Hi, everyone. Awkwaaaaar! here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Lily Allen album, West End Girl.

Here we have the newest album from pop singer and songwriter, Miss Lily Allen, her first album in about seven years, and we are even many more years out from her commercial peak in the 2000s when she was essentially an English millennial alternative pop darling, known for her breezy vocals; very unfiltered, spicy lyrics; and quirky production choices, which could range from anything to chilly electro beats, a reggae flip, or some lush baroque pop instrumentation.

Now, while personally, I've never really outright disliked Lily Allen's music, I've always felt like something was missing to give it that extra bit of lasting power. And broadly, I think we've seen this in the lessening impact of her music as she has continued to release more stuff. In fact, I feel like many audiences memory-holed her last album completely, as so much of the material on that project was dedicated to her marriage – her first marriage – to her ex, Sam Cooper, falling apart. Now, she had since started dating and eventually tied the knot with actor David Harbour of Hellboy and also Stranger Things fame.

And given David's celebrity status, obviously, Lily's relationship with him was a lot more public. I mean, after all, there is that now infamous Architectural Digest house tour video on YouTube that's been getting a lot of traffic lately.

And the reason I bring this up is the discourse around this new album has been so intense and insane. It's almost as if Lily's last album wasn't also about a publicized relationship coming apart. However, the larger discussion around West End Girl could be attributed to a handful of things. It could be the super detailed storytelling on these tracks, David Harbour's larger visibility, and of course, some of the more salacious lyrical details.

And this has all had a weird compounding effect on the public interest around this record, because for sure, just taken at face value, the story behind this album is absolutely heartbreaking. I mean, it's even received some comparisons to Beyoncé's Lemonade. However, a lot of this record's appeal, I will say, is couched in Lily Allen coming across like sympathetic character. And while showing fans how rocky her second marriage here has been has led to a lot of support, West End Girl has also caused a lot of fans to go back and look at Lily Allen's time in the spotlight, bringing up not so flattering moments, like her admissions of cheating in her last marriage, or some exchanges she's had with Azealia Banks in the midst of their years-long beef that had her looking pretty questionable. Or even accusations of kissing Zoe Kravitz, unconsensually.

So yeah, opening up the emotional Pandora's box of this record for Lily seems to have had a bit of a boomerang effect or a blowing up in your face effect. With that being said, though, I do think this record has an appeal beyond the infidelity details and the mention of a bag full of butt plugs and condoms and stuff, because there is genuinely a smart, thoughtful, literary progression to the way these songs unfold.

From the introduction where Lily is feeling quite paranoid and a little uneasy about seeing the way her life is changing in this new marriage. Then she goes from there to worrying about the state of the relationship and spiraling out, wondering if there's something going on that she's not fully aware of. Then we go to finding out about the other woman, actually getting in contact with her at one point, too. Then from there, Lily is digging down to see how deep the cheating rabbit hole goes and also trying to get back out there herself romantically, with her laying out the details of this dysfunctional non-monogamy arrangement that I guess her and David had going in order to keep the marriage afloat.

By the end of the album, Lily is very much feeling unloved, lonely, and at a loss, being faced with the variety of ways in which her and her partner are broken and caught in cycles of neediness, people-pleasing, codependence, deception, etc. Narratively, there's no major stone left unturned, and there is an admirable honesty to the way this project unfolds, even if it is just one side of the story, because obviously not every detail Lily relays is flattering, especially the gut punch realization that her daughters – being in their teen years – she's setting a very poor example for both of them romantically, given that she can't really get her shit together on that front, even in this stage of life.

I think another contributing factor to this record's popularity is there's a massive relatability to it, too, in today's day and age, as there are so many dysfunctional couples out there right now who are just struggling to find good guidelines for getting things back on track. Also, a lot of different unaddressed mental health issues. And too often trendy relationship dynamics, such as polyamory, are used as a bandaid to cover up for aspects of a relationship that are just not working for both involved, just used as a bandaid to distract from larger issues. And honestly, this has just become all too cliché of a story on the dating scene today. And Allen lives it all out herself from one track to the next.

With all that being said, though, as interesting as I find the narrative behind this record to be, the more I listen to it, the more I found myself feeling apathetic toward the vocals and music itself. Whether you're talking about the wallpaper electro beats and vocals that are just mercilessly drenched in autotune on "Ruminating" or even the more tragic "Relapse". Personally, I get a lot more out of the tracks here that have a more segmented pop structure and more whimsical production like "Sleepwalking" as well as "Tennis". And while it's not my favorite tune on the record, I can definitely appreciate the theater of "Madeline", the track I was alluding to earlier where Lily gets in contact with the other woman and you essentially hear their exchange.

But even with Lily stepping outside of her comfort zone to get super literal and novelistic in the way that she lays everything out here, the writing can be a bit spotty or on the nose. So matter of fact, what I'm hearing comes across as either cringe or just giving second-hand embarrassment, like on "Pussy Palace", which, as heavy as this song must have been to write, I don't know... "I didn't know it was your Pussy Palace, Pussy Palace, Pussy Palace, Pussy Palace / I always thought it was your Dojo, Dojo, Dojo" – i's not my favorite hook here for sure. Please don't tell me anyone was calling it a dojo!

I do find the phrasing and wordplay and humor of tracks like "4chan Stan" as well as "Nonmonogamummy" to be much better. But still, I am left a little perplexed by the logic of those tracks. Like, even if the arrangement they originally laid out somehow was actually stuck to, it's hard to see how exactly all of this would actually work.

The writing on the tail-end of the record can be a bit spotty too, in my opinion, even if some of the realizations that are arrived to in the very end are valid. The track "Just Enough", despite its very emotional content, I felt very numb in reaction to, mostly due to how haphazard and underwhelming the vocals were. "Dallas Major", by contrast, is a lot punchier and cheekier, and essentially is Lily Allen talking about how much she hates and is annoyed by the process of having to go back online and try to seek out extracurriculars romantically. "Beg For Me", though, is actually a major highlight on the record, in my opinion, where Lily passionately wants to be wanted as she pretty much mourns the total loss of attraction and connection in this relationship.

But yeah, again, despite there being a very compelling narrative at the core of this album, and a handful of very, very solid enjoyable highlights, there were just too many moments where the vocals, music, and production, in my opinion, fell short, due to just sounding bland, sounding uninteresting, or just sounding heavy-handed. Then there's the matter of how emotionally distressing I personally found some pockets of this record to be, which even if I do admire what Lily was putting into them narratively, I don't see myself putting them on again voluntarily any time soon, which is why I'm feeling a strong 5 to a light 6 on this project.

Anthony Fantano, Lily Allen, forever.