Lily Allen has opened up about how the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour was "disruptive" for her two children. The singer discussed the creation of her fifth LP, West End Girl, during an interview with CBS News. Lily wrote and recorded the record in the 10 days following the end of her relationship.
The singer shared that her intention was to create a "solid and stable and consistent environment" for her children after the family relocated to America. "That was really not what I had hoped for for my kids," she said of her divorce.
Lily admitted that she wrote her music for her two daughters. "All the pain that I've been through the past year, they've been through too. One thing that I wanted to do was to show my kids that you can use that pain and harness it and turn it to something else and I think I've done that," she explained.
The 40-year-old shared that she plans on bringing her kids along on the tour. "I'm just so excited. We're planning our touring schedule around their holidays and them being able to come on the bus and bring friends. It makes me want to cry talking about it as they're so excited and so am I," she said.
Lily also discussed the personal difficulties she faced following the end of her marriage. "My life was falling apart, so I had to go and deal with very practical stuff. It was Christmas all of a sudden, I have two kids. I got Christmas out of the way, I realized that I needed to go and do some work on myself and I checked myself into a place and get the help that I needed," she added.
She continued: "At the time I wasn’t really thinking about it as a commercial endeavour, it was just, it was an act of desperation actually. While I was writing it I wasn’t really sure whether it was going to see the light of day up until relatively close to its release. I was always thinking, 'Is this something I want to share with the world?' But not when I was writing it because the writing was very much... I hate the word - I don’t hate it but I feel like we hear the words 'catharsis' or 'therapy' in relation to music."
The hitmaker released West End Girl on October 24, with the work detailing the breakdown of her marriage. The album has been described by Lily as "a mixture of fact and fiction." Themes of the work include cheating, gaslighting and sex addiction. The couple, who tied the knot in 2020, confirmed their separation in February 2025.