A few years ago, I became glued to a podcast named Normal Gossip, in which the host, journalist Kelsey McKinney, and a guest dissected real-life stories anonymously submitted by strangers. They could be heart-wrenching and hilarious and deliciously petty—tales of bad dates and sports leagues and misbehaving neighbours; housemates and grandmothers and summer camps. The more specific, the more compelling they seemed to be. To this day, the scandals of a corgi-based Facebook group, a pocket watch community and usage of acrylic yarn at a knitting group remain etched in my memory.
When McKinney later published a book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, she wrote of the merits of hearsay as both dopamine hit and act of protection, but also of how since childhood she had felt compelled to retell gossip. “I wanted to take it in my hands and mold it,” she said, “rearrange the punch lines and the reveals until I could get the timing right enough that my friends in the cafeteria would gasp.”
In late October, the release of Lily Allen’s fifth album, West End Girl, made me think of McKinney and her podcast again. Allen’s record is an impeccable piece of storytelling—the tale of a marriage thrown to the wind, its songs divulge and dissect and are mesmerisingly indiscreet. They are also catchy enough that it feels as if their salaciousness might be spread simply through the medium of whistling alone. It is, in short, a record so accomplished, about a story so devastating, it feels as if the singer has molded it, rearranged its punch lines and reveals to get the timing just right.
Everyone in the cafeteria gasped, of course. In the days that followed its release, newspaper columnists ruminated on everything from the meaning of puffer jackets (as worn by Allen on the album’s cover) to the morals of open relationships (as experienced by Allen in her marriage); it became the singer’s highest-charting album in over a decade, the most-downloaded of the week; Gwyneth Paltrow described it as a masterpiece; people dressed as Allen and her former husband for Halloween.
It helped, naturally, that Allen’s ex was the actor David Harbour; that they had once opened their Brooklyn brownstone for an Architectural Digest video tour; and that Allen, in an act of wit and defiance, had chosen to hold an album promo shoot in said home shortly before she moved out. She gave her listeners characters, set, script and score.
She also gave them unflinching specificity, a kind of inventory of betrayal. In one track she’s going through her husband’s bedside drawer, she’s poring over his receipts; in another she’s finding plastic bags from the US pharmacy chain Duane Reade filled with butt plugs, lube and hundreds of condoms. Later, she’s recounting text exchanges with her husband’s mistress, and wondering why his inamorata is also now his tennis partner.
It all seemed to culminate in a single line, levelled in Allen’s famously impudent tone: “Who the fuck is Madeline?” The line drew the ear in much the same manner as the apricot scarf in Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”, or “Becky with the good hair” in Beyonce’s “Sorry”. A detail that speaks of hyper-vigilance and crazed surveillance, all the self-degradation that often follows a partner’s betrayal.
‘The Life of a Showgirl’ marked a rare creative misstep for Taylor Swift
To turn turmoil and vulnerability and humiliation into music is a remarkable feat, and one that was long ago mastered by Taylor Swift. The popstar has made something of a specialty out of writing songs that are righteous and wronged and ripe with specifics—half-cloaked references to exes and rivals, the bad things they did, the hurt they unleashed.
Allen’s record arrived not so very long after the release of Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl. It was her 12th record, and it sold magnificently, of course, but it marked a rare creative misstep for the singer. On many of its songs, Swift once again cast herself in the role of vengeful underdog, let down by lovers and friends—an increasingly hard tone to strike when you are the biggest popstar in the world and radiantly engaged to a football star.
More than anything, her timing felt off. The songs moved with a precision quite at odds with pop’s current attitude, which is messy, contradictory and flawed; intimate more than aspirational.
Back in 2006, Allen’s debut held all of these qualities—Alright, Still was irreverent and tittle-tattle-y, and Allen herself a pleasingly gobby and unpredictable pop star. In more recent years, there was a shift: her life seemed to follow a kind of Swiftian trajectory, if not in terms of mega-tours and colossal pay checks, then certainly in its careful study of perfection—sobriety, pilates, Brooklyn townhouses, the happy-ever-after of marriage to a famous man.
Much of the joy of West End Girl comes in its detonation of this scene; as if she has not only blown up the indefectible image of her married life but burst the fierce, shiny bubble of pop music that has dominated for so long. What’s left is something heart-wrenching, hilarious, deliciously petty, a glorious return to normality.
