Lily Allen Defends West End Girl Tour After Criticism

The discourse surrounding Lily Allen’s ongoing tour has once again reared its head.

Last year, the Brit Award winner unveiled her critically-acclaimed fifth album West End Girl, claiming at the time that the project was designed to be listened to straight through from start to finish, rather than fans cherry-picking their personal favourites or playing it on shuffle.

With that in mind, when Lily began her tour in support of the project – aptly titled Lily Allen Performs West End Girl – earlier this year, much was made of the fact that the show saw the Smile singer performing West End Girl in its entirety, before leaving the stage.

This followed a section where a string orchestra played a selection of Lily’s hits from her first three albums, with concert-goers being encouraged to sing along karaoke-style.

As a result, Lily’s section of the show clocked in at around an hour, and while some took issue with this at the time, most reviews of the show from both fans and critics were positive (you can read HuffPost UK’s review of Lily Allen Performs West End Girl here).

Now that Lily has kicked off the arena leg of the tour, her show is once again facing scrutiny, with one journalist for the Spectator writing on X that she’d been on stage for 50 minutes, had “no support act”, spoken “not one word to the audience” and charged “£86 [for a seat] in the gods”.

Lily responded on Monday night, pointing out that “there is a support act” and that her show “has always been advertised as Lily Allen Performs West End Girl.”

She explained: “I was a few [minutes] late as my tights were laddered and I had to change them. The show is just over an hour as it’s just the album in its entirety.

“It’s my artistic choice not to talk to the audience, the fourth wall helps with the storytelling. Most people find it to be effective.”

The chart-topping star added: “I don’t want anyone to feel ripped off, everyone on this tour is really working very hard to give people the best show we possibly can, and I’m extremely proud of it.”

Lily previously addressed her critics back in March.

When one fan claimed that the British star was the subject of a “smear campaign” that had come “out of nowhere”, she wrote back: “Oh it’s coming from somewhere, but we move!”

A follow-up post saw her speculating that “bots” could be behind some of the negative comments being shared about her online.