Pop singer Lily Allen speaks about ex-husband’s infidelity saying breakups are “f***ing brutal”

Lily Allen has spoken frankly about her split from ex-husband US actor David Harbour, saying breakups are “always f***ing brutal”. The pop star opened up while talking about her new album.

After releasing her first album in seven years, the 40-year-old admitted it took her life “falling apart” for her to find her “authentic voice” as a music artist. The Brit-Award winning singer’s fifth album, West End Girl, contains a mix of “truth” and “fantasy”, according to Lily, sees the pop star sing about a sexual “arrangement” that was broken.

Lily told Interview Magazine that she wrote and recorded the album across 10 days in December with a “guy called Blue” who was the musical director on her last tour in 2018. She said: “I feel very differently about the whole situation now. We all go through breakups and it’s always fucking brutal. But I don’t think it’s that often that you feel inclined to write about it while you’re in it.”

It was at the end of December 2024 that reports surfaced of the singer’s split from Stranger Things star Harbour, 50, who she married in 2020. Allen said: “At the time, I was really trying to process things and that’s great in terms of the album, but I don’t feel confused or angry now. I don’t need revenge.”

She added: “Some of it (the record) is based on truth and some of it is fantasy… It’s not a cruel album. I don’t feel like I’m being mean. It was just the feelings I was processing at the time.”

Speaking about the album’s format, she said: “There’s an album I love called A Grand Don’t Come For Free by the Streets, and it’s like a movie from start to finish. Each song can stand alone and make total sense, but together it’s more like a novel. I’ve always wanted to do that, and it just happened that way on this record.

“The night before I went into the studio, I wrote 18 track titles – no melodies, no lyrics. Nobody in the studio knew what was going on in my life. I got there, spent about two hours crying my heart out, and then I was like, ‘We’re going to write an album based on some of these feelings’.”

In the album the narrator mentions a woman called Madeline, and ponders if she is both emotionally and sexually involved with their cheating partner.

Allen said: “It was very important to me that I didn’t sound like a victim, so I’d be like, ‘We have to change that line. It just sounds too ‘Poor me’. I wanted it to feel brutal and tragic, but also empowering, that there was joy in being able to express it.”

Allen also revealed she uses the membership-based dating app Raya and said she got banned from Hinge for “‘impersonating’ myself.”

The singer said dating apps are “awful, especially if you’re going through heartbreak”. “There is nothing more depressing than hundreds of people that are nothing like the person that you’re missing. It’s just like, ‘No, that’s not him. That’s not him. That’s not him”, she said.