“It Was A Way For Me To Process What Was Happening”: Lily Allen On Marriage, Motherhood And Her Music Comeback

Lily Allen opens the front door of the Georgian townhouse she’s calling home for the summer with a “Hiya” and a hug and beckons me in, vape in hand. She’s wearing a well-worn grey-marl Miu Miu polo, bottle-green pleated mini, black tights and stompy platform boots, looking a little out of place, perhaps, in the cartoonishly quaint la-di-da-ness of Bath, where she’s living while she stars in Matthew Dunster’s Ibsen adaptation, Hedda, at the Theatre Royal. But actually, she tells me, leaning against the kitchen counter of her high-ceilinged Regency rental and flicking the kettle on to make us tea, her first husband’s father lived nearby so she’s not so much a fish out of water. And anyway, “I do the same thing wherever I am,” she says, rustling in a plastic bag for a fresh Lost Mary (triple melon). “I’m just on my laptop, doomscrolling.” And to do that, she continues through a mouthful of pistachios, that signature Allen cynicism ratcheting up a notch, “It doesn’t matter where you are!”

Wait – a correction. She’s actually not been doomscrolling because she recently gave her assistant control of all of her social media passwords to ease her screen time. “This is how fucking deranged I am,” Allen says, sitting down at a large oak table, a sugary cuppa in front of each of us, the air heavy with the scent of several generously sized first-night bouquets positioned nearby. “[But] I can ask ChatGPT if a particular person has posted something. And it will say ‘Yes!’ And so last night I was like,” – and here she starts barking in imitation of herself, like a sort of rabid animal – “‘You have to give me 15 minutes!!!’ Really, it’s deranged.” (As ever with Lily it’s candour to the max. Later, she asks if I want to see her new boobs and doesn’t wait for a reply before lifting up her top to reveal the work of, it has to be said, a very talented surgeon. He must be getting a lot of referrals, I say. “Well, I don’t think he needs them because he did Kris Jenner’s face a couple of weeks after me.”)

Here she is, the Lily we love to love (yeah, sure, for some it’s still love to hate): funny, foul-mouthed, her wounds, old and new, open and ready for inspection. It will be 20 years next summer (I know, I know) since the 40-year-old first burst onto the scene, all tulle, trainers and attitude, with her first single “Smile”, a song about a woman’s anger towards her ex, it set the tone for what would become her singular musical style – clever, ferociously honest lyrics hiding amid a sing-song London accent and sugary sweet melodies. It’s “music [that] sounds really pretty and it’s not” is how Allen sums herself up. It’s a sound that has – again, love or hate – made her a contemporary great, with more than four million albums sold, three Ivor Novellos and a Brit award to her name. Not bad for a career originally forged, lest we forget, on MySpace.

Along the way, she has become a mother – she shares Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12, with her first husband, Sam Cooper, who runs a building firm; written a best-selling memoir; had a short-lived stint as a vintage boutique owner – immortalised by the accompanying documentary From Riches to Rags (look it up on YouTube immediately; you will not regret it); and co-designed a very well reviewed sex toy (the Liberty, still on sale).