For whatever reason, it took most people this long to grasp that part of Lily Allen’s “revenge” (a.k.a. simply telling it how it is) against David Harbour throughout her West End Girl album rollout has also been through the not-so-coded-at-all use of certain interior design references. Ones that were again used when Allen appeared on the December 13th episode of Saturday Night Live as the musical guest for the first time since 2007 (when she sang “Smile” and “LDN”). And, although Josh O’Connor was the host and therefore supposed “star” of the episode, it was Allen who stole the show with her performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline,” the former of which one couldn’t help but marvel at because of how, by SNL standards, the set design was quite elaborate (yet it was Dakota Johnson’s “cameo reveal” as “Madeline” that got people talking about that performance far more).
Indeed, Allen got to take full advantage of the set while singing “Sleepwalking” (billed by Mel Ottenberg as one of his favorite West End Girl tracks when he did a Q&A with Allen for Interview, accordingly asking her if it would be a single). A set that featured many of the by-now-well-known visuals from Allen and Harbour’s Architectural Digest segment for Open Door. Namely, the pink bedspread of their bedroom, the tiger-print chaise (an homage to the tiger-print room) and the general similarity it bore to something out of their erstwhile Carroll Gardens townhouse—highlighting a veritable hodgepodge of “coded” elements from that abode.
Allen’s overall obsession with interior design is also something that’s no secret, particularly to those who listened to her Miss Me? podcast before she jumped ship from it to become a pop star again. There was even a September 16, 2024 “Listen Bitch!” episode (“Interiority Complex”) of the podcast where the subject was “Interiors.” At which time Allen mentioned the one part of her house she cherished most was her stoop, telling Miquita Oliver, “I have become very fond of my stoop… In between the stoop and the street is my front garden and I really like to sit out there in the sun, watching the world go by.” In other words, she preferred to be outside of the actual home she built with Harbour. And the stoop itself is one of the many “sets” that were used in the promotional photos for the album (seemingly taken inside the actual house before it was sold…or maybe the re-creations are just that good), with Allen standing outside her door as she tries to juggle a bagful of groceries with a Duane Reade bag—this being an overt nod to track seven on the record, “Pussy Palace” (during which Allen drones, “Duane Reade bag with the handles tied/Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside/Hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken/How’d I get caught up in your double life?”).
Right after Allen reveals this love for her stoop to Oliver, she replies that it’s “important to create spaces of respite and safety in your own home. As Cleo Sol says, ‘Don’t you ever be afraid in your own home.’ And that’s your home, house and your soul.” Allen then had what seemed like an odd response to Oliver’s statement, admitting, “That’s hard for me to hear.” Oliver adds, “I know, oh babe. I meant it as comfort” before they both urge, “Next question.” In the present, knowing what is known now, it sounds as if Allen was in the early stages of coming to terms with abandoning the home she had tried to create with Harbour.
In fact, so much of the album is centered on that townhouse, even from the moment the record begins and Allen mentions, “And you found us a brownstone/Said, ‘You want it? It’s yours’/So we went ahead and we bought it/Found ourselves a good mortgage/Billy Cotton got sorted.” As for the latter esoteric name check (though esoteric no more), Allen called it out as being one of the lyrics she was “impressed with” to Anthony Mason of CBS Mornings, who asked her, “Did you impress yourself at all with any of your lyrics?” Allen answered, “What ones are the ones that I like… I mean, they’re just sort of, like, little jokes… like the guy that did the, um, who’s a very good friend of mine, is a designer called Billy Cotton, who designed, um, my house in Brooklyn. He gets a mention, but nobody would know who he is so, it’s very, it’s a strange thing to put in a song but I appreciate it. It’s little things like that” (a.k.a. the “Littlest Things”).
But if Allen thought no one knew who he was, she’d be forgetting about the fact that so many have now gone back to watch her Open Door episode with Harbour to find the latter prattling on about how, “We started on this design process with budget-unconscious designer Billy Cotton. One of the things he had was called ‘layered Italian,’ that was the design theme, and it was based a little bit on The Godfather movies.” This particular film series serving as an “homage” to Carroll Gardens being an “old Italian neighborhood.”
Before Harbour can keep yammering on about it, however, Allen manages to get a word in edgewise by remarking, “We wanted somewhere to feel like the central kind of engine of the house when you come in, there’s a big table to, like, dump the shopping on, the kids do the homework ‘round there, I cook…everyone abandons me.” The pair then start over-the-top laughing as a way to ensure that everyone knows it’s “just a joke.” Though, of course, as it turned out, not so much.
They then venture into what Allen refers to as “the Garden Room,” which features a green “double-sided sofa” that Allen “jokingly” (again) says allows “David and I [to] argue and, sort of be looking at each other, but relaxing at the same time” (and, what do you know, the green couch makes an appearance in one of the WEG promo photos Allen poses for while smoking a cigarette). This followed by a nervous burst of laughter. At about the six-and-a-half-minute mark, the pair gets around to showing AD their bedroom, which, to reiterate, is very much what Allen is visually referencing during her SNL performance of “Sleepwalking.” For, as the curtain pulls back beneath a neon pink sign that reads, “West End Girl,” the viewer is given a glimpse into the lonely existence of this version of Allen, who lounges around in a mint green teddy and laments, “You won’t love me/You won’t love me/You won’t touch me/Still so needy.”
Considering the track is technically related to sleep (and also not sleeping together a.k.a. not having sex), it makes sense for her to choose the boudoir backdrop. One that very closely mirrors what was seen in Open Door, primarily via the pale pink bedspread. Other parts of the re-imagined-but-still-very-similar room instead incorporate additional nods to different rooms in the house, including the bombastic floral/tropical wallpaper motifs and a palm tree lamp. And then, there’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it medium shot that more hawk-eyed viewers will recognize as the framed embroidery of different sexually transmitted diseases. The very same one that Allen calls out in Open Door, sarcastically noting, “[The décor] go[es] really well with our embroidery of sexually transmitted diseases.” Harbour, with a somewhat vexed tone, adds, “That, you’ve had that since I’ve known you. That’s amazing, by the way.” Needless to say, he doesn’t appear to actually think so, with their interior design clashes being representative of a larger kind of relationship clash.
When they get to the bedroom, which, as Harbour proudly mentions, has no windows, it’s also clear that Allen is at her most uncomfortable, particularly when Harbour talks about how “what you do is you make the bedroom just a place for…couple activities.” She looks at him with a blank expression in that moment, perhaps germinally coming up with the “Sleepwalking” bridge that would be, “I know you’ve made me your Madonna/I wanna be your whore/Baby, it would be my honor/Please sir, can I have some more?/I could preserve all of your fantasies/If only you could act them all out with me.” And this she sings while leaning and sliding down against the wall of the SNL stage, perhaps faintly wondering if she should have seen the warning signs about a man who wanted a bedroom like that. After all, in 2019, when Harbour first allowed Architectural Digest into his living space, back when he was living in a peak “bachelor loft” in Manhattan, he also made a big to-do about having a bedroom that didn’t always let light in, showing off his blackout shades that descended at the touch of a button.
The fact that AD had come into his home before is also something that Harbour brings up in a douchey way at the outset of his 2023 episode with Allen, telling the camera crew, “Last time I was single and I was living on the Lower East Side. I have a family now, kids…I mean, this is so embarrassing.” And there are parts of the interior design itself that Harbour also clearly found embarrassing, like the tiger-print room downstairs where the family supposedly watched movies together. As Harbour explains to AD, “This was a real brainchild of my wife. She was like, ‘I really wanna do a tiger-print carpet’ and I was like, ‘Okay, it’s a little crazy…’ And I was like, ‘What about the couch?’ and she was, like, ‘Tiger print.’ “And I was like, ‘That’s ridiculous’ and it is, and it’s been done!” Allen asserts, “It’s great, I love this room.” Hence, the allusion to it with the tiger-print chaise on the SNL stage.
But, again, Allen was already doing this with her photoshoot for West End Girl, so it’s odd that people would only just now have it dawn on them that she’s additionally “coming for” Harbour through pointed interior design details. And seeing as how this performance is a precursor for what’s to come on her West End Girl Tour, it’s likely that this brief glimpse of the set design is just the tip of the iceberg for reminding audiences of that Open Door episode, of that place that made her sing on “Let You W/in,” “I’ve become invisible/Stuck here in my palace.” And of the fact that Allen’s house hardly felt like a home to her, even though she had a strong hand in its design. For, like another of Harbour’s exes, Alison Sudol, Allen identified with the sentiments of the former when she posted just a few weeks after West End Girl came out, “…in early June of 2019[,] I was living in New York, in a fancy apartment with big windows that looked at another building. I had chosen almost every item in it but it didn’t feel like home. I was a kind of sad that drifted in and out of focus. It was the tail end of a relationship but I didn’t know it yet.”
In short, she, too, tried to build a life with Harbour with some help from bespoke interior design choices, only to end up “sleepwalking” as well in order to ignore the pain of how much the fantasy of their life together wasn’t at all aligning with the reality. But now, at the very least, one of his exes is getting as much mileage as possible out of all that time, money and effort put into the interiors.
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