0.42.2 - There's a Story Goin' Round
Time starts...now.
If you'd asked me to name anyone from the music scene of the early 2000s who might randomly pop up into the music world after a long hiatus and release a highly talked about new album, Lily Allen's name might have appeared towards the fourth or fifth hour of me guessing, probably shortly after I guessed Duffy would have released new music. I was convinced she had moved out of the music game for good*, trading in her short lived but moderately successful career for talk show hosting duties and having weird and not always great opinions on politics and saying them out loud.
I don't have any particular gripes with her music, well, not the original incarnation of her career. In fact, one of her songs from that era The Fear is amongst my favourites from that time, earning a coveted spot on my highly populated but carefully curated music mix of 'songs I like and want to put in a big list somewhere' which I assume every music fan with access to a streaming service has some incarnation of. Mine is called "BBQ Party Playlist" even though we haven't held a barbeque at our house since I turned 40 for one reason or another, but the legacy lives on in my multi-hour long setlist of every song I ever kind of liked.
The thing I've always believed about her was that she had a great instinct for a lyric, a cutting turn of phrase that had a keen edge when slicing into the social, personal, or romantic subjects she chose for her records. The Fear in particular is a lovingly crafted takedown of British tabloid culture and the way we react to them, how the papers trade in the scandal of the day, while the subjects of their scrutiny warp their own behaviours to conform to society's expectations.
It's funny what 15 years will do to your perspective.
If you've somehow missed the greater context to this preamble, let me enlighten you by telling you that quite out of the blue, with little promotion, Lily Allen released West End Girl, an album which chronicles the breakdown of her relationship with actor David Harbour. Now, before I go on let me say that assuming that her account of the breakup is accurate** David Harbour sounds like a real piece of shit and I can totally see how much that could mess someone up, and why as a creative person you might want to express that through your music, or writing, or Coptic pottery painting outlet.
Here's the thing though. I listened to the whole album in one sitting, driving down the motorway for a day out at Yorkshire Sculpture Park***, and the longer I listened, the more conflicted I became. Was I engaged? I was, I cannot lie. But was I engaged with the music? Not at all. The appeal, the allure, the draw of the album was the scandal and the telling of it. Musically, it's mundane, forgettable. I pulled into the car park as the album reached the end convinced that if you took that entire album, beat for beat, and replaced the lyrics with poetry about anything else sung by anyone else you'd be hard pressed to consider it anything other than fairly anodyne elevator music, rather than it being a "brave masterpiece".
There are lots of great breakup albums, but what makes them great is they're emotionally powerful but also musically powerful. Somehow, West End Girl only manages one part of that for me, and I can't help but feel like the effusive praise for it since its release a fortnight ago isn't really just music critics mistaking "juicy and compelling" for "important and creative". This is the musical equivalent of a Page 6 gossip column, Take A Break magazine with an instrumental beat behind it.
Being nearly 900 albums into my run this year means that I've obviously listened to a lot of the candidates for 'great breakup album' status already; Melodrama by Lorde, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, Disintegration by The Cure, plus just about every Taylor Swift album I've listened to this year. But to present some contrast, and add some weight to my argument, I listened to two breakup albums I consider to be the peak of their artform.
I honestly don't think there's a better modern breakup album than 21. While it might not have the A-to-B-to-C narrative throughline and complete retelling of the breakup that West End Girls has, that is to it's benefit; instead we get vignettes, disconnected scenes of what came before, all anchored with the gospel blues soul sound she's known for. She's got an incredibly powerful voice, like a volcano of raw emotion and she absolutely leaves everything out on the court on this record; a record that's filled to the brim with absolute heartbreak bangers. If you needed something to get you through a breakup, you're 100% going to find greater salvation in belting out tear-stained accompaniments to Set Fire To The Rain or Someone Like You than any comfort you are likely to find listening to Pussy Palace.****
In the interest of gender equality (though the number of heartfelt straight breakup albums by male artists which don't just collapse into toxic misogyny is, shall we say, limited*****), and because I liked the synchronicity of it being another album with a number title, 13 by Blur manages again to mark the process of a relationship falling apart, in this case the long-term relationship between Damon Albarn and Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann. There are long and candid accounts of the relationships between several of the Britpop pillars at the time, but principal amongst them was the history of Damon Albarn orchestrating the breakup of Frischmann and her than boyfriend Brett Anderson of Suede, then dating in a highly public, highly mercurial way before their chaotic relationship fell apart just as both of their bands were doing the same to some degree.
With that preamble, you'd expect an album full of recrimination perhaps, of the kind of vengeful "all women are crazy" invective it would be easy to fall into. Instead, 13 shows the other side of a failing relationship than that portrayed in 21. There's a sadness and an understanding, a reflection on how things fell apart and the hundred little shifting pebbles beneath their feet they placed themselves, before the avalanche took them both off the cliff. If Someone Like You is the hairbrush clutching defiant breakup anthem, No Distance Left To Run is the start of the healing process, the musical touchstone for the moment of acceptance when you know it's done, and you have to move on to something new.
In the end, Lily Allen will make her money, she's going on tour doing the album in it's entirety (the first time, perhaps, a therapy patient has managed to convince people to come and pay her for her therapy session) and why not? But can we please not call it a great album, or a masterpiece? There are so, so many better options out there.
* Cursory research informs me that she actually released albums in 2014 and 2018 as well as the two I was familiar with but I'm not going to correct myself just because I have been proved wrong, what do you take me for?
** I have no reason to believe it is not, but I'm also conscious that breakup stories are often kinder to the person telling them than the person being told about.
*** This isn't strictly necessary detail but I like to add texture to your reading experience.
**** I have to take issue with her including a cover of 'Lovesong' by The Cure on 21 though. I know its thematically resonant, but that's not your song and you're version is just a worse version of the original Adele. Just write something else instead!!
***** I'd recommend everyone go watch the TrainWreckords episode on Robin Thicke's album Paula if you want an idea of quite how badly this can go.
