Lily Allen
West Finish Lady
BMG
Nov 04, 2025
Internet Unique
On October 24, Lily Allen shocked the world by releasing her fifth album (and first in seven years since her 2018 effort No Disgrace). The shock launch of a model new album by some of the profitable and notoriously controversial British pop stars of the final 20 years can be information sufficient in and of itself. Nonetheless, as soon as it landed on streaming platforms, listeners had been completely gobsmacked by its stark and albeit brutal lyrical content material.
That is much less a breakup album of the type we’ve seen in recent times, like Adele’s 30 and even Beyoncé’s cultural lightning rod Lemonade, than it’s a exact, near-surgical dissection of the collapse of Allen’s marriage to Stranger Issues star David Harbour. As such, there are replays of voicemails, explicit particulars (like getting “caught on the F (prepare),” a traditional situation any New Yorker can relate to), and memorable traces scattered all through the album, notably in its extra incendiary first half. When you will have track titles like “Pussy Palace” and “4chan Stan,” with loads of lyrics that might nonetheless elicit FCC fines ought to she utter them on prime time, you already know that this can be a uncooked, uncompromising work.
As such, given the quantity of discourse it has generated on social media platforms in simply over every week, notably on TikTok, it’s simply some of the talked about albums of the 12 months. However all of that, whereas attention-grabbing, doesn’t mechanically be certain that it’s additionally one of many 12 months’s greatest pop albums. What does is Allen’s mixture of weak lyricism (some would possibly use the time period “overshare”) with a sound that effortlessly mixes style by mixing bossa nova rhythms (at occasions, it appears that evidently ’60s Astrud Gilberto is her North Star if she was yelling obscenities at each João Gilberto and Stan Getz the complete time) with rap, dancehall, reggae, and ska overtones, producing a sound like no different.
This can be a must-hear album, even in case you are unfamiliar together with her earlier work, because it’s clearly one of many 12 months’s highest. If you wish to know who “Madeline” actually is, ought to somebody ask about it at your subsequent workplace or college operate, pay attention up. (www.lilyallenmusic.com)
Creator ranking: 9/10
