Twenty years in the past, Lily Allen instructed a dishonest boyfriend to f*ck off with a smile on her face.
Now, at 40, she’s discovered his secret intercourse condo and she or he sounds correctly exhausted about it.
“Pussy Palace” is observe seven on West Finish Woman, and it’s the type of music that makes you need to examine your companion’s financial institution statements.
Not since you’re paranoid, however as a result of Allen’s captured one thing horribly believable: that second if you flip a key anticipating one factor and discover systematic betrayal as an alternative. The “dojo” she thought she was visiting? Yeah, it was by no means about martial arts.
The Premise (And Why It’s Worse Than You Assume)
Right here’s what will get me about this music. It’s not nearly discovering infidelity. It’s about discovering infrastructure.
This bloke didn’t simply cheat; he maintained an entire separate property for it. There’s premeditation right here, monetary dedication, in all probability a separate cell phone contract.
Allen’s narrator is dropping off medicine and garments (already a purple flag, why doesn’t he have garments the place he really lives?), caught on a delayed F prepare, stressed of her thoughts, and about to stroll into the worst inside design reveal of her life.
The music doesn’t let you know how she bought the important thing or why she’s making this supply.
That lacking context really makes it extra unnerving. We’re dropped into the center of somebody’s routine that’s about to detonate.
What She Present in Pussy (And Why the Particulars Matter)
The second verse is the place Allen actually twists the knife. She’s not simply itemizing proof; she’s cataloguing the whole operation.
A shoebox of handwritten letters from earlier ladies. Not texts, precise letters, which suggests this has been happening lengthy sufficient that a few of these relationships predate WhatsApp.
The sheets are on the ground, which is sort of lazier than if he’d made the mattress.
Lengthy black hair “in all probability from the evening earlier than” is a element that makes your abdomen drop due to that phrase “in all probability.”
She’s having to infer the timeline of her personal betrayal.
Then there’s the Duane Reade bag (the American chemist chain, which locations this both in New York or suggests he’s introduced provides again from a visit).
“A whole bunch of Trojans” is sort of humorous in how extreme it’s. This isn’t a person having an affair; it is a man operating a small sexual enterprise out of a West Village condo.
What Allen’s doing right here is forensic. She’s not crying or screaming within the music; she’s documenting.
That “How’d I get caught up in your double life?” isn’t actually a query. It’s her attempting to work out the logistics of her personal deception, which is in some way extra devastating than rage could be.
The “Intercourse Addict” Query (Which Isn’t Actually About Habit)
The refrain retains asking: “So am I taking a look at a intercourse addict?” and it’s a query that reveals extra in regards to the narrator than the companion.
She’s attempting to pathologize what she’s discovered, to make it make sense. As a result of if it’s dependancy, it’s a illness, one thing past his management, one thing she may need been in a position to assist with if solely she’d recognized.
However the music doesn’t really imagine this framing. That “Oh, discuss a low blow” that follows suggests she is aware of this isn’t about dependancy. It’s about betrayal dressed up in excuses.
Allen’s too good to let him off that simply, even within the hypothetical. The repeated “I all the time thought it was a dojo” isn’t simply humorous due to the wordplay; it’s tragic as a result of it exhibits how totally she was lied to.
A dojo is a spot of self-discipline, self-improvement, respect. The distinction couldn’t be starker.
The Sound of Pussy Palace (Which Shouldn’t Work However Does)
Blue Might and Leroy Clampitt have produced one thing that sounds prefer it belongs in a Stranger Issues episode.
All synth-heavy, vaguely 80s, with that barely ominous high quality that the Netflix present’s theme has, and truthfully, when you hear it, you possibly can’t unhear it.
However right here’s the factor: it really works as a result of it’s so at odds with the content material. This bouncy, nearly danceable manufacturing wrapping round lyrics about discovering your companion’s f*ck palace creates this queasy dissonance.
You could possibly completely play this in a membership and folks would dance to it earlier than they processed what Allen’s really singing about.
It’s a sugar-coated capsule of a music, and that’s all the time been her candy spot. Going again to “Smile” or “Not Truthful,” Allen’s greatest tracks have all the time put devastating content material in deceptively cheerful packaging.
Chloe Angelides, who did further manufacturing, deserves credit score for the bridge.
These easy “Oh-oh-oh” vocals create precise respiration house in a music that’s in any other case fairly claustrophobic in its element. It’s like arising for air earlier than the ultimate refrain drags you again beneath.
The place This Sits in Allen’s Catalogue
Look, Allen’s been writing about shit males for 20 years. However there’s a distinction between 21-year-old Lily singing “Smile” a couple of dishonest boyfriend and 40-year-old Lily singing “Pussy Palace” about… no matter this case is.
The youthful vindictiveness has been changed by one thing extra weary. This isn’t “I’m going to get revenge”; that is “I’m too f*cking drained for this.”
West Finish Woman as an entire appears to be Allen reckoning with life and relationships in center age, with tracks like “Madeline” and “4chan Stan” persevering with to choose aside trendy life together with her attribute mixture of humour and horror.
The album title itself is a wink to her London roots. She’s a West Finish woman in the identical manner the Pet Store Boys sang about them, however up to date for 2025 when even that romantic notion has been sophisticated by Airbnbs and second residences saved for shagging.
Why This Feels Completely different
The music’s racked up over 189,000 views on Youtube inside days, with individuals already deep within the feedback attempting to work out whether or not that is based mostly on Allen’s personal expertise or another person’s.
That hypothesis might be lacking the purpose. Whether or not it’s actually true or not, it feels true, and that’s what issues.
What makes “Pussy Palace” compelling is that it’s not a couple of one-night stand or a drunken mistake.
It’s about organisation. It’s about somebody who had an entire system labored out, who paid lease on a second place, who saved it stocked with provides and apparently had sufficient visitors to justify shopping for condoms by the hundred.
That stage of deception takes effort, and Allen captures the particular type of betrayal that comes with realising somebody put in that a lot work to deceive you.
The music additionally will get at one thing fairly present: how straightforward it’s now to keep up separate lives.
Relationship apps, a number of telephones, the gig economic system making bizarre schedules regular.
All of it makes the type of double life Allen’s describing extra logistically possible than it could have been even a era in the past.
She’s not the primary to write down about infidelity (clearly), however she may be one of many first to write down about infidelity as a correctly managed facet undertaking.
Twenty years in, Lily Allen’s nonetheless in a position to take one thing painfully private and make it into one thing you’ll need to sing alongside to, even for those who’ve by no means found your companion’s intercourse condo.
The truth that she will be able to make that work, that she could be humorous and heartbreaking and indignant and exhausted , is why she’s remained related when so lots of her mid-2000s friends have pale.
“Pussy Palace” may need probably the most provocative title on West Finish Woman, however beneath it’s simply Allen doing what she’s all the time accomplished greatest: telling the reality in a manner that makes you giggle earlier than you realise you need to in all probability be crying.
