If the pop music industry were a high school cafeteria, Lily Allen wouldn't be sitting at any of the tables amongst her peers. Sure, she'd have a seat waiting among her late-aughts classmates like Kate Nash, M.I.A., Duffy and MIKA — all frantically finishing their homework before next period — but Allen's across the street by the Tube entrance in an oversized puffer coat, smoking ciggies with the bad kids, tears welling in her eyes as she fights with her slag boyfriend on a Sony Ericsson.The tables have turned: now, 20 years on from her debut album, she's been hired full-time as a teacher at the public Pop Academy (downtown division), guiding a new generation of stars as they navigate heartbreak, career injustices, and the uphill battle of being undervalued in an industry that still underpays and underplays the girls and gays. With fifth studio album West End Girl, Allen returns to show the kids how it's done, strutting through the inner-city hallways, mashing gum and blowing bubbles.West End Girl isn't going open-world or making any real attempts at thematic well-roundedness. Instead, it's a record almost entirely about the same thing: the devastating end of a relationship with a man who was never meant to be in a monogamous relationship. Reportedly inspired by Allen's failed marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour, the LP is lined with songs about interpersonal collapse amidst her attempts to be a modern-age "Nonmonogamummy," even as her inner child warns her against it: "I changed my immigration status / For you to treat me like a stranger," she grumbles softly on that song.The creative freedom on the record is palpable. If Lily Allen wants to write 14 songs about the same petty, messy, generally low-stakes personal drama, she's going to do it — and she's going to deliver with such precision that it's easy to end tracks like "Pussy Palace" in tears, even when the chorus includes, "I didn't know I was your pussy palace / I always thought it was a dojo." The song itself documenting a colour-draining realization familiar to so many, it would be an easy sort of story to tell without depth, but Allen cuts through the gristle to the heart of things like nobody else can."I used to be quite famous / That was way back in the day," she rattles off on "Dallas Major," a middle-of-the-road cut in an otherwise stacked tracklist. Smooth, dated R&B production simmers like a slow-cooked chocolate ganache on the stove, leading into the following track, "Beg for Me," and it's evident Allen is no longer being strong-armed into chasing trends. Instead, she's amplifying what she does best now that she's no longer in contention for the crown of pop's Sheezus — itself Allen's 2014 record eclipsed by label meddling, marked by the poor lead single "Hard Out Here," a desperate attempt to connect with a generation she was never truly part of.If this all sounds a bit far-fetched to you, don't take a critic's word for it; listen for yourself. Album highlights include "Ruminating," which I imagine PinkPantheress listening to — stoned and sad in her London bedroom — on her royal purple iPod Nano. Then there's "Madeline," the conscious "Jolene" archetype where Allen is directly in conversation with the other woman in her marriage. It's likely the public standout, although a layer of artifice holds me back from crying into the sink as I wash my dishes.The "Jolene" archetype is still a wise move from a pop-comeback point of view: a no-nonsense narrative, gripping and universal. From a lesser songwriter, it would be easier to approach cynically, but Allen is here to prove she's one of the greats — authentically working within the tropes, and not the other way around. Even the album's motif of voicemails-as-narrative-device is cliché in the grand scheme of things, yet the artist proves she can play this game better than most.All in all, the brilliance of West End Girl lies in its lack of pretension, and the fact that its room feels mostly cleared of committee. Its dated influences are consciously amplified as a middle finger to relevance, and to a system that once kept some of Allen's earlier works from reaching their full potential. It sounds as though she's finally been left alone to produce the album she wanted, and that one of pop songwriting's valedictorians has been here all along — even if she was skipping class for a while, buying pot at a Burger King two stops down.
Wavelength
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