Lily Allen returned to the Saturday Night Live stage after nearly 19 years away with two performances from her latest pop album, West End Girl.
Rooted in her separation from Stranger Things actor David Harbour, West End Girl finds the British singer-songwriter “taking a brutal inventory of the scars she amassed while her marriage was falling apart,” Rolling Stone‘s Maura Johnston wrote in a positive review.
Allen said the trouble in her personal life ended up pulling her out of a bout of writer’s block.
“I thought I didn’t have any good songs left,” Allen, 40, told The Times upon the album’s October release. “My writing had been really bad and it took something to happen in my life, for everything to be blown up, for me to be able to go, ‘Oh, here she is.’”
Allen on Saturday returned to the stage alongside actress Dakota Johnson for “Madeline,” with Johnson playing the part of the woman with whom her husband is having an affair.
Allen will perform the album in its entirety on her nine-city North American tour in April.
NME gave ‘West End Girl’ a four-star review, describing the album – recorded following the breakdown of Allen’s marriage to Stranger Things star David Harbour – as “a vicious, vulnerable and victorious comeback.”
This time, she’ll have Cher, who performed her 1989 hit ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ at the ‘SNL 50’ concert in February. The legendary singer, who joined Cyndi Lauper for her final farewell tour show in August, was last the musical guest in 1987, almost four decades ago.
Season 51 of the long-running late-night variety show premiered on NBC and Peacock on October 24. Among the season’s hosts so far have been Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter – who was her own musical guest – and Amy Poehler, while the other musical guests have included Doja Cat, Olivia Dean and Sombr.
