Twenty years in the past, Lily Allen advised a dishonest boyfriend to f*ck off with a smile on her face.
Now, at 40, she’s discovered his secret intercourse house and she or he sounds correctly exhausted about it.
“Pussy Palace” is monitor seven on West Finish Woman, and it’s the form of tune that makes you need to verify your accomplice’s financial institution statements.
Not since you’re paranoid, however as a result of Allen’s captured one thing horribly believable: that second if you flip a key anticipating one factor and discover systematic betrayal as a substitute. The “dojo” she thought she was visiting? Yeah, it was by no means about martial arts.
The Premise (And Why It’s Worse Than You Assume)
Right here’s what will get me about this tune. It’s not nearly discovering infidelity. It’s about discovering infrastructure.
This bloke didn’t simply cheat; he maintained a complete separate property for it. There’s premeditation right here, monetary dedication, in all probability a separate cell phone contract.
Allen’s narrator is dropping off medicine and garments (already a crimson flag, why doesn’t he have garments the place he really lives?), caught on a delayed F practice, wired of her thoughts, and about to stroll into the worst inside design reveal of her life.
The tune doesn’t let you know how she obtained the important thing or why she’s making this supply.
That lacking context really makes it extra unnerving. We’re dropped into the center of somebody’s routine that’s about to detonate.
What She Present in Pussy (And Why the Particulars Matter)
The second verse is the place Allen actually twists the knife. She’s not simply itemizing proof; she’s cataloguing the whole operation.
A shoebox of handwritten letters from earlier girls. Not texts, precise letters, which suggests this has been occurring lengthy sufficient that a few of these relationships predate WhatsApp.
The sheets are on the ground, which is sort of lazier than if he’d made the mattress.
Lengthy black hair “in all probability from the evening earlier than” is a element that makes your abdomen drop due to that phrase “in all probability.”
She’s having to infer the timeline of her personal betrayal.
Then there’s the Duane Reade bag (the American chemist chain, which locations this both in New York or suggests he’s introduced provides again from a visit).
“A whole bunch of Trojans” is sort of humorous in how extreme it’s. This isn’t a person having an affair; it is a man operating a small sexual enterprise out of a West Village house.
What Allen’s doing right here is forensic. She’s not crying or screaming within the tune; she’s documenting.
That “How’d I get caught up in your double life?” isn’t actually a query. It’s her making an attempt to work out the logistics of her personal deception, which is someway extra devastating than rage could be.
The “Intercourse Addict” Query (Which Isn’t Actually About Habit)
The refrain retains asking: “So am I taking a look at a intercourse addict?” and it’s a query that reveals extra concerning the narrator than the accomplice.
She’s making an attempt to pathologize what she’s discovered, to make it make sense. As a result of if it’s habit, it’s a illness, one thing past his management, one thing she may need been in a position to assist with if solely she’d recognized.
However the tune doesn’t really imagine this framing. That “Oh, discuss a low blow” that follows suggests she is aware of this isn’t about habit. It’s about betrayal dressed up in excuses.
Allen’s too sensible to let him off that simply, even within the hypothetical. The repeated “I at all times thought it was a dojo” isn’t simply humorous due to the wordplay; it’s tragic as a result of it reveals how totally she was lied to.
A dojo is a spot of self-discipline, self-improvement, respect. The distinction couldn’t be starker.
The Sound of Pussy Palace (Which Shouldn’t Work However Does)
Blue Might and Leroy Clampitt have produced one thing that sounds prefer it belongs in a Stranger Issues episode.
All synth-heavy, vaguely 80s, with that barely ominous high quality that the Netflix present’s theme has, and actually, when you hear it, you possibly can’t unhear it.
However right here’s the factor: it really works as a result of it’s so at odds with the content material. This bouncy, nearly danceable manufacturing wrapping round lyrics about discovering your accomplice’s f*ck palace creates this queasy dissonance.
You may completely play this in a membership and other people would dance to it earlier than they processed what Allen’s really singing about.
It’s a sugar-coated capsule of a tune, and that’s at all times been her candy spot. Going again to “Smile” or “Not Truthful,” Allen’s finest tracks have at all times put devastating content material in deceptively cheerful packaging.
Chloe Angelides, who did further manufacturing, deserves credit score for the bridge.
These easy “Oh-oh-oh” vocals create precise respiration house in a tune that’s in any other case fairly claustrophobic in its element. It’s like arising for air earlier than the ultimate refrain drags you again beneath.
The place This Sits in Allen’s Catalogue
Look, Allen’s been writing about shit males for twenty years. However there’s a distinction between 21-year-old Lily singing “Smile” a couple of dishonest boyfriend and 40-year-old Lily singing “Pussy Palace” about… no matter this case is.
The youthful vindictiveness has been changed by one thing extra weary. This isn’t “I’m going to get revenge”; that is “I’m too f*cking drained for this.”
West Finish Woman as a complete appears to be Allen reckoning with life and relationships in center age, with tracks like “Madeline” and “4chan Stan” persevering with to choose aside fashionable life along with her attribute mixture of humour and horror.
The album title itself is a wink to her London roots. She’s a West Finish lady in the identical manner the Pet Store Boys sang about them, however up to date for 2025 when even that romantic notion has been sophisticated by Airbnbs and second residences saved for shagging.
Why This Feels Completely different
The tune’s racked up over 189,000 views on Youtube inside days, with individuals already deep within the feedback making an attempt to work out whether or not that is based mostly on Allen’s personal expertise or another person’s.
That hypothesis might be lacking the purpose. Whether or not it’s actually true or not, it feels true, and that’s what issues.
What makes “Pussy Palace” compelling is that it’s not a couple of one-night stand or a drunken mistake.
It’s about organisation. It’s about somebody who had a complete system labored out, who paid lease on a second place, who saved it stocked with provides and apparently had sufficient site visitors to justify shopping for condoms by the hundred.
That degree of deception takes effort, and Allen captures the particular form of betrayal that comes with realising somebody put in that a lot work to misinform you.
The tune additionally will get at one thing fairly present: how straightforward it’s now to take care of separate lives.
Courting apps, a number of telephones, the gig economic system making bizarre schedules regular.
All of it makes the form of double life Allen’s describing extra logistically possible than it will have been even a era in the past.
She’s not the primary to jot down about infidelity (clearly), however she is perhaps one of many first to jot down about infidelity as a correctly managed aspect challenge.
Twenty years in, Lily Allen’s nonetheless in a position to take one thing painfully private and make it into one thing you’ll need to sing alongside to, even should you’ve by no means found your accomplice’s intercourse house.
The truth that she will make that work, that she could be humorous and heartbreaking and offended and exhausted all of sudden, is why she’s remained related when so lots of her mid-2000s friends have pale.
“Pussy Palace” may need essentially the most provocative title on West Finish Woman, however beneath it’s simply Allen doing what she’s at all times achieved finest: telling the reality in a manner that makes you chuckle earlier than you realise you need to in all probability be crying.