Woman Claiming To Have Inspired Lily Allen's Madeline Reacts To The Song
A woman alleging that she inspired the new Lily Allen cut Madeline has shared her take on the song.
Last week, Lily unveiled her fifth album West End Girl, her first release since splitting from Stranger Things actor David Harbour.
Much has already been made in the media suggesting West End Girl is a break-up album, with Lily previously telling Perfect magazine that the new collection is “autofiction”, while in a prior interview with British Vogue, she said it was “inspired by what went on” in her relationship with the Marvel star, albeit with artistic licence applied.
One of the new album’s most talked-about moment comes in the song Tennis, in which the narrator looks through her husband’s phone and finds messages from a mysterious woman named “Madeline”, lamenting: “I can’t get my head ’round how you’ve been playing tennis, if it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous, you won’t play with me… and who the fuck is Madeline?”
Tennis is then followed immediately by a song named Madeline, which serves as an imagined conversation between the album’s protagonist and another woman in her husband’s life.
The Mail On Sunday published an interview over the weekend with a woman claiming to have inspired the song Madeline, claiming: “Of course I’ve heard the song. But I have a family and things to protect.
“I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I understand this is going on. It’s a little bit scary for me.”
The song Madeline also contains snippets of messages that are implied to have been sent from the titular character to Lily, one of which is signed off: “Love and light… Madeline.”
During her Mail On Sunday interview, the woman was asked if she knew these messages would be included on the album, to which she responded: “Yeah, I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it at the moment.”
Meanwhile, the Sunday Times published an interview with Lily on the same day, in which she said that Madeline was “a fictional character”, responding “yes” when asked if she represented a “construct of others”.
Speaking more generally about the album, the Grammy nominee said: “I don’t think I could say it’s all true – I have artistic licence. But yes, there are definitely things I experienced within my relationship that have ended up on this album.”
Asked whether her ex or her two teenage children from her first marriage have heard the album, she responded: “I don’t know if I can answer that.”
Per the Official Charts Company, Lily is on track to have three songs from West End Girl – Pussy Palace, Madeline and the album’s title track – chart within the top 40 this week.