Lily Allen

• 1. Introduction

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  In the months before her debut album, almost nobody outside her record label's A&R department knew who Lily Allen was. Even so, 500 limited edition 7-inch vinyl copies of her song "LDN" were rush-released, and they resold for as much as £40. Her audience had found her first, on the social networking site Myspace, where she posted her own recordings. The listeners who traded those singles were about to carry an English singer, songwriter and actress into the national spotlight. What does it take for a label's overlooked signing to reach number one with so little help from that label? Why would an artist with such momentum step away from music while it was going so well? And how did a woman who spoke so openly about her family, her marriages and her mistakes end up on the stage of a West End theatre?

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• 2. Thirteen Schools

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  Lily Rose Beatrice Allen was born on the 2nd of May 1985 in Hammersmith, west London. Her father, Keith Allen, was a Welsh-born actor. Her mother, Alison Owen, was an English film producer. Owen came from a devoutly Catholic, working-class family in Portsmouth and was 17 when she gave birth to Sarah, Lily's elder sister. Lily also has a younger brother, the actor Alfie, who is the subject of her song "Alfie", and a younger sister, Rebecca.

  At the age of three, Allen appeared in The Comic Strip Presents... episode "The Yob", which her father had co-written. When she was four, her father left the family. She spent her early childhood on a council estate, and the family later settled in Islington. There they lived for a time with the comedian Harry Enfield, while her mother was dating him.

  Allen attended 13 schools, among them Hill House School and Bedales School, and was expelled from several for drinking and smoking. At eleven, she was overheard singing "Wonderwall" by Oasis in a school playground by Rachel Santesso, a former music student at the University of Victoria. Santesso, who later became an award-winning soprano and composer, called her into her office the next day. She began giving Allen lunchtime singing lessons. That led to Allen singing "Baby Mine" from Disney's Dumbo at a school concert. She later told Loveline that the audience was "brought to tears at the sight of a troubled young girl doing something good". At that point she knew music was something she needed to do, either as a lifelong vocation or to get it out of her system.

  Allen reached grade 5 standard on the piano and grade 8 in singing. She also played violin, guitar and trumpet, and she sang in a chamber choir, where her first solo was "In the Bleak Midwinter". In 1998 she appeared in the music video for "Vindaloo" by Fat Les. At fifteen she dropped out of school. She said she did not want to "spend a third of her life preparing to work for the next third of her life, to set herself up with a pension for the next third of her life."

  Ibiza gave her a very different education. On a family holiday there, she told her mother she was staying with friends and instead remained in Sant Antoni de Portmany. At fifteen she earned money working in a Plastic Fantastic record store and dealing ecstasy. On the island she met her first manager, George Lamb.

  In 2001 she recorded the vocals for "On Me Head Not Off Me Head", a song her father wrote for the film Mike Bassett: England Manager. In 2002 she featured on "Who Invented Fish and Chips" by her father's group Fat Les. She also started working with producers and recorded a demo, but several labels rejected her. She blamed her drinking and her status as Keith Allen's daughter. Eventually her father's connections helped her sign to London Records in 2002. The executive who had signed her then left, and the label lost interest. She departed without releasing her folk songs, many of which her father had written. She then studied horticulture to become a florist, but changed her mind and returned to music. In 2004 her manager introduced her to the production duo Future Cut, who worked in a small studio in the basement of an office building.

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• 3. Myspace Breakthrough

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  Regal Recordings signed Allen in 2005 and gave her £25,000 to produce an album. The label could offer little support. It was preoccupied with other releases, such as X&Y by Coldplay and Demon Days by Gorillaz.

  In November 2005, Allen created a Myspace account and began posting demos she had recorded that month. They attracted thousands of listeners and won airplay on BBC Radio 1. She also made two mixtapes, My First Mixtape and My Second Mixtape, to promote her work. As her Myspace friends grew into the tens of thousands, The Observer Music Monthly, a magazine published in The Observer, took an interest in March 2006. Her label was slow to answer publications that wanted to write about her. Two months later, she appeared in the magazine's cover story, her first major mainstream coverage.

  The success persuaded the label to give her more creative control. She was allowed to use songs she had written herself instead of working with mainstream producers. She chose Greg Kurstin and Mark Ronson, and she finished the rest of the album in two weeks. Alright, Still was released in July 2006. Most of its tracks had already been previewed on her Myspace page, including the singles "Smile", "LDN", "Knock 'Em Out" and "Alfie".

  By July 2006, her debut commercial single, "Smile", had reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. It earned double Platinum certification from the British Phonographic Industry. Alright, Still drew positive reviews, peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and sold over 2.6 million copies worldwide. It also earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Album.

  The United States took longer to catch on. "Smile" appeared on the US iTunes Store in September 2006. Entertainment Weekly named Alright, Still one of the top 10 albums of 2006 before it had even been released there. MTV made her its Discover and Download artist of the month for January 2007. The album arrived in the US on the 30th of January 2007 and landed at number 20 on the Billboard 200. By January 2009 it had sold 960,000 copies in the UK and 520,000 in the US.

  In 2007, Allen played the newly launched Park Stage at Glastonbury Festival, replacing MIA, who had cancelled. During the festival she reunited two members of The Specials. Guitarist Lynval Golding claimed the moment played a "massive part" in the group's 2009 reunion. She sang the vocals on "Oh My God", a top ten single by Mark Ronson that covered a song by the Kaiser Chiefs. On the 1st of July 2007 she sang "LDN" and "Smile" at the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium. Her single "Littlest Things" helped earn Ronson a 2008 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non Classical. She also won a 2008 BMI songwriting award for "Smile".

  In October 2007, she covered "Don't Get Me Wrong" by the Pretenders for the compilation Radio 1: Established 1967, which marked forty years since BBC Radio 1 first went on air. She later performed at a benefit concert for War Child, an agency that protects children affected by war. Backed by Keane, she sang "Smile" and "Everybody's Changing".

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• 4. Reggae and Retro

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  Joe Strummer, the Clash singer and guitarist, was a close friend of Allen's father Keith and was close to Allen too. When she was young, he played her mixtapes of Brazilian music and Jamaican reggae and ska. She later said she had "always been into very black music", such as ska, reggae and hip hop. Since she did not know how to rap, she chose reggae as her reference point when making Alright, Still.

  The result blends ska and reggae with pop melodies. The ska influence shows clearly on "LDN", her second single. Her melodies owe something to the jazz improvisation of the American singers Blossom Dearie and Ella Fitzgerald. The beats borrow from genres such as jazz and grime. Her early songs were sung against retro productions, and she was also noted for her liberal use of crude words.

  Allen has said she cringes when she listens to Alright, Still. It reminds her that she was a "sort of over-excitable teenager who desperately wanted attention" when she wrote it. Many other artists had adopted a retro sound since her debut, so she wanted to move on. On her second album, It's Not Me, It's You, she took a new direction in both sound and lyrics. Its first single, "The Fear", is an electro-pop track denouncing consumerism. Some critics praised the new direction and her willingness to write about less common subjects.

  A rapper once borrowed her voice for a reason that had nothing to do with genre. T-Pain sampled her song "Who'd Have Known" in his single "5 O'Clock" because of her accent.

  Her own influence has reached other singers. Lady Gaga, Tegan and Sara, Bridgit Mendler, Jullie, Victoria Justice and Charli XCX have each been influenced by Allen. So has Olivia Rodrigo, who would eventually share a Glastonbury stage with her.

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• 5. Second Album Success

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  After Alright, Still, her parent record company, EMI, was taken over by Terra Firma. Allen changed management from Empire Artist Management to Twenty-First Artists, though her core team stayed in place. At her label's urging, she tried and failed to make her second album with several writers and producers. She then returned to Greg Kurstin, who had written three songs for the debut. Kurstin produced It's Not Me, It's You at Eagle Rock Studios in Los Angeles and played piano on it. On her earlier work she had written lyrics for finished tracks. This time she co-wrote the songs with Kurstin.

  Her statement explained the change. "We decided to try and make bigger sounding, more ethereal songs, real songs... I wanted to work with one person from start to finish to make it one body of work. I wanted it to feel like it had some sort of integrity. I think I've grown up a bit as a person and I hope it reflects that." She posted two new demos on her Myspace page and planned a mixtape to show fans the new direction.

  The album was first scheduled for early 2008. Creative problems and a personal loss pushed it back to the autumn. An EMI restructuring that autumn led to the release date being moved again.

  Her public behaviour around this time drew plenty of criticism. She cancelled a scheduled appearance at the 2008 Isle of Wight Festival and told promoter John Giddings that her album was behind schedule. Giddings said the reason was not acceptable and possibly a lie, but he decided not to sue. Photos of her drunk and topless at the Cannes Film Festival were widely covered in the press. At the 2008 Glamour Awards she arrived intoxicated in a dress covered in decapitated Bambi figures and had an expletive-laced exchange with Elton John on stage. On the 29th of June 2008, she performed at Glastonbury Festival alongside Mark Ronson. An emotional Allen dedicated "Littlest Things" to her grandmother, who had died the night before.

  To reach people who had never heard of her, the album's viral marketing campaign included an online game, Escape the Fear, created by Matmi. It topped the worldwide viral charts three times, including during Christmas week, a highly contested time of year. By the 18th of February 2009 it had been played over two million times.

  It's Not Me, It's You was released in February 2009. It debuted at number one in the UK, Canada and Australia, and at number five in the United States. It was certified platinum in the UK, and its release was a factor in EMI more than trebling its earnings. "The Fear" spent its first four weeks in the UK at number one, and "Not Fair" reached number nine. Her It's Not Me, It's You World Tour began in March 2009 and ran until September 2010.

  The prizes arrived in 2010. At the Ivor Novello Awards, her work with Kurstin earned her the Songwriters of the Year award. With Kurstin she also won Best Song Musically and Lyrically and Most Performed Work for "The Fear". Allen appeared overwhelmed by recognition from what she considered "real awards". She also won the Brit Award for British Female Solo Artist at the 2010 Brit Awards. In October 2010, she won her second BMI Pop Song Award, for the extensive US radio airplay of "The Fear". Her full tally for music now stands at 31 awards and 73 nominations. Those include nominations for nine BRIT Awards, one Grammy Award, three Ivor Novello Awards (all won), one Mercury Prize and twelve NME Awards (three won).

  Meanwhile, Allen and Amy Winehouse were credited with starting a process that led to the "year of the women" media label in 2009. That year, five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" were nominated for the Mercury Prize. Around the same time, Allen and Jamie Hince, guitarist for The Kills, raised £48,350 for the children's charity The Hoping Foundation by singing "Dream a Little Dream of Me" at a karaoke auction.

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• 6. Beyond the Charts

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  In 2008, Allen hosted her own BBC Three talk show, Lily Allen and Friends, under a one-series contract. The show was based on the social networking phenomenon that helped launch her career. Guests included Mark Ronson, Joanna Page, James Corden, Lauren Laverne, Róisín Murphy, Louis Walsh and Danny Dyer. Despite a high-profile nationwide marketing campaign, it attracted only 2 per cent of the total multi-channel audience. BBC Three nonetheless renewed it for a second season, citing her rapid development as a host and her popularity with its target audience. Its controller, Danny Cohen, later said the show would not air in the spring of 2009 as planned because of her music commitments.

  In 2009, the National Portrait Gallery made her the face of its marketing campaign. Nadav Kander photographed her for a picture emblazoned with the words "vocalist, lyricist, florist". Karl Lagerfeld, head designer at Chanel, personally hired and photographed her for a campaign promoting a luxury line of handbags due to launch in September 2009. On the 15th of September 2010, Allen and her sister opened their own clothing store, called Lucy in Disguise.

  In January 2011, Allen launched her own record label, In the Name Of, with financial backing from Sony Music. It released the debut album of Tom Odell and closed in 2014. In May 2016, she announced a second label, Bank Holiday Records. The British-American R&B singer Celeste was one of its first signings.

  On the 20th of September 2018, she published a memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, with Blink Publishing. It was nominated for FutureBook Campaign of the Year. The Evening Standard picked it as one of seven "best celebrity memoirs of 2018", and The Guardian listed it among nine books in the Showbusiness category of its best books of 2018.

  In October 2020, she worked with the sex tech company Womanizer to create her own product, Liberty, a clitoral pump. She became the company's chief liberation officer and leads its #IMasturbate campaign, which encourages women to embrace their sexuality. She had already recommended Womanizer's products in her memoir.

  In 2024, Allen began hosting a twice-weekly BBC Sounds podcast, Miss Me?, with her friend Miquita Oliver. That year she also opened an OnlyFans account to sell pictures and videos of her feet. Photos of her feet were popular on WikiFeet, a foot fetish website, and her nail technician suggested she could make money from them. She has said that, as of 2024, she earned more from OnlyFans than from her roughly eight million listeners on Spotify.

  Her acting career began long before the West End. In 1998, she appeared as a lady-in-waiting in the film Elizabeth, which her mother co-produced. In July 2019, she played Elizabeth Taylor in How to Build a Girl, alongside her brother Alfie.

  In June 2021, she announced that she would play the lead role of Jenny in the West End play 2:22 A Ghost Story at the Noël Coward Theatre from the 3rd of August 2021. Danny Robins wrote the play and Matthew Dunster directed it. Reviewing it for The Independent, Annabel Nugent wrote, "Allen is superb as Jenny." In 2022, Allen received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress and won a WhatsOnStage Award for the role.

  In 2023, she starred as Katurian in a revival of Martin McDonagh's play The Pillowman at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. Her co-stars were Steve Pemberton, Paul Kaye and Matthew Tennyson, and Dunster directed again. In April 2023, she starred alongside Freema Agyeman in Dreamland for Sky Max, a comedy-drama from Sharon Horgan. It was developed from a short starring Morgana Robinson that aired in 2017. In July and August 2025, Allen played Hedda Gabler in Hedda, a new reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's play. Dunster adapted and directed it for the Ustinov Studio in Bath, Somerset.

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• 7. Private Life, Public Row

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  In September 2007, Allen began dating Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers, and in December she announced that they were expecting a child. In January 2008, she announced that she had suffered a miscarriage. In her 2018 memoir, she wrote that she had actually had an abortion but "faked" the miscarriage because she feared how the tabloids would report the story. After five months of dating, the relationship ended. She has also said she spent three weeks in a psychiatric clinic because of depression.

  Allen began dating Sam Cooper, a builder and decorator, in July 2009. On the 5th of August 2010, she announced that she was pregnant with their first child, a boy due early in 2011. She experienced complications early on, including "about a week and a half of really heavy bleeding". In late October, six months into the pregnancy, she contracted a viral infection that caused a stillbirth, announced on the 1st of November. On the 6th of November she was admitted to hospital, where she responded well to treatment for septicaemia. In February 2017, she said she had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder after the stillbirth.

  The couple became engaged in December 2010 while on holiday in Bali. They married on the 11th of June 2011 at St. James Church in Cranham, Gloucestershire. The designer of her wedding dress confirmed that she was several months pregnant that day. Her daughter Ethel Mary was born in 2011, and her second daughter, Marnie Rose, in 2013. After Marnie's birth, Allen experienced postnatal depression.

  On the 2nd of September 2018, Allen posted on Instagram that she had paid for sex with female escorts in 2014. She was married to Cooper at the time and on tour promoting Sheezus. She had described the events in My Thoughts Exactly and posted because the Daily Mail planned to publish an article the next day. She wrote, "I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed", and she linked the events to her postnatal depression and the breakdown of her marriage. She criticised the press for portraying them as a "lesbian prostitute sex romp". On The Jonathan Ross Show, she said she did not regard the sex as cheating, because the escorts were women.

  The memoir also described an affair with Liam Gallagher while he was married to Nicole Appleton. In mid-2015, Allen and Cooper broke up after she told him about her infidelity. In June 2018, it was announced that a "friendly divorce" had been finalised and that they would share custody of their children.

  In 2019, Allen began a relationship with the American actor David Harbour. They made their red carpet debut at the 26th Screen Actors Guild Awards in January 2020. On the 7th of September 2020, a day after obtaining their marriage licence, they married in Las Vegas in a ceremony officiated by an Elvis impersonator. They shared a home in Brooklyn. In 2024, Allen said she had prioritised her children over her career, in contrast to the relative absence of her own parents. In December 2024, The Telegraph reported that the couple had separated, after Allen's profile was seen on the exclusive dating app Raya. Other reports say the separation became official in early 2025.

  Allen has been outspoken about her body image. In an interview for Lorraine, an ITV breakfast programme, she said she "used to sleep for days so that she didn't eat" and that her relationship with her body was "not great" in her 20s. In January 2021, she explained that she had become addicted to the prescription drug Adderall in 2014, taking it to lose weight before supporting Miley Cyrus on the Bangerz tour. In February 2017, she said she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In 2023, she was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

  In 2008, a man named Alex Gray first contacted Allen with tweets claiming he had written her song "The Fear", under the handle "@lilyallenisRIP". He went on to send threatening letters to her home, her clothes shop, her record label and her manager's office. In October 2015, he emailed his mother saying he planned to murder a celebrity. He then spent nights in Allen's back garden and broke into her bedroom while she slept, which ultimately forced her to move. Allen strongly criticised the Metropolitan Police for their inaction. She said they refused to show her a picture of her stalker, lent her a panic alarm and then demanded it back, and would not believe the incidents were linked. In April 2016, Gray was convicted of burglary and harassment. At Harrow Crown Court on the 10th of June, Judge Martyn Barklem sentenced him to an indefinite hospital order. Gray also received a restraining order banning him from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Allen said she isolated herself, believing "nobody was taking me seriously because the police weren't taking me seriously". That period coincided with her divorce, in which she says "everyone sided with Cooper".

  In November 2010, she took legal action against Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail, after the paper published photographs of her home. She cited invasion of privacy and copyright infringement. She is also a cricket fan and has appeared on Test Match Special.

  Outspokenness got her into trouble early. She made disparaging remarks about musicians such as Luke Pritchard of the Kooks, Bob Geldof, Cheryl, Nicola Roberts, Amy Winehouse, Kylie Minogue and Katy Perry. She later put it down to a lack of confidence: "I felt like 'Oh God, I'm short, fat, ugly and I hate all these people who flaunt their beauty.'" On the 28th of June 2007, she was arrested in London for allegedly assaulting the photographer Kevin Rush as she left a nightclub in the West End. In May 2009, the French football magazine So Foot published a fake interview in which she was quoted making derogatory remarks about David and Victoria Beckham and Ashley and Cheryl Cole. The British tabloid The Sun reprinted some of it. Both publications later apologised and paid her damages.

  Allen considers herself a socialist and is a staunch supporter of the Labour Party. She was credited with helping inspire a parliamentary rebellion against Prime Minister Gordon Brown. She wrote to all members of parliament asking them to back an amendment to an energy bill that would require a reward scheme for home production of renewable energy. When the British government planned a three-strikes policy for file sharing copyright infringement, she supported disconnecting repeat offenders. She created a blog titled "It's Not Alright" against file sharing. It later emerged that she had copied text from an interview with 50 Cent on the Techdirt website without attribution. That led to accusations that her own early mixtapes infringed other artists' copyrights. A group of file-sharing supporters calling themselves "Anonymous" launched a denial of service attack, dubbed Operation Payback, that shut down her website.

  On the 1st of October 2009, Allen and several other musicians released the world's first digital musical petition. It aimed to pressure world leaders attending the December 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen and included a cover of "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil. In the London assembly and mayoral elections of April 2016, she said she would give "half her vote to the Women's Equality Party", voting for them on the London-wide Assembly list and for Labour elsewhere. In June 2016, she published tweets and attended protests supporting the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after mass resignations from his shadow cabinet.

  On the 15th of June 2017, she appeared on Channel 4 News to discuss the Grenfell Tower fire. She claimed that "the death count has been downplayed by the mainstream media". The official figure then stood at 17 fatalities, and she said, "I'm hearing from people that the figure is much closer to 150". The official death toll is now 72. In November 2019, during the general election campaign, she called the Labour manifesto "the best I've ever seen". She shared a picture of her polling card with the caption "Tories OUT."

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• 8. Comebacks

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  In September 2009, Allen announced that she was considering a career in acting, that she would not renew her record contract, and that she had "no plans" to make another record. She did not vanish from the charts. In June 2010 she featured on "Just Be Good to Green" by Professor Green, a UK top five single. The following month she began writing songs for a musical version of Bridget Jones's Diary, scheduled to open in London's West End in 2012. In September 2010, she gave her last performance for two and a half years, supporting Muse at Wembley Stadium in London. In 2011, T-Pain used a verse of hers as the chorus of "5 O'Clock", with Wiz Khalifa. The song reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Allen's first Top 10 single in the United States.

  In June 2012, Allen confirmed she was back in the studio with Greg Kurstin. She briefly changed her professional name to Lily Rose Cooper and appeared on "True Love" on Pink's sixth album, The Truth About Love, released in September 2012. In February 2013, she performed live at a Paris fashion show produced by Mark Ronson, in what she called her "mumback". In August 2013, she changed her professional name back to Lily Allen.

  In November 2013, she recorded a cover of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" for the John Lewis Christmas advert. A portion of the song's sales earnings went to Save the Children's Philippine Typhoon Appeal. It reached number one in the UK singles chart on the 24th of November. Twelve days earlier, on the 12th of November, she had premiered the video for "Hard Out Here" on her official website. The song entered the UK singles chart at number nine, giving her two simultaneous top ten hits. The video was accused of being racist for its use of mostly black dancers in an allegedly "disapproving" manner. Allen replied that ethnicity was not a factor in hiring the dancers. She said the video was a lighthearted satire of the objectification of women in modern pop music. In November 2016, she apologised for it in an interview with Annie Mac. "I definitely wanted to make a feminist statement. But I was guilty of assuming that there was a one-size-fits-all where feminism is concerned."

  In December 2013, Allen was announced as one of the newest signings at Warner Bros. Records. Warner Music Group had acquired Parlophone from Universal Music Group in May 2013. "Air Balloon" premiered on BBC Radio 1 on the 13th of January 2014 and was released on the 2nd of March 2014 as the second single from her third album, Sheezus. The album came out on the 5th of May 2014 and topped the UK Albums Chart. In 2014 she also supported Miley Cyrus's Bangerz Tour in North America and performed at Glastonbury Festival.

  After Sheezus, Allen had what she called an "identity crisis". She did not enjoy the music she was being asked to make, and she believed people within the industry were controlling her choices. For her next album she wanted to work through her problems via music. She felt that people are often led "by outside forces" when trying to express themselves, and she wanted to explore that. In late 2017, she uploaded numerous songs online, including "Family Man". In December, a song called "Trigger Bang", featuring the rapper Giggs, leaked. On the 24th of January 2018, she announced that the album would be called No Shame, and it was released on the 8th of June 2018. An electropop album, it takes influence from dancehall and reggae. Its confessional lyrics discuss the breakdown of her marriage and friendships, maternal guilt, substance abuse and social and political issues. Critics praised its mature lyrics, her artistic evolution, and its composition and production. It was one of 12 albums shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and peaked at number eight on the UK Albums Chart. It reached the top 40 in New Zealand and Ireland and became her fourth consecutive top 10 album in Australia. She then embarked on the worldwide No Shame Tour.

  In April 2019, Allen revealed on Beats 1 radio that her next record would be a concept album. In March 2020, she said it featured only "odd mentions" of her past addictions, because she felt she had "moved on mentally so far from that time." At Glastonbury Festival in 2022, she appeared during Olivia Rodrigo's set to perform "Fuck You". It was a protest against the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that abortion was not protected by the Constitution of the United States. The Guardian described it as a "thrilling, furious" moment. Allen, then nearly three years sober, said she was unsure she could perform "on a stage like that sober again". In late 2022, she booked five weeks in a music studio, but it felt "contrived" and the music was not ready for release. By 2024, she had recorded around 50 songs for her next project.

  On the 20th of October 2025, Allen announced that her fifth studio album, West End Girl, would be released four days later. It was her first album in seven years and her first since leaving Parlophone Records. Its lyrics are personal and honest, discussing the infidelity and alleged sex addiction of her ex-husband David Harbour. She said the album was partially based on the "demise" of that relationship. Critics gave it widespread acclaim. It peaked at number two on the UK albums chart and reached the top 10 in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland. The lead single, "Madeline", reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart. The album track "Pussy Palace" peaked at number 8, her first top-10 UK single in over a decade.

  On the 13th of February 2026, she announced that all of her albums would be released on vinyl. That includes Alright, Still, which has never had a vinyl release. Her 2026 headline tour is titled Lily Allen Performs West End Girl.

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