Lily Allen Announces Comeback Album ‘West End Girl’

Lily Allen has announced her highly anticipated return to music with West End Girl, marking her first studio album in seven years.

The British artist revealed the project will arrive on Friday, October 24th, bringing an end to the extended hiatus that began following 2018’s No Shame.

The announcement comes with Allen expressing vulnerability about the new material. “I’m nervous,” she admitted in a statement. “The record is vulnerable in a way that my music perhaps hasn’t been before – certainly not over the course of a whole album.”

West End Girl emerged from an intensive creative period, with Allen writing and recording the entire project over just 10 days in Los Angeles late last year. She subsequently completed the album between New York and London, creating a transatlantic musical journey that mirrors her own geographical shifts in recent years.

New York features prominently throughout the record, serving as both backdrop and inspiration for the 14-track collection. Allen relocated to the city in 2020, the same year she married actor David Harbour. However, the couple divorced four years later, prompting Allen’s return to London.

“I’ve tried to document my life in a new city and the events that led me to where I am in my life now,” Allen explained. The singer-songwriter described the record as “a mixture of fact and fiction” that explores human behaviour and relationships. She added, “I think it’s very much an album about the complexities of relationships and how we all navigate them.”

The album’s creation involved collaboration with music director Blue May, who helped bring Allen’s vision to fruition. During a January episode of her Miss Me? podcast with Miquita Oliver, Allen had expressed hopes of releasing music this year, though she framed it as wishful thinking at the time. “Hopefully, maybe get an album out by the end of the year. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? It’s not real, I’m just trying to manifest it now,” she said.