Lily Allen announces first album in seven years

Lily Allen has announced her first album of new music in seven years.

The record West End Girl will be released via BMG on October 24 and features 14 new songs, written and recorded over a 10-day period in Los Angeles in December 2024.

The tracks, inspired by her move to New York, were later finished in London and New York.

Allen, who recently split from her husband, Stranger Things actor David Harbour, said: “I’m nervous. The record is vulnerable in a way that my music perhaps hasn’t been before – certainly not over the course of a whole album.

“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.

“At the same time, I’ve used shared experiences as the basis for songs which try to delve into why we humans behave as we do, so the record is a mixture of fact and fiction which I hope serves as a reminder of how stoic yet also how frail we humans can be.

“In that respect I think it’s very much an album about the complexities of relationships and how we all navigate them. It’s a story…….”

Allen, 40, who married Harbour in 2020, previously said on her podcast Miss Me? that she entered a treatment centre for therapy in January because she wanted to be her “strongest self” for her children, who she shares with ex-husband Sam Cooper.

All 14 songs on the new album were written by Allen, mainly in collaboration with her musical director Blue May.

The album’s executive producers were Lily Allen, her former partner Seb Chew, Kito and Blue May, with cover art by Spanish artist Nieves González.

Allen burst onto the music scene in 2006 with her debut album Alright, Still, which featured tracks such as Smile and LDN.

Her 2018 album No Shame was nominated for the Mercury Prize, but she stepped away from music after releasing a candid memoir My Thoughts Exactly.

She has had success as an actor in recent years, starring in sold-out runs of plays 2:22 A Ghost Story and The Pillowman, plus a recent starring role in a new adaptation of Ibsen’s domestic tragedy Hedda Gabler.