Lily Allen's West End Girl chronicles her split from David Harbour

Lily Allen released West End Girl on October 24, her first full-length album in seven years, a plainly personal collection that chronicles the breakdown of her four-year marriage to actor David Harbour. The 14-track record, written largely in a concentrated period late last year, addresses themes including infidelity, nonmonogamy, substance relapse and the emotional fallout of separation, and has prompted renewed attention to the couple’s split and the private events Allen says inspired the songs.

Allen has said the album is a mixture of fact and fiction and described it as a way to process what happened in her life. "There are definitely some things that happened in my real life that are reflected on this record," she said, while also telling interviewers that some characters are composites. In particular, a figure named Madeline appears across multiple tracks; Allen confirmed the character is constructed from numerous people rather than a single identifiable individual. She wrote the bulk of the record in about 10 days during a period she has described as deeply depressed.

Several songs offer detailed, often blunt vignettes of mistrust and discovery. Tennis recounts finding a...