Photographers feverishly tried to capture an image of Allen, adorned in silk and lace, as she demonstrated her masterful ability to enact revenge in an entirely new format: styling. Pairing a teeny-tiny Colleen Allen bralette with an elegant floor-length matching skirt and stole (in white, no less!), this was the 2025 version of a revenge dress.
Would you expect any different, at this point? Allen is, evidently, in her boldest and most brilliant era yet. Hot on the heels of her comeback album, West End Girl, which gave jaw-dropping insight into the breakdown of her marriage to actor David Harbour (a mix of ‘fact and fiction’, she says), Allen just announced her first tour in seven years – playing a series of intimate venues across the UK.
Lily Allen at the 2025 CFDA Awards at American Museum of Natural History on November 03, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Adrian Edwards/GC Images)
It’s predicted to be a sell-out success. West End Girl’s blend of brutal honesty and infectious melodies broke records in its opening week, knocking Taylor Swift from the top spot for her Life Of A Showgirl album in the UK. ‘I’ve never seen a response like this from music I’ve written,’ says songwriter Violet Skies, who was part of the small team who spent 16 days with Allen writing and recording the album last year.
‘It was such a fever dream,’ Skies recalls, noting that the team was only given two weeks’ notice to get to Los Angeles, where the album was recorded in the home of executive producer and long-time musical partner of Allen’s, Blue May. ‘It was so inspiring and just very real, because it was all happening to her in real time.’
The album was recorded a year ago now, just as rumours about a possible separation between Allen and Harbour were brewing. (They confirmed their split in February this year.) Allen had tried to record her come-back album in 2022 but kept postponing days in the studio. When she arrived in Blue May’s house last year, though, she was ready.
‘Lily arrived with the song titles, which is really very unusual,’ Skies explains. ‘She would come in and say, “Right, I want to write a song called Dallas Major,” and we’re like, “OK, let’s have some backstory.” But because the story, although elaborated in some ways, is real, it’s easier to build on. We’re not trying to pull stuff from our imaginations.’
Allen hadn’t worked with most of the team before so how did Skies navigate the raw confessions and ruthless detail in the album that poured out? ‘You have to approach it with a lot of compassion and space because these are very real feelings Lily had,’ she says. ‘It was very intense, some 12-hour days. The day we wrote Relapse was a night-time studio session at Blue’s house, but earlier we’d been writing Madeline, so it was very heavy, and you have to really talk through the process enough to work out what she wants to say. On days like that, it was like playing tennis with Lily. I’d throw some melodies or lyrics, and she’d throw some back. Sometimes she would hand me a whole paragraph of thoughts and then we’d organise them. While it might be painful, it was really fruitful. She’s so honest and funny and self-effacing; I don’t know if I’ve ever worked with an artist who’s willing to say what Lily will. Most people are trying to present the best version of themselves, and Lily was trying to present the realest version of herself.’
It was also hilarious at times, Skies says. ‘There were a lot of days we were just laughing at the audacity [of the lyrics]. When we worked on Sleepwalking and we put the line in from Oliver Twist, “Please sir, can I have some more?” we were all laughing and then I turned to Lily like, “I feel bad because I know this is actually happening to you,” and she’s like, “No, it is funny!” I guess, what else are you going to do if you can’t laugh at it?’
The environment was also unusual, Skies says, with days spent sat on the sofa writing while others thought up melodies on piano, guitar and drums. ‘It felt like days I had as a teenager in a band, writing live in the room,’ Skies says. ‘That’s not normal these days. Many songwriting sessions have less and less real instruments, it’s just a computer.’
That’s perhaps what made the music so profound, certainly breaking the mould on what a break-up album, and a pop album at that, can be. Allen and May also made sure that every team member is credited equally, including how the profits are split. ‘It’s rare to be treated that well on a project, with that amount of transparency and respect,’ Skies explains.
For Skies, then, West End Girl shook up the status quo of the music industry – as much as the rest of us. ‘There’s a line in Let Me In that says, “All I can do is sing,” and that really is Lily’s best form of self expression,’ Skies sums up. ‘The pen is her power.’
