or five/A gardener and a stylist, do you think I’m satisfied?”). Something Allen could technically afford to invoke as well, but has perhaps since thought better of it than the days when she was still releasing new music and touring circa 2014 and 2018. 

    Or maybe, as a Brooklynite, she found herself reading 2021’s Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder for added confirmation of her decision to “stand down,” as that book is all about the struggle for a female artist to keep working at her art after having a child, eventually turning that struggle into performance art (with the child incorporated into it). Also recently added to the culture of this mother-or-artist conundrum, Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power (like Nightbitch, also released in 2021) explores the territory of motherhood/womanhood when it comes to continuing to pursue art post-childbirth. Halsey appears to be conflicted on the matter as well, with lyrics like, “Go on and be a big girl/You asked for this now/You better show ’em why you talk so loud” and “I just wanna feel somethin’, tell me where to go/‘Cause everybody knows somethin’ I don’t wanna know/So I stay right here ’cause I’m better all alone/Yeah, I’m better all alone.” Described by Halsey as a concept album (Allen has, incidentally, said that’s what her next album is going to be, too) centered on the specific “horrors of pregnancy and childbirth,” it’s apparent that Allen isn’t the only female artist with some very mixed emotions on the matter of motherhood. Especially as it relates to continuing to be an artist at all. 

    During Allen’s formative years as a millennial, it was Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) who further corroborated the idea that women could “have it all” in the season three Sex and the City episode, “All or Nothing” (which first aired in 2000). A title that unwittingly speaks to what Allen is saying about choosing between one thing or another: artistry or motherhood (some would say artistry is the “all,” while motherhood is the “nothing”). And, lest anyone forget, Samantha was more of a perennially single, “non-mother” type than Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) herself, so maybe it was easier to make such a declaration. 

    And so, if Allen can confirm that, sooner or later, a choice must be made (or it will be made for you) about art or motherhood, it certainly doesn’t make the latter sound any more appealing to those women who do view their art as their true child. Besides, does any kid really want to be referred to as “Mommy’s favorite mistake” once they see in adulthood that they stymied their mum’s creative output?

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “yes, and?” Joins the Ranks of Other “Clapback at the Critics” Songs

    “yes, and?” Joins the Ranks of Other “Clapback at the Critics” Songs

    It is an increasingly “grand tradition” in the genre of songwriting. Not to mention a rite of passage for any major pop star who stirs up enough controversy. That tradition being to “clapback” at the faceless blob known as “The Critics” (though some are simply trying to treat art with the seriousness it should be imbued with—but try telling that to a stan, or a celebrity as convinced of her perfection as Lana Del Rey). With Ariana Grande’s lead single from Eternal Sunshine, “yes, and?,” she revives this grand tradition with the help of the inspiration that came from being, let’s just say it, a homewrecker (a song title that’s already been used, to memorable effect, by Marina and the Diamonds [now MARINA], and appears on the list below). Repurposing the narrative to her benefit with a song that takes ownership of loving a certain babyface ginger dick, Ethan Slater. Best known, that’s right, for his portrayal of SpongeBob SquarePants in the musical of the same name (Grande always has a fetish for the wiry, slightly gay types). 

    While “yes, and?” can’t quite surpass a track like Madonna’s “Human Nature” in terms of its stinging qualities against the critics (e.g., “I’m not your bitch/Don’t hang your shit on me”), it’s definitely become instantly “up there” among the ranks of iconic clapbacks in song form. Below are a few other noteworthy ones from the past few decades, in no particular order. 

    “shut up” by Ariana Grande: Obviously no stranger to criticism by the time 2020’s Positions rolled around, it was fitting that Grande should kick off that album with the saucy “shut up.” A clear message to critics, tabloid headlines and online trolls alike, Grande’s directive was simple: “You know you sound so dumb (so dumb, so dumb, so dumb)/So maybe you should shut up/Yeah maybe you should shut up.” Elsewhere, she points out that those who tend to criticize tend to have the most time on their hands and are also plenty criticizable themselves. Thus, she adds, “How you been spendin’ you time?/How you be usin’ your tongue?/You be so worried ‘bout mine/Can’t even get yourself none.” That line about “using one’s tongue” also foreshadowed the lyric from “yes, and?” that goes, “My tongue is sacred/I speak upon what I like.” Because, apparently, it’s only okay when Ari does that, not critics. 

    “Without Me” by Eminem: Released as the lead single from Eminem’s fourth album, The Eminem Show, “Without Me” was a sequel, of sorts, to “The Real Slim Shady” from 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP. By 2002, when The Eminem Show came out, Eminem was, even more than Grande, extremely well-versed in being caught in the melee of critics’ and politicians’ contempt. Not to mention the fellow celebrities/public figures Eminem was wont to name-check in his songs. In “Without Me,” that includes Dick and Lynne Cheney, Elvis Presley, Chris Kirkpatrick of *NSYNC, Limp Bizkit, Moby and Obie Trice (though Obie is only mentioned in reference to “stomping” on Moby). More than anything, however, Eminem’s intent is to remind all of his detractors how “empty” it would feel without him in the music industry. Hence, the earworm of a chorus, “​​Now, this looks like a job for me/So everybody, just follow me/‘Cause we need a little controversy/‘Cause it feels so empty without me.” The accompanying video portraying Eminem as a superhero rather than a villain only added to the efficacy of his jibe at critics. 

    “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Sinead O’Connor: Although “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the second single from I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, is about many things, one of its most fundamental verses is peak “clapback at the critics,” of which there were already many—especially in conservative Catholic Ireland—at the time of O’Connor’s second record release. The verse in question goes: “There’s millions of people/Who offer advice and say how I should be/But they’re twisted and they will never be/Any influence on me/But you will always be/You will always be.” In this way, O’Connor insists that the public perception or criticism of her will never matter—only the opinion and viewpoint of the one she truly loves (at that time, producer John Reynolds) will. The video for the song also heightens the notion of O’Connor continuing to perform however she wants to and say whatever she wants to as its entire premise is just her dancing and singing onstage in front of an expectedly judgmental crowd.

    “Human Nature” by Madonna: The occasional Sinead adversary, Madonna, brought listeners the inarguable mack daddy of all clapback songs in 1994, with the release of Bedtime Stories (still among one of Madonna’s most underrated records). A direct reference to her treatment and the general slut-shaming that occurred during her Sex book and Erotica era, Madonna wanted to remind critics that she may have forgiven, but she didn’t forget. As the fourth and final single from the album, “Human Nature” differed from the previous singles (including “Secret,” “Take A Bow” and “Bedtime Story”) in that it deliberately sought to remind listeners and critics alike that, despite presenting a “softer side” for this record, the defiant, devil-may-care Madonna was still there. Ready to pounce—and in a black latex bodysuit, too. For just as iconic as the song itself was the Jean-Baptiste Mondino-directed video, awash in S&M aesthetics inspired by Eric Stanton. As Madonna herself said of the track, “The song is about, um, basically saying, ‘Don’t put me in a box, don’t pin me down, don’t tell me what I can and can’t say and it’s about breaking out of restraints.” The restraints that critics have, so often, foolishly tried to place on Madonna. 

    “Like It Or Not” by Madonna: By 2005, Madonna had more than just the usual critics on her back. After turning forty-seven, Madonna kept pushing the so-called limits of pop stardom by daring to keep not only releasing records and performing live, but still dressing “too scantily” “for her age.” Complete with the leotards and fishnets that characterized her Confessions on a Dance Floor period. Fittingly, “Like It Or Not” served as the finale to the record, with Madonna promising her detractors, “This is who I am/You can like it or not/You can love me or leave me/‘Cause I’m never gonna stop.” Turns out, she might have been directing those comments at Guy Ritchie as well. 

    “Vulgar” by Sam Smith and Madonna: In case you couldn’t tell by now, Madonna is not just the Queen of Pop but clearly the Queen of the Clapback—as further evidenced by this modern update to the content and attitude of “Human Nature.” Sam Smith and Madonna came together for this song after the latter’s condemnation for her appearance (too obviously riddled with plastic surgery—that was the usual critique) at the 2023 Grammys and after Smith, too, was criticized for his increasingly “fat” and “effete” appearance during the Gloria album rollout and the according visuals that came with it (including the video for “Unholy”—during which Smith is dressed in some very Madonna-as-Dita attire). Teaming up to hit back at those who would try to keep them down (even though Madonna has far more experience with that than Smith), the duo triumphantly announces, “Got nothing left to prove/You know you’re beautiful when they call you/Vulgar/I do what I wanna/I go when I gotta/I’m sexy, I’m free and I feel, uh/Vulgar.”  

    “Your Early Stuff” by Pet Shop Boys: The Madonna-adjacent (in terms of gay fanbase, musical stylings and coming up in the 80s) Pet Shop Boys also know a thing or two about being critiqued. Especially when it comes to the main criticism being that they’ve been around “too long.” As though an artist should simply pack it in because some arcane alarm clock goes off in their head about being “too old” to continue when, the reality is, true artists keep creating art until the day they die. Featured on 2012’s Elysium (the duo’s eleventh album), Neil Tennant had no trouble writing the song as, per his own words, “Every single line in that song, every single thing has been said to me.” This includes such backhanded “compliments” as, “You’ve been around but you don’t look too rough/And I still quite like some of your early stuff/It’s bad in a good way, if you know what I mean/The sound of those old machines” and “Those old videos look pretty funny/What’s in it for you now, need the money?/They say that management never used to pay/Honestly, you were ripped off back in the day.” Unlike the other songs on this list, “Your Early Stuff” is perhaps most unique for stemming directly from the criticisms of the common people, as opposed to more ivory tower-y, “legitimate” critics. 

    “URL Badman” by Lily Allen: Another British addition to the list, this still too-untreasured gem from Lily Allen’s equally untreasured Sheezus record, “URL Badman” is Allen at her most delightfully snarky (which is saying something, as she she’s quite gifted with snark). Taking little boys who write for the likes of Complex and Vice (RIP, but that’s karma) to task, Allen speaks from the myopic perspective of the URL Badman in question, declaring, “It’s not for me, it must be wrong/I could ignore it and move on/But I’m a broadband champion/A URL badman,” also adding, “And if you’re tryna call it art/I’ll have to take it all apart/I got a high-brow game plan/A URL badman/I’m a U-R-L-B-A-D-M-A-N with no empathy.” This speaking to the crux of how musicians feel about critics in general. 

    “Attention” by Doja Cat: Released as the lead single from Scarlet, Doja Cat’s mountains of controversy had piled up significantly by 2023, chief among them being her blithe defense of dating a white supremacist/sexual abuser and her venomous attack against her own fanbase, who she told to “get a job”—the usual dig made by people who think paid time for unsatisfying labor is supposed to make you a more worthwhile person on this planet (hence, “Billie Eilish Is A Jobist”). “Attention” paired well with this rash of events, with Doja Cat creepily talking about some invisible monster (perhaps what Lady Gaga would call “the fame monster” inside of her) that needs the attention, not her. It’s a very, “That wasn’t me, that was Patricia” defense, and maybe “Scarlet” is the easier part of herself to blame for needing her ego to be fed. Nonetheless, she still demands of the critics, “Look at me, look at me, you lookin’?” later mocking them with the verse, “I readed all the comments sayin’, ‘D, I’m really shooketh,’ ‘D, you need to see a therapist, is you lookin’?’/Yes, the one I got, they really are the best/Now I feel like I can see you bitches is depressed/I am not afraid to finally say shit with my chest.” Obviously, that last line sounds familiar thanks to appearing in the chorus of Grande’s “yes, and?” when she urges, “Yes, and?/Say that shit with your chest.” In another moment of skewering the critics, Doja Cat balks, “Talk your shit about me, I can easily disprove it, it’s stupid/You follow me, but you don’t really care about the music.”

    “Taco Truck x VB” by Lana Del Rey: Lana Del Rey has often felt similarly. And, like Sinead O’Connor’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” it’s one verse in particular that makes Del Rey’s lengthy “Taco Truck x VB” (the “VB” being an abbreviation for a previously unreleased version of Norman Fucking Rockwell’s “Venice Bitch”) stand out as a clapback track. The one that shrugs, “Spin it till you whip it into white cream, baby/Print it into black and white pages don’t faze me/Before you talk, let me stop what you’re saying/I know, I know, I know that you hate me.” And just like that, Del Rey dismisses all responsibility for dubious behavior….like wearing a Native American headdress, posing a non sequitur “question for the culture,” posting unblurred-out videos of black and brown protesters/looters during the BLM of summer 2020 or insisting she’s not racist because she’s dated plenty of rappers (on a side note: no one knows who she might be talking about apart from white “rapper” G-Eazy).

    “Homewrecker” by Marina and the Diamonds: Even if Marina Diamandis a.k.a. Marina and the Diamonds a.k.a. MARINA is singing from the perspective of her alter ego, Electra Heart, 2012’s “Homewrecker” is still plenty viable as a clapback song. And it definitely ties into Ariana Grande’s overarching theme on “yes, and?,” which is a direct addressment of the critics who have called her, that’s right, homewrecker. Opening with the tongue-in-cheek lyrics, “Every boyfriend is the one/Until otherwise proven…/And love it never happens like you think it really should,” MARINA paints the picture of a woman who won’t be torn down by the slut-shaming insults lobbied against her. Besides, as she announces (in the spirit of Holly Golightly), “And I don’t belong to anyone/They call me homewrecker, homewrecker.” She gets even cheekier when she adds, “I broke a million hearts just for fun” and “I guess you could say that my life’s a mess/But I’m still lookin’ pretty in this dress.” This latter line reminding one of Grande’s lyric on “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” “You got me misunderstood/But at least I look this good.”

    “Piece of Me” by Britney Spears: No stranger to being called a homewrecker herself after getting together with Kevin Federline in 2004, when Shar Jackson was pregnant with his second child, Spears was already jaded about critical lambastings by 2007. And “Piece of Me” was the only appropriate response to all the scrutiny (especially after Spears was reamed for her performance of “Gimme More” at the 2007 VMAs). Thus, she unleashed it as the second single from Blackout. Having endured the critical lashings of her every move, 2007 was also the year that Spears famously shaved her head at a Tarzana salon, providing plenty of grist for the tabloid mill. But to her endlessly stalking paparazzi and the various critics, Spears roared back, “You want a piece of me?/I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous/I’m Mrs. Oh My God That Britney’s Shameless/I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! This Just In!/You want a piece of me/I’m Mrs. She’s Too Big Now She’s Too Thin.” So apropos to her entire existence in the spotlight, Spears’ Vegas residency would end up being called that as well—a heartbreaking choice considering how many pieces her family took of her to make her endure that ceaseless run of performances. 

    “Rumors” by Lindsay Lohan: Inarguably Lindsay Lohan’s only solid contribution to the music business, “Rumors” embodies the apex of 00s tabloid culture, awash in all the language of voyeurism (“I can see that you’re watchin’ me/And you’re probably gonna write what you didn’t see”). And Lohan made the mistake of releasing it slightly before she would really be turned into a tabloid/late night talk show joke. This stemming from her overt dependency on drugs and alcohol at a time when a movie titled Herbie: Fully Loaded was going to come out. Cue all the obvious jibes. If only “Rumors” had been released just a year later to secure maximum impact as a defense for her clubbing/party girl behavior. Even so, it remains what RuPaul would call safe as part of the clapback canon. 

    “Industry Baby” by Lil Nas X featuring Jack Harlow: In 2021, Lil Nas X came under fire by Nike for selling a limited run of Satan Shoes featuring the famous swoosh logo with the help of MSCHF, an art collective based in Brooklyn. Nike sued for trademark infringement, prompting Lil Nas X to create quite the tailored concept for the premise of the “Industry Baby” video (with the title sardonically alluding to the insult “industry plant”). Incidentally, it was directed by Christian Breslauer, who would also go on to direct Grande’s “yes, and?” video. But Lil Nas X wasn’t just rebelling against the lawsuit, but all of his haters in general, rapping, “You was never really rooting for me anyway/When I’m back up at the top, I wanna hear you say/‘He don’t run from nothin’, dog’/Get your soldiers, tell ’em that the break is over.” And while co-production from Ye (a.k.a. Kanye West) has left some taint on the track, it still packs a punch when it comes to walloping the critics.

    “Mean” by Taylor Swift:  Probably the most flaccid of the clapback tracks on this list, “Mean” was a direct response to music critic Bob Lefsetz, who reviewed Taylor Swift’s 2010 performance at the Grammys less than favorably. Among some of his more scathing assessments about her off-key performance (made all the more noticeable because she had joined Stevie Nicks onstage) was that she full-stop “can’t sing” and that she had “destroyed her career overnight.” Nostradamus this man is not. But his words clearly stung enough for Swift to include an angry little girl clapback (something that “Look What You Made Me Do” would perfect) on 2010’s Speak Now, released nine months after she performed at the Grammys in January. Which means she found the time to tack “Mean” onto the record for optimal impact. Even so, Lefsetz would rightly note later of the rumors that it was about him and his review, “If this song is really about me, I wish it were better.”

    “Not My Responsibility” and “Therefore I Am” by Billie Eilish: The subject of frequent scrutiny, Billie Eilish already has two clapback at the critics songs under her belt and she’s only twenty-two years old. The first “song,” “Not My Responsibility,” wouldn’t really become a song until it appeared on her sophomore album, Happier Than Ever, in 2021. Originally created as a short film interlude for her Where Do We Go? World Tour, the song came at a time when Eilish was being constantly called out for being, let’s say, the epitome of a twenty-first century sexless pop star. A direct attack on body- and slut-shaming, Eilish softly states, “I feel you watching always/And nothing I do goes unseen/So while I feel your stares/Your disapproval/Or your sigh of relief/If I lived by them/I’d never be able to move.” This more modern commentary on what criticism in the age of social media can do extends not just to critics, but the legions of online commentators as well. A legion that Eilish also acknowledges on “Therefore I Am,” which was released later in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, ergo Eilish’s ability to film freely in a vacant Glendale Galleria. A privilege the critics she derides would never have access to. Something that shines through in her laughing taunt, “Stop, what the hell are you talking about?/Ha/Get my pretty name out of your mouth/We are not the same with or without/Don’t talk ’bout me like how you might know how I feel/Top of the world, but your world isn’t real/Your world’s an ideal.” Often, an impossible one for anybody to live up to. But such is the complex and isolating nature of being a critic.

    Genna Rivieccio

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