I have just finished listening to Lily Allen’s annoying new album, West End Girl. I put down the record and was struck with a pang of anxiety. I am old enough to remember when we were all wringing our hands about privacy – the surveillance state, Big Brother Is Watching You, the over-monitoring of social media as a pretext to caution or even imprison private citizens. Did I miss a nuance somewhere, when we decided that Big Tech harvesting and selling our data would presage the demise of the very concept of a private life?
Apparently so. It seems we are willing to forsake our privacy, entirely on our own terms, and celebrate everyone who does the same. West End Girl is an album about Allen’s open relationship, her divorce, and her boundary-crossing husband – who we all know to
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