Consumer Guide Album

Lily Allen: West End Girl [BMG, 2025]
Some sixteen ago I wrote a full-length Barnes & Noble Review essay praising this then-23-year-old British ingenue-in-disguise. Then I pretty much forgot about her as she became a renowned minor U.K. star. Sonically, this album is, like Allen's voice, lightweight albeit tuneful, but after all this time she seemed worth checking out and proved surprisingly complex. I believe the album reflects a major lacuna in marital mores between the UK, where the concept of the "open marriage" is often all but taken for granted, and the USA, where such notions are less casual and explicit. "I know you've made me your madonna," Allen reminds her theoretical lifemate before informing listeners that "my marriage has been open since my husband went astray." In fact, she concludes, her estranged husband is a "sex addict," so maybe it's in the spirit of competition that she adds "I wanna be your whore." And it gets more detailed and complicated than that, you bet. A