Lily Allen

Lily Allen (born Lily Rose Beatrice Allen, 2 May 1985, London) is an English singer-songwriter who broke out from MySpace demos and witty blog posts into mainstream pop with her debut album Alright, Still (2006), led by the UK Number 1 single “Smile” and follow-ups like “LDN,” which established her conversational, ska-pop-tinged style and sharp social commentary. She shifted into sleeker electropop on It’s Not Me, It’s You (2009), co-written and produced with Greg Kurstin, yielding chart fixtures such as “The Fear,” then paused major recording activity before returning with Sheezus (2014) and the acclaimed, diaristic No Shame (2018), a set that chronicled post-fame turbulence with confessional clarity. Parallel to her music, Lily Allen expanded into writing and performance—publishing the memoir My Thoughts Exactly (2018) and earning stage acclaim with her West End debut in Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story (2021), for which she received an Olivier nomination, followed by a 2023 turn in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. In 2024–2025 she co-hosted the BBC podcast Miss Me? with Miquita Oliver and publicly addressed a period of mental-health difficulty, then re-centered her career around a full-length return: West End Girl (BMG), released October 24, 2025, her first album in seven years. Framed as the most vulnerable work of her career and executive-produced with Blue May (with Seb Chew and Kito also attached), West End Girl reconnected Lily Allen’s diaristic writing with dance-pop and R&B textures while folding in the stage craft and storytelling instincts she honed in theatre.