Lets have a bit of empathy for David Harbour right now...

I may be in the minority here...

In case you missed it, British singer, actress and podcaster Lily Allen (40) released her fifth album last Friday called ‘West End Girl.’ It was apparently made in ten days, December of 2024, during the demise of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour (50). The album begins with Allen moving into a fabulous Brownstone in NYC, being offered the lead in a play in London and all of sudden having a conversation about her marriage being open… The next song in, she sings of being unable to sleep due to ruminating on her partner having sex with another woman, asking ‘Baby won’t you tell me that I’m still your number one?’ There is a searing line apparently said by her partner: “If it has to happen, baby, do you want to know?’’ Which frankly gives a woman no choice at all - because the point is, shagging someone else - IS happening, so it’s up to you if you want the truth or not…. Imma gonna go out on a limb here and guess this record is all about Harbour - although Allen told Vogue ‘There are things that are on the record that I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel.’

The rest of the album unfolds the sorry tale of being gaslit, lied to, shamed, blamed and ultimately betrayed by (preseumably) her husband. What begins an open marriage with set boundaries (no strings sex, paid for, strangers, no emotion) then becomes something else with ‘Madeline’ taking centre stage in the relationship. Allen doesn’t know who or what to believe. Having moved her life, her two daughters , her recovery and her work to New York - Allen flounders and fears relapsing. The straw that breaks the marriage’s back is Pussy Palace - when Allen discovers sex toys in their West village apartment and she asks: Am I looking at a sex addict?

Yes, yes you are Lily, because the minute someone asks for an open marriage just because you have taken a job you are excited about in London, means their sex drive is more important than your feelings… But as Allen states, when she tells her husband about the play his first question is: ‘you should have to audition.’ And there it is. The ego. The very fragile male ego. Was the open marriage question partly a punishment for Allen for daring to leave the family nest and have theatre success of her own? (I saw her in Ghost Story and she was great). There is a clip of Allen and Harbour at the Olivier awards where he is openly surprised that Allen is nominated for her one and only play - commenting that he has done hundreds, with no nominations. It’s a joke, said in a light hearted way - but watching now it feels like there is a truth behind it. Was he jealous?

In the final song: Fruitloop Allen sings: ‘It is what it is, you’re a mess, I’m a bitch, wish I could fix your shit but all your shit’s yours to fix. ‘Cause it’s not me, it’s you.’ But here’s the thing, you can only clean up your own side of the street - so what’s Allen’s part to play in the downfall of her marriage? She may add in the song that there was nothing she could do - he’s trapped in his own ‘fruity loop,’ - but we all have a role in any relationship, as difficult as that is to accept and process.

If Harbour is trapped in a loop, then this eviscerating album is likely to do little to help that loop. That said, Allen has every right to turn her pain into art - and make no mistake, this album is beyond catchy, witty, poignant, devastating and oddly cheerful in parts. It will no doubt win Allen heaps of awards and plaudits for its skilful raw songwriting and twinkly crystal-clear vocals.

But there is a video clip I can’t get out of my mind: of Allen and Harbour at a (I think) Stranger Things premiere. Allen in a yellow/green sparkly dress and Harbour in some gaudy awful suit. Her daughters from her first marriage are with them and one runs around to cling onto Harbour’s leg, gazing up at him adoringly. I was reminded of him saying on Allen’s Miss Me? podcast, chatting to her co host Miquita Oliver, that he was the last boy in the Harbour family and he had a ‘fetish’ about ending the bloodline so ‘the genealogy stops.’ Does that sound like a man who had a healthy happy family experience in childhood?

He went on: “But I do remember meeting the kids, and having breakfast with the kids, and being scared, and then almost immediately falling in love with them, like, in love with them, and feeling that thing that people talk about when they have kids, like: Wow, I want to take care of you beyond myself, I would do anything for you, give you anything.’ They were, like, 6 and 7 at the time. That really pushed me over the edge. I realised this is a family, a pre-made family, and I want to be there for them.”

These children, Ethel (13) and Marnie (12) lived with Harbour all through lockdown. He appeared to be the most doting of step-dads and as the West End Girl album landed, he was seen at Universal Studios with the girls. Which tells you that while Harbour isn’t (in Allen’s words) able to have a relationship with her, he clearly is with her children.

I’m all too familiar with this scenario in the fact that my Mother lived with a man - they didn’t actually marry - for around 4 years when I was 11 - 15 and then they split - and I carried on living with him at weekends. He was a constant in my life when my parents were unable to be. So Harbour is clearly trying to still have a relationship with Allen’s children - which is admirable when you consider he isn’t their biological father and has no obligation to do so. My would-have-been-step-father was no saint when it came to his relationships with women, but as a parent he was brilliant.

Harbour has been diagnosed as bi-polar. He has been sober for 26 years and openly discussed his own mental health struggles including voluntarily committing himself to a treatment facility. A theatre stalwart, fame came later in life to him - in his 40s, when his star turn as Hopper in Stranger Things in 2016 brought him worldwide acclaim. Must be a complete head fuck no? Sure, there is adulation and money and all the best tables at restaurants etc etc - but if you haven’t done the internal work, then how exactly is that going to help the insatiable ego? Being validated everywhere except in your own head?

I’ve yet to read of Harbour’s reaction to the album, or if in any way he tried to stop it being made… Its out there - the world able to see through Allen’s POV just how she felt about all his wounding mistakes. How will that sit with someone who has already struggled with sitting with pain as all addicts do? If indeed Allen’s question reveals he is a sex addict - replacing one addiction with another - how will this record help his recovery?

That said, I don’t disagree with Allen for choosing to express her pain through her art. Feelings are valid full stop. It is just recognising that those feelings are now all across the internet and everyone looking and commenting (here I am, included in this) and in the middle of it all are two recovering addicts who value their sobriety and two young girls within a family that is no longer what it was. It’s messy, it’s complicated and we have only heard one side.

I wish them both well, to quote GP who declared the album a ‘masterpiece.’ Harbour is about to go on a global press tour to promote the much anticipated final season of Stranger Things, which no doubt will be as welcome to him as daily root canal. Of course he will be asked repeatedly ‘who is Madeline?’ Or what he thinks of the album. His PR team must be pulling all nighters as they try to work out the best approach to field such lazy questioning and the focus being pulled away from his acting work onto his private life.

Can you imagine being holed up in some hotel room for weeks on end where every journo comes at you with a judgement having played West End Girl on loop for three weeks? An honest soul-searching answer is one that potentially Harbour can’t even find for himself let alone a baying press.

People are human. We make mistakes. We try and hope and fail and get up and do it all over again. No one, even ardent Allen fans, will ever know what went on in her marriage because both people in it will have different views and opinions. Neither wrong nor right, just different - because we all bring our own baggage to the table. No matter how glitzy that NYC Brownstone table is…