Twenty years in the past, Lily Allen informed 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 observe seven on West Finish Woman, and it’s the sort of track that makes you wish to verify your associate’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 an alternative. 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 track. It’s not nearly discovering infidelity. It’s about discovering infrastructure.
This bloke didn’t simply cheat; he maintained an entire separate property for it. There’s premeditation right here, monetary dedication, most likely a separate cell phone contract.
Allen’s narrator is dropping off remedy and garments (already a purple flag, why doesn’t he have garments the place he really lives?), caught on a delayed F prepare, wired of her thoughts, and about to stroll into the worst inside design reveal of her life.
The track doesn’t inform you 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 ladies. 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 nearly lazier than if he’d made the mattress.
Lengthy black hair “most likely from the evening earlier than” is a element that makes your abdomen drop due to that phrase “most likely.”
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 nearly 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 track; 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 by some means 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 in regards to the narrator than the associate.
She’s making an attempt to pathologize what she’s discovered, to make it make sense. As a result of if it’s dependancy, it’s a illness, one thing past his management, one thing she might need been in a position to assist with if solely she’d identified.
However the track doesn’t really consider this framing. That “Oh, discuss a low blow” that follows suggests she is aware of this isn’t about dependancy. 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 Could 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 truthfully, when you hear it, you’ll be able to’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 associate’s f*ck palace creates this queasy dissonance.
You can 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 track, and that’s at all times been her candy spot. Going again to “Smile” or “Not Honest,” Allen’s greatest tracks have at all times put devastating content material in deceptively cheerful packaging.
Chloe Angelides, who did extra manufacturing, deserves credit score for the bridge.
These easy “Oh-oh-oh” vocals create precise respiration area in a track 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 20 years. However there’s a distinction between 21-year-old Lily singing “Smile” a few 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 an entire appears to be Allen reckoning with life and relationships in center age, with tracks like “Madeline” and “4chan Stan” persevering with to select aside fashionable life together 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 method the Pet Store Boys sang about them, however up to date for 2025 when even that romantic notion has been difficult by Airbnbs and second residences saved for shagging.
Why This Feels Completely different
The track’s racked up over 189,000 views on Youtube inside days, with folks 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 few one-night stand or a drunken mistake.
It’s about organisation. It’s about somebody who had an entire system labored out, who paid hire 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 sort of betrayal that comes with realising somebody put in that a lot work to deceive you.
The track additionally will get at one thing fairly present: how simple it’s now to keep up separate lives.
Relationship apps, a number of telephones, the gig economic system making bizarre schedules regular.
All of it makes the sort of double life Allen’s describing extra logistically possible than it might have been even a era in the past.
She’s not the primary to write down about infidelity (clearly), however she is likely to be one of many first to write down about infidelity as a correctly managed facet mission.
Twenty years in, Lily Allen’s nonetheless in a position to take one thing painfully private and make it into one thing you’ll wish to sing alongside to, even when you’ve by no means found your associate’s intercourse house.
The truth that she will be able to make that work, that she might be humorous and heartbreaking and offended and exhausted abruptly, is why she’s remained related when so a lot of her mid-2000s friends have light.
“Pussy Palace” might need probably the most provocative title on West Finish Woman, however beneath it’s simply Allen doing what she’s at all times accomplished greatest: telling the reality in a method that makes you snigger earlier than you realise it’s best to most likely be crying.
