When Lily Allen dropped her comeback album, West End Girl, the internet rushed to support her and demonise David Harbour for his actions.
Lily’s brutally personal album featuring secret texts from ‘Madeline’ and the shattered illusion of David’s ‘dojo’ was more than we could handle.
A chorus of ‘get him’ and gleefully shocked TikTok responses erupted online as our knee-jerk reaction to empathise with the perceived victim kicked in.
Fans described the album as ‘being on FaceTime to your friend when they finally tell you how bad their ex was’; eye-opening and intimate.
West End Girl allowed listeners to immediately forge a bond with Lily, having likely been betrayed by exes themselves and empathising strongly.
Now that the dust has settled, criticism of Lily’s past actions has been creeping up in popularity, reminding fans she might not be the best person to place on a pedestal.
Controversial Halloween costumes and her own cheating scandal have resurfaced as the internet grapples with the possibility that their hero of the month is not innocent.
What are Lily Allen’s controversies?
The Not Fair singer is probably the first to admit that she’s not had the most blemish-free past.
There are three main controversies that are being brought up as a way to temper the fervor with which the internet has promoted Lily and her album.
Her first marriage
Seltzerprincess on X said: ‘I feel like it’s been memoryholed that Lily Allen admitted to repeatedly cheating on the guy she was married to before him with sex workers, and then claimed it wasn’t infidelity bc the sex workers were all women.’
This is referring to the fact Lily previously revealed that in her last marriage to Sam Cooper, who is the father of her two children, she ‘cheated’ on him.
While on tour for Sheezus, she ‘slept with female escorts’, reasoning that she was ‘lost and lonely and looking for something’.
On Instagram in 2018, she wrote: ‘I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed. I don’t do it anymore.’
At the same time, she told the Guardian: ‘She was expensive. High-class hookers are. I didn’t care. I just wanted her to help me feel something.’
In an interview with Jonathan Ross, she said: ‘Because it was a woman, I felt like it wasn’t cheating. I was bonkers.’
She has since admitted that what she did does count as cheating.
Her 2014 Halloween costume
I’mwolfie wrote: ‘Lily Allen has brought out an album and I want to make it known, yes it’s – she got cheated on by David Harbour. But let me just remind you she also dressed up as “Dr. Luke” “gynaecologist” after Kesha came out about the Dr Luke S.A. Poor taste and actually disgusting.’
In 2014, around the same time as the escorts, Lily decided to dress up as a gynaecologist named Dr Luke for Kate Hudson’s Halloween party.
The outfit came shortly after Kesha accused producer Dr Luke of sexual assault.
Many branded the actions ‘really poor taste’ on X, and it’s never been addressed by Lily.
Others defended her, with samkohn1 saying: ‘How can you not see that this is a dig at Dr Luke and not Kesha? People dress up as monsters for Halloween. Engage your brain!’
‘Kissing’ Zoe Kravitz
Kaiamal13 shared: ‘I’m sorry but no matter how much people praise Lily Allen’s album, I just can’t press play. The fact that she sexually assaulted Zoë Kravitz and it’s being brushed over like nothing happened?? just vile.’
In her memoir, Lily described being drunk on a night out with Zoë Kravitz and revealed that the pair had kissed.
The incident was awkwardly brought up on Watch What Happens Live, as Eddie Redmayne enthusiastically said he ‘loves’ The Fear singer, to which his co-star quipped: ‘No you don’t.’
‘If by kissing she means attacking, then yes — she kissed me,’ Zoë continued, clearly not finding the situation amusing.
‘She attacked me,’ the actress doubled down before clarifying that the book portrayed it as if she ‘wanted it’ but that was not the case.
Lily later awkwardly told MTV: ‘I can’t really speak for her. All I can say is my version of events, which didn’t match hers, clearly.’
Why does everyone suddenly care?
There are two major influences at play here: the need to cut down people who rise too high and the mass of people discovering Lily for the first time.
Most people who know of the star are aware of her problematic past, usually in the form of controversial statements on her podcast.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
Some of her other behaviour, including the alarming Zoë situation, mainly occurred in the mid-2010s, when she was heavily using drugs and alcohol.
It’s something which she has addressed on numerous occasions, although not always giving the perfect answers or apologies fans would have hoped for.
Lily has been sober since 2019, something she tackled on the track Relapse where she craved a drink after discovering David’s cheating.
Other than the occasional West End play or news coverage of risque things on her podcast, she’s done very little to be in the public eye on this scale.
In the UK, she’s not had a top 10 hit since 2009’s Not Fair, so it’s reasonable that her antics have fallen off most people’s radars, especially internationally.
Then came this sudden influx of interest in her, with songs trending on TikTok and internet sleuths clamouring to discover the identity ‘Madeline’.
Suddenly, everyone is hyper aware of Lily and realising maybe she’s not the damsel in distress the album painted her to be.
Then there is the parasocial need to defend David Harbour at play, heightened by his friendly public perception as he’s spent the last decade playing dad to an orphan in one of the biggest TV shows.
Together with misogynistic hangovers of blaming women for their husbands’ infidelity, you have a perfect storm for social media backlash.
Where does that leave Lily’s success?
The internet does not do well with nuance and grey areas; we like our cheaters villainous and our scorned partners innocent.
Our algorithms provide echochambers, encouraging us to connect with like-minded people but also creating an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality.
Discussing this for Intellectual Takeout, Josh Burns wrote: ‘Before social media, it was possible to express varying degrees of alignment with ideas.
‘We talked to people we disagreed with, because they probably weren’t in absolute opposition to our views, just partially, and their reasoning might have been well-founded. We are human beings; our lives have more inherent meaning and our belief systems are infinitely more complex than a simple binary switch.’
As Bigfoofheart said on X: ‘I don’t even love Lily Allen all that much, but it wouldn’t take a genius to see that our culture requires women to be consistent, likeable, sanitised and beyond reproach.’
There is a larger debate here about whether it is possible to separate the art from the artist. Many say no, especially if that artist is alive and making money.
However, in reality, highly controversial Kanye West was still the seventh most-streamed person on Spotify last year.
Ultimately, each person needs to decide where the line is for them with the knowledge that if you listen to that album (or watch that TV show, or film, etc), that problematic creator makes money.
The streams for West End Girl have been steady since its release. According to SpotifyNumbers on X, it had a total of ‘5,856,543 unfiltered streams on Spotify on October 27’.
Streaming an album famously gives artists very little money — around $0.004 per stream — but every listen adds up. Lily’s numbers from Monday alone work out at an estimated $23,400 (£17,700).
While her music remains in major playlists, the discourse around her problematic past and toxic relationship will continue, sides will be drawn, and then everyone will simply move on.
Ultimately, West End Girl has done the job it needed to do, getting her back in the charts and shaming her ex-husband publicly.
She (and David) will come through this unscathed, and we’ll all forget about it… perhaps until David’s Stranger Things press tour next month.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.