Lily Allen review – pop star makes much-anticipated comeback – but where is the West End Girl? | Music
When Lily Allen’s West End Girl It was launched in October 2025, it was an immediate sensation. A uncooked doc of marital betrayal and neglect, it was a brand new sort of divorce album for the post-tabloid superstar, impressed by Allen’s own separation from actor David Harbor. It earned Allen rave evaluations and a spot alongside Miranda July’s All Fours in a up to date canon of emancipatory, autofictional artwork for contemporary (heterosexual) ladies. The album’s construction as a story held wealthy potential for reside staging, and Allen’s alternative to play it in full on a tour of theaters – earlier than returning for an area run later this yr – recommended she would do good on her theatrical promise.
Split into two acts, West End Girl Live definitely begins with theatrical aptitude. A string ensemble – named the Dallas Minor Trio after considered one of the album’s standout tracks – takes to the stage for a model of Allen’s 2008 hit The Fear. The crowd enthusiastically sings alongside to karaoke-style lyrics on a display behind the trio. It works as a prelude: the music’s minor key paranoia interprets effectively to the association and its themes of existential crises are related to the album we’re right here to see.
It’s a disgrace that this wry, becoming begin is undermined as the trio goes on to play 9 extra of Allen’s songs on this type. Songs like Not Fair work pretty effectively as Bridgerton-style instrumentals, but the maligned 2014 single Hard Out Here would not – nor does it profit from having its considerably tone-deaf lyrics projected. Staging hits like this is perhaps cute as a 10-minute-long introduction, but as the whole, 45-minute first half of a much-anticipated comeback present it dangers testing the endurance of the viewers; a compromise between committing to a full album present and avoiding accusations of not enjoying the hits.
After not showing in the first act of his personal present, the strain on Allen to ship a satisfying second half is excessive. After an interval, Allen seems from behind a luxe theater curtain for West End Girl’s breezy title observe; the calm earlier than the storm on a lush, spotlit set. She solutions a rotary telephone on the pink velvet steps, performing out one aspect of a shattering telephone name. She’s a bit stiff onstage, whilst the skittering beats of Ruminating kick in. The curtain pulls again to disclose a stage set of a stylized bed room, but not a lot is product of this additional room: Allen strikes from chair to chaise to mattress as if blocking in a rehearsal. The on a regular basis particulars listed in Tennis – emails, texts, Instagram posts – gave the unique album the texture of actual life, but right here they really feel banal.
This might be a false begin right down to nerves, but sadly the power barely will increase as the present goes on, even when Allen has one thing extra to do. During Pussy Palace she pulls props from the music’s lyrics (“Duane Reade bag with the handles tied/Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside”). She strikes awkwardly throughout Relapse, as if making a half-hearted try and act out the music’s panic. 4chan Stan is additionally awkward, as she wraps herself in lengthy lengths of material printed like a receipt she’s inspecting (“Never been to Bergdorf’s/But you took someone shopping there on May 24”). Allen appears to loosen up and interact extra immediately with the crowd throughout Nonmonogamummy and Dallas Major, but between them she performs Just Enough standing stock-still behind a curtain.
There’s a model of this present that would learn into listlessness, and work effectively. Allen might emphasize the torpid state she finds herself in on Let You W/In (“I’ve become invisible, stuck here in my palace/I’m so fucking miserable”) by contrasting it with one thing dynamic, as she does with the album’s manufacturing. As it is, it is uninteresting to observe her undergo the motions to a backing observe. It’s simple that the viewers are into the second half: shouts of “dump him” reverberate together with the lyrics to each music, and there is a standing ovation at the finish. But how a lot of that comes from current goodwill – and, undoubtedly for some, the need to carry out catharsis to this materials? In the first act, Allen’s viewers sang for her – in the event that they needed to do the similar for the second act, would they nonetheless have gotten what they wanted?
