chaosincurate's 2025 Favourites (4/12) - The Leonard Cohen Award

The Leonard Cohen Award is for an album from this year that embodies the lines "There is a crack, a crack in everything // That's how the light gets in". It's not a perfect album by any means, but this album seems to defy critique, sometimes being entirely unaffected by it's flaws and sometimes even being improved by them.

Lily Allen - West End Girl

If you look at the publish dates of these posts, you might notice that this post took a little longer to make than the ones before it. Some of that is my personal life getting in the way, but mostly I just didn't feel good about my options for this category. Usually there are reliably a couple albums every year that have this effect on me (hence the category's existence), but this year nothing jumped out at me. Initially the choice I had here was For Melancholy Brunettes, but I opted against it because 1. I already spoke about that album early and often, and 2. I genuinely rate that album both personally and critically, and find that there aren't really flaws in it.

That indecision lead to me scrolling through my Album of the Year ratings though, and when I saw this it just clicked for me. This album is fantastic in a lot of ways but is also flawed in some endearing ways. The lyrics are mostly witty, clever, and insightful, but there's the occasional dumb line that doesn't really work but in a fun kind of way. The musical identity of the album is a little all over the place, but it is brought together by a cohesive concept and narrative, while also feeding into the turbulent state being described. The quality of the songs can be inconsistent, but that inconsistency also birthed the more memorable songs on the album like Ruminating and Madeline. I think it's a given that an album is far more likely to be in this category if it has a ton of personality (which this album absolutely does), but it is also huge for the notable flaws of the album to also be tied to some of it's best traits, which I think I've established also applies here.

Lily Allen's writing is really incredible here too, for the most part. Between the occasional over-reliance on puns and portmanteaus for my liking there is some very underrepresented aspects of manipulation and abuse that are depicted here, most clearly in Just Enough, but sprinkled across the album, from the downplaying of accomplishments at the start, to the weaponizing of children at the end to protect a reputation. She really focuses in on the minutiae of this sort of dynamic and it turns her wit and perceptiveness, a tool that she used to use mostly for making fun of people in the past (to great effect mind you), into something that can actually help people recognize toxicity in their own relationships.

"

You give me just enough hope to hold onto

"

I also wanted to bring attention to the ambition in the album's concept and flow. On the surface level this album is about Lily Allen's experience of being cheated on by her husband, which isn't particularly unique or impressive (I feel like we've had a few of those this year), but the execution is really interesting. First it's worth reiterating that Lily Allen is just a really good writer when it comes to this sort of thing, but also she takes it a step further, because the way the album unravels is like a detective drama in the first half and switches to working through the fallout of her discovery in the later stages of the album. I think it could have been executed slightly smoother (maybe more time should have been spent on the more unique first half), but the idea is really cool, and I appreciate her taking such a big swing with it.

I think that more or less sums up my feelings on the album: it's a big swing, and a respectable hit, but not a home run. It is definitely worth a listen though, and I really appreciate the effort. I'm looking forward to seeing if Lily Allen has the momentum for a long-term comeback from here, too.