Lily Allen’s almighty explosion of a break-up album West End Girl is all many fans across the UK are thinking about this week.
Since the Smile hitmaker, 40, dropped her first record in seven years last week to critical acclaim and left jaws on the floor in the process, fans have been trying to piece together the not-so-symbolic meanings from the tracks.
But there’s one little Easter egg fans reckon they’ve just clocked: that Lily actually says the name of the women Harbour allegedly cheated on her with in the song Madeline.
For the uninitiated, West End Girl’s 14 songs appear bluntly detail the messy untangling of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour, who she refers to as a ‘sex addict’ as well as accusing him of cheating and gaslighting.
It’s an absolute slam-dunk of an album, musically and lyrically, pushing the boundaries of honest, gut-wrenching storytelling pop, peppered with her unmistakable wit, such as her wry asides, like: ‘Who’s Madeline…?’
In a song titled as the pseudonym Madeline, Lily sings that she and Harbour had an ‘arrangement’ – that he could sleep with strangers while being ‘discreet’ and there ‘must be payment’ – but he broke this with the titular woman, who was known to him.
After the album drop the ‘real Madeline’ appeared to come forward as costume designer Natalie Tippet, who worked with Harbour on Netflix movie We Have A Ghost, which began filming in August 2021.
Natalie, 34, told The Mail on Sunday she has ‘a family and things to protect’ but said she had heard the song.
‘I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I understand this is going on,’ she continued. ‘It’s a little bit scary for me.’
Armed with this knowledge, while listening to the song Madeline again, fans have spotted what they think could be Lily revealing Natalie’s name on the track.
On TikTok fan mariahelifri wrote that she could hear Lily’s pronunciation of the word Madeline morph into ‘Natalie’ at one stage during the song.
‘Finding out that the side chick’s real name is Natalie and you can hear it in the background vocals of Madeline,’ she wrote, hand on mouth in reaction to the apparent discovery.
While some agreed they heard it, others insisted she was actually singing Madeline not Natalie, and that these fans are trying to find an Easter egg that’s not there.
Either way, other fans said the pseudonym Madeline was intentional by Lily, as they do sound fairly similar and both have three syllables.
‘She chose the name wisely,’ said Nathalli, while Mayjhm said: ‘The name was cleverly chosen.’
A few real life Madelines also weighed in on the comments section and all revealed similar stories.
‘You have no idea how often people mistake my name for Natalie when I introduce myself,’ one said, and many agreed.
What did Lily Allen appear to say about David Harbour in West End Girl?
In West End Girl, Lily appeared to reveal that they were in some version of an open relationship, but accused David of pushing the boundaries of this by cheating on her.
‘We had an arrangement/ Be discreet and don’t be blatant/ It had to be with strangers,’ she sings, before describing her discovery of a woman who she refers to as Madeline.
While Lily previously said she’d like to have children with David, in the album – which was met with rave reviews – the star sings about her husband considering getting a vasectomy, as she wonders whether he’d got a woman pregnant that’s not her.
She also sings in Pussy Palace that she ‘found a shoebox full of handwritten letters /From brokenhearted women wishing you could have been better’ in an apartment owned by David in New York, which she said was evidence of his ‘double life’.
Lily also sings about finding a bag full of ’sex toys, butt plugs, and lube inside’.
In the titular track, Lily described David’s ‘demeanour’ changing after she got a part in West End play, 2:22 A Ghost Story.
Ruan Filipski said that Lily ‘is a genius’, while Jaxxxx commented that they hadn’t heard the name Natalie in the song until it was pointed out.
‘Omg that makes so much sense why she chose the name Madeline,’ said stardustxoxo.
Other bombshell claims in the record are that Harbour’s flat – apart from their family home – was his own ‘Pussy Palace’, where Lily sings that she found a bag full of sex toys.
While Lily has called the album a mix of truth and fiction and hasn’t shared an awful lot about her current relationship with Harbour since it dropped, the US actor has remained totally silent.
He will likely be keeping his head under the sand until he is forced to emerge for the Stranger Things press tour to promote season 5 of the Netflix hit, due to be released in November, which fans of Lily found amusing timing from the pop sensation.
Lily and David confirmed in February that they were divorcing, having married in a low-key Vegas wedding in 2020.
They lived in New York with Lily’s two children Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, who she welcomed during her first marriage to Sam Cooper.
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