Lily Allen, and how to puncture shame
Last week, Lily Allen’s album arrived into the public’s hands like a lightning bolt - literally, it was shocking (this is an understatement: the entire internet was simultaneously clutching its pearls). Even within the context of Allen’s confessional style, West End Girl seems to show an exceptionally raw portrait of a very painful experience. The detail is so unsparing that it includes what may be actual quotations from Allen’s own correspondence, read out as if through the pince-nez of a court stenographer. This album isn’t just a glimpse behind closed doors: it is an invitation to sit down with a box of popcorn, and watch the action play out before your eyes.
This invitation puts a big subject heading on the table: shame. Shame is an emotion we experience to support our social needs. For humans, being around others is essential to survival, so shame helps us fit into groups and avoid being turfed out. For example, if we’re tempted to steal resources from others in our network, shame kicks in to stop us, avoiding the risk of exile if caught. However, our shame instinct can be hijacked when the things deemed worthy of social exclusion shift from being rooted in group survival into more ideological pronouncements – as seen when things like sexuality or divorce feel like they risk judgement and ostracism. Shame is dissipated when we can share the aspects of ourselves we worry would be rejected and receive acceptance instead, affirming our safe place within our group.
So, what does this album have to say about shame? It dives right into its depths, ricocheting through multiple topics that could elicit the aforementioned judgement and ostracism, including marital breakdown, infidelity, money, parenting, insecurity, and addiction. The arc of the album takes these things from being hidden, furtive secrets, to making them very publicly known, dragging light on all the dark places in which Lily has been living. She is inviting us to look at it all with her, rebelling against the idea that it should be kept under lock and (Allen!) key. Sharing these experiences so openly seems to be an outright riposte to the creeping sinews of shame.
This rebellion isn’t just visible in Allen’s subject matter. While it has long been her schtick to marry seemingly contradicting lyrics and melodies, in this album things feel different. Gone is the peppy pop with catchy choruses: instead, a dream-like, gentle synth tone jarringly accompanies deeply sad, angry and fear-filled words. The songs refuse to be rushed, or forced into traditional structures – they rhyme or they don’t rhyme as they please, provide a chorus or don’t, and repeat words when they want to, to the point they almost shed their meaning. In these ways, it seems that Allen’s work resists the external pressure to conform, or to be softened and made easily-digestible: she brings us into the discomfort with her, and leaves us with the responsibility of finding our way back out.
What can we learn from our West End Girl? Through this magnum (Madeline?) opus, we can see her fighting the corrosive shadow of shame, placing those feelings squarely at someone else’s door (can’t imagine whose door, of course – nothing to see here, defamation lawyers!). In talking about her life on her terms, Allen is defying the idea that the fear of judgement should silence her. She is not playing by the rules, in any way – and in so doing, she’s created something very new, which is also very hers.
While it may not be within all of our powers (or inclinations) to write a vitriolic revenge epic that undoubtedly slaps, perhaps we can take a kernel of Lily’s example with us. We all have things that we feel ashamed of and would love to bury out of sight, but maybe there are ways for us to interact differently with them – perhaps we talk about them with friends we really trust, or experiment with writing about them just for ourselves (no need to publish them for 8 billion people to read, if you’d prefer not to). How we feel about our worst experiences may not be set in stone: there is always the option of taking them off the dusty old shelf and having another look at them, to see what could change on the next playthrough.