Lily Allen’s Infidelity Album: West End Girl
Lily Allen explores her ex’s infidelity in her new album West End Girl. Allegedly, David Harbour broke the rules around their open marriage arrangement.
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Diss track? That’s so 2023 Shakira. Try diss album. Last Friday, British singer Lily Allen dropped West End Girl, essentially one long f*ck off to her cheater ex, actor David Harbour of Stranger Things fame. Allen divorced Harbour last December for his wandering dick and numerous affairs. They were only married four years. One his dalliances, with his costume designer, went on for three years (allegedly).
But like so many FWs before him, Harbour needed a cover for his serial cheating. Enter “open marriage.”
Why are you so cynical about open marriage, Tracy?
Because I read my mail, CN.
Polyamorists get cheated on too.
As I’ve argued in my last three podcasts, and new book chapter, open marriage is zero defense against cheating. All it takes to be a cheater is to secretly and unilaterally break the terms of an agreement for one’s own benefit. In fact, cheating is its own high. FWs need the deceit. Permission is a buzzkill.
So, while Allen thought she was on the same page with Harbour on the ground rules about their relationship, he was off merrily screwing around with impunity.
But one part of the new Lily Allen divorce album is when she calls out someone named Madeline as the other woman and the person who David Harbour allegedly broke the rules of their open arrangement with. The album has 14 songs which appears to tell the story of their turbulent marriage. The Stranger Things actor has been accused of having a cheating on her, which he has never responded to.
In Tennis, the first mention of Madeline, Lily sings in its final moments “So I read your text, and now I regret it. 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 f**k is Madeline?”
Who is Madeline?
Natalie Tippet, the costume designer.
You have to admit, that supercilious look is pure OW.
Lily sings:
“How long has it been going on? Is it just sex or is there emotion?/ He told me it would stay in hotel rooms, never be out in the open/ Why would I trust anything that comes out of his mouth? I’m not convinced that he didn’t f**k you in our house”.
‘We had an arrangement/ Be discrete and don’t be blatant. There had to be payment/ It had to be with strangers/ But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.”
No, Lily, she was your husband’s coworker. Come sit on the comfy chump sofa with us.
Cosmopolitan magazine reports:
When asked if she had heard Lily’s music inspired by the situation, Natalie reportedly “rolled her eyes” and told the Daily Mail, “Of course I’ve heard the song.”
Natalie kept her response minimal, explaining, “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.”
Oh, you have a toddler — and a three year affair? Has anyone suggested that David Harbour take a paternity test?
Natalie Tippett admitted she left Allen whingy, self-serving voicemails, which brilliantly Allen incorporated into her diss track.
“Madeline” says: “We don’t speak outside of the time we spend together/ And whenever he talks about you, it’s with the upmost respect’.
The Utmost Respect
Yes, nothing conveys respect like fucking another woman’s husband on the down low and rolling your eyes when asked about it.
On the “Madeline” voicemail, she tells Lily:
“I hate that you’re in so much pain right now/ I really don’t wanna be the cause of any upset. He told me you were aware this was going on and that he had your full consent. If he’s lying about that, then please let me know/ Because I have my own feelings about dishonesty.
“Lies are not something that I want to get caught up in. You can reach out to me any time, by the way/ If you need any more details or you just need to vent or anything/ Love and light, Madeline.”
Natalie, you had THREE FULL YEARS to check out this man’s story.
THREE FULL YEARS.
For the record, David has yet to weigh in on the West End Girl drama. Back in April, he told GQ that he avoids interacting with tabloids and chatter surrounding his split with Lily.
“I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life. There’s no use in that form of engaging [with tabloid news] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole,” he said after a long pause, adding that anything he says would encourage “a salacious shitshow of humiliation.”
Humiliation is fine for the chump, but never the FW. You can all stop being hysterical. David is above such interactions. Unless he’s flying them into Atlanta to fuck them on set.
I still haven’t recovered from Kacey Musgraves’ broken heart album…not sure I can listen. Thanks for letting us know so we can support Lily.
Well done, Lily! I hope she sees this post. And I hope that album sells like hotcakes.
“No, Lily, she was your husband’s coworker. Come sit on the comfy chump sofa with us.”
That couch is certainly comfy and I’d rather sit with fellow chumps than be the pathetic pos that gets off on being an AP.
What strikes me about this is that Lily Allen’s earlier songs were so strong and irreverent and funny and joyful and called out BS so authentically.
So take one smart strong woman who doesn’t accept poor treatment from men… you have someone who is going to be a challenge. Predator alert!
In comes her future husband, and the mind games and lying begin.
Gradually she is undermined by the very simple subterfuge of lying. The predator moves her to a different country, away from her network. She is more reliant on her predator.
The predator breaks her down, abuses her trust, causes her to doubt and question herself, isolates her. He is enjoying himself, tricking her and seeing her more vulnerable and sad.
The fun for these people is in breaking strong people down. It’s not really about the act of sex or romance at all. It’s just about the joy of deceiving people who trust them, the joy of lying! The joy of hurting kind, loving people.
These men, like the tabloids, want to nestle up close to the loving, strong, creative, beautiful women and bask in their warmth, and also at the same time want to destroy them and desecrate them.
I know, I was married to one of them. I was a strong, funny, joyful, loving woman, too. I don’t think these guys go after any other kind.
I love what she did with this album, which is to simply tell the truth. I relate, relate, relate. You go, Lily. And thank you.
Agree! agreed agree! It’s about IN YOUR FACE to chumps by reckless, insecure extremely selfish self centered people set on taking down any secure and joyful person in an I’LL SHOW YOU power move. Sadly it works and this move x2 almost took me out emotionally physically and spiritually. But many of us chumps, as caged birds can still sing. Sing it Lilly!!
He sent “bad luck flowers” to her debut play in London with this note:
“If you get reviewed well in this play, you will get all kinds of awards and I will be miserable.”
Charming.
And, yes, she was nominated for an Olivier award for her performance. 👑
Yes. I am sure that there was a level where he felt powerful by breaking me down. I was happy and mostly confident. I remember a huge red flag where I sought solace from him after I made a terrible mistake and he tormented me and made it so much worse. What a mistake to ignore that behavior from him.
On point—thanks for this eloquent summary of predators’ motives: deceiving and desecrating beautiful loving women. My former FW mocked polyamory and open relationships while deceiving me the entire 6 years we were supposedly “together” and in a monogamous relationship. I am now over him, thankfully, and Chump Lady & this community have been hugely helpful.
Reading posts like yours are affirming and help me get stronger and wiser. Thank you!
The heart-warming bits of this story are that (firstly) Lilly put her story out there for all, rather than being crushed by the shame of being cheated on as all to often happens to Chumps and (secondly) that because of the way that she put her story out there, when someone hears it, she will get paid.
Sucks to be David and Natalie/Madeline ……. and more power to Lilly!
LFTT
I am hopeful that little by little, through pop culture things like this, chumps will no longer be pressured to stay quiet and keep secrets, that “shame will change sides” to paraphrase Gisele Pelicot.
… the other moral of this story is, don’t post pictures of yourself in your underwear on social media! Hello!
oh LOL I think it’s her bathing suit. Well don’t post those either. It’s thirsty and lame.
I am simply ensorcelled by the fact that an entire diss ALBUM dropped. And just in time for the final season of Stranger Things! (and alas-one more pseudo-celebrity I have to distance myself from…)
Like, it had to get green lit, pass through corpo, get edited, and it still released!
(I should really work on my editing and find a publisher…anyhow…)
Using Fuckwit Logic, it absolutely stands to reason that if you are already in an open arrangement that it does not take a huge logical leap for additional secrecy to enter the mix. One of these days I will sit down and meta-analyze the accounts of fuckwittery-I would be curious to see exactly how often(I would imagine it’s 70%+) “that you knew about” came up.
Stay Mighty!
I never heard or read the word “ensorcelled” in my whole life…had to look it up. Noe I will hear it tomorrow in some bazaar context
I am to please.
I listened to Lily’s song Smile on repeat after DDay. She’s awesome. I hope shell feel the weight lift being free of a FW.
As the late, great Robin Williams said, “Open marriage is nature’s way of telling you that you need a divorce.”
Nice.
I’m not sure this was an open marriage in the true sense. They bought a brownstone in NY — which, according to her lyrics, she wasn’t sure was affordable — and then she got the lead in a play in London. While she was trying to succeed at that new gig, he called her from NY and asked for an open marriage. She, again, was hesitant — she didn’t want it — but reluctantly agreed.
Technically, she agreed. What are her options over the damn phone though? I don’t know these people, obviously. But it sounds like she knew the train had already left the station. She’s in the middle of an important job. She has kids that are being parented by this FW. She’s just uprooted her life to move to another country.
It doesn’t matter, because he couldn’t even keep those conditions, but I don’t think she was wholehearted about the “open” idea in the first place.
So often it’s the FW man pressuring their wife to have an open marriage in order to facilitate their cheating
I love this! And I’d agree based on people I’ve known who’ve in these open marriages.
Per an interview: In the song Tennis Allen describes spotting a message ping on her husband’s phone from another woman, called Madeline. Who is she? “A fictional character.” Is she a construct of others? “Yes.”
It appears that Medline is a composite of multiple women, and multiple women have come forward claiming to be Madeline.
How low do you have to go to want credit and fame for being the other woman?
“How low do you have to go to want credit and fame for being the other woman?”
So many of them are like this though. All the women that sleep with a famous guy and then sell their stories to tabloids to get a moment of fame? On the one hand, I don’t want the FW to get aay with it, so…good? But at the same tiome, I can’t imagine wanting to be famous for THAT of all things. It’s so gross and pathetic.
Yeah, I’m watching the John Gacey tapes on Netflix. He killed about 30 boys. He enjoyed torturing them. It wasn’t just about sex with men. No empathy, said at one point these boys were objects to him. I see a lot of parallels to cheaters and this monster. It’s evil. They get off on the lying and deceit. It’s not just about sex and relationships. There is something fundamentally wrong with cheaters. Most psychopaths don’t commit crimes.
Scitechsaily.com
Scientists Discover a Key Biological Difference Between Psychopaths and Normal PeopleBY NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITYOCTOBER 27, 2025
OOOH, science!!
I saw this study when it was first published and then found other studies showing that childhood traumatic/adverse experience can affect the size of the striatum. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-sciences/news/2023/oct/new-study-reveals-impact-childhood-trauma-brain-structure#:~:text=The%20study%20found%20that%20people%20who%20experience,risk%20of%20developing%20psychosis%20by%20three%20times
people who experience childhood trauma or pre/perinatal complications are more likely to have smaller volumes of a region of the brain called the insula, and a larger region called the striatum…
So this study doesn’t necessarily support the rather eugenic theory that psychopathy and empathy impairment are “genetic”. It may be that some children don’t “survive” childhood abuse and trauma in an emotional sense and are fatally and irreversibly damaged by it, even down to a cellular level.
That doesn’t make me sympathize with adult creeps but it does motivate me to get involved in efforts to prevent the kind of abuse/trauma that acts as an assembly line to produce adult perpetrators.
Thats a good point. What comes first? The chicken or the egg? I dont think they delved into what was causing the brain difference. Just showed they have it. And honestly, do we care why the person is a s@@t? They all use their childhood trauma as an excuse for bad behavior. Who hasn’t had a wee bit of trauma in their life? I just think cheaters and psychopaths are cut from the sale cloth.
I think degree of trauma x individual skinlessness x lack of supportive resources is probably the formula that creates these adult “trauma zombies”– people who didn’t really “survive” adverse childhood experiences because they end up doing to others the worst of what was done to them. To me, genuine survivors are people who survive emotionally because they manage to spare their own souls from toxic influences.
The only reason I think it’s worthwhile untangling the skein of what creates adult abusers is because we can learn things that may help prevent the generational effect from repeating (namely by helping victims rescue themselves and their children from abusive role models before the children are “inculcated” and violentized) and also because dissecting and studying abusers like bugs has some predictive value for survivors in terms of trying to guess what their abusers’ next scary moves might be.
But working in advocacy generally cures of ever feeling actual “sympathy” in response to the tales of woe most abusers have. These stories may be genuine but, as advocates, I think we all got to the point where we felt nothing for these abusers regardless of how harrowing their childhood stories were because they grew up to destroy the lives of innocent people.
It’s a rather interesting and weird kind of split mentality to simultaneously feel great empathy for the traumatized and abused children these abusers once were but then feel absolutely nothing for the horrible and destructive adults they become and, what’s more, sort of revel in any legal consequences they end up paying.
Spot on as usual
Sorry. Scitechdaily.com
I don’t think the human psyche is wired to accept open marriages. From the small number I’ve seen it always starts with rational, loving, calm discussions and ends with one partner standing atop a pile of their spouse’s belonging in the front yard, an insane look on their face, scissoring one arm off of every one of their spouses shirts*, to the concern of the neighbors. (*Or insert crazytime activity of your choice.)
British primatologist, evolutionary researcher, bestselling science writer and Jane Goodall successor Richard Wrangham believes the main reason early humans made the very difficult leap to language was to keep tabs on mates. In other words, we may have diverged from our “poly” ape ancestors to evolve as monogamous– or at least to hypocritically prefer that our mates be monogamous (even if we attempt to live by other rules).
This may relate to Wrangham’s interpretation of the “expensive tissue” theory which he writes about in his book, Catching Fire on the evolution of cooking and human brain evolution. In short, because brain development vies for metabolic fuel with the immune system– the other most energy-burning system in the body– human’s larger brains came at the cost of far weaker immunity when compared to our ape ancestors and closest ape cousins, who have weaker brains but far more powerfuul guts and therefore more powerful immune systems (since approx. 85% of the immune system resides in the GI tract. So powerful immunity = powerful gut that can digest raw meat, tough leaves, etc.)
So kind of like how humans adapted to cooking certain foods to kill pathogens and break down tough fibers that our weakened guts can’t process, we also developed a biologically intuitive avoidance of STDs that requires limiting at least our partners’ sexual “exposure.”
By rights the intuition should make most individuals limit their own exposure to STDs. Apparently the majority do but there will always be some individuals who exhibit narcissistic hypocrisy and assume they’re somehow magically exempt from risk.
Anyway, there’s a wonky, more rambling version of what PrincipledLife said in far fewer words. 😀
She was an admitted cheater in a previous relationship, so, I don’t know…what goes around comes around?
I was starting to think I was the only one here who knew she is a serial FW.
Perhaps I am a prude or something I don’t know. But I’ve known people who were in “open relationships.” I don’t know of any that lasted. Most of them seemed to be a ruse for one of the partners to be able to carry on with someone else they became attracted to. Hence the relationships broke up because of the cheating.
And the cheating one wound up with the person they cheated with.
That’s quite the reaction from somebody who admitted to repeatedly cheating on her ex, Sam Cooper, and with prostitutes at that. She whined about how she had to do it because she felt “lost and lonely.” She was also the OW, joining the Mile High Club with Liam Gallagher and then agreeing to lie to his wife after she’d heard a rumor about it.
This is just the rage of an incredibly entitled FW who has finally got her comeuppance. No sympathy whatsoever.
Came to check and see if anyone was pointing this out.
I like the album, it really does cover some raw chump emotions, but in context this is more the story of a former cheater and OW who found out why cheating sucks rather than the story of a triumphant chump.
Will that stop me from playing “Beg For Me” on repeat though? No. No, it will not.
Hmm, wow. The fact she couldn’t take her own cheating medicine fits my little armchair theory that cheating– like other forms of domestic abuse– might sometimes be a reenactment ritual where someone internalized the abuse they experienced or witnessed in childhood and then compulsively “replays” it in adulthood but with victim/perp roles reversed.
In other words, she was subjecting a previous spouse to her own worst fears as is evidenced by her devastated response to having the same thing done to her.
The reason I suspect betrayal/abuse for people like this could be likened to a superstitious “rite” is because of the zero sum game dynamic in abusive family systems where one is either a victim or perpetrator but nothing in between so that– at least in their twisted perceptions– the only sure way to avoid being victimized is to victimize others.
I swear some people end up abusing and betraying like it’s an OCD tic, similar to the guy who needs to flip the light switch 20 times before leaving the house in order to feel safe from some nameless danger “out there.” I know that makes them sound rather pathetic but maybe I’m just a cold fish because I could know this about someone’s background and still not pull a single punch if they abused me or others.
I think you’re right. They are predators who can become prey if they make the mistake of being with somebody as disordered as they are or worse. My FW did that with his OW, who was an emotionally abusive serial cheat. They just can’t do equality. They are either victimizer or victim because that’s how they see relationships. I can feel sorry for the child they once were who was mistreated, but I have no pity to give an adult who chooses to behave in such an appalling way. Lots of people had bad childhoods, but they choose to be kind instead of being abusers.
Nowhere is it written that abusers can’t end up as victims because, in a statistical sense, there are no common denominators predicting which people will become victims. It can literally be anyone– the good or the bad or the ugly. The only statistical predictors related to abuse is that abusers are generally really fucked up.
All the same, I agree that most people who had terrible childhoods don’t tend to grow up to be abusers. In any case, there’s no excuse for any basically functional adults. Human fee will and all that.
Interesting plot twist. I’m sorry I didn’t follow this story more closely.
Noooo! There’s no room for Lily on our sofa. She herself was “the other woman” when she slept with Liam Gallagher while he was married to Nicole Appleton. During her marriage to Sam Cooper, she cheated on him with female prostitutes and then told him it wasn’t cheating because they were women. If that’s not a typical cheater move, then I don’t know what is.
She wrote about her cheating in her autobiography „My thoughts exactly“.
Presumably, her current husband is the karma that’s so often invoked in this forum!
Okay, permission granted to shove her off the sofa on to the hard floor of Consider Your Choices.