HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: Nothing cures creative block like discovering your husband's secret sex lair.

This article originally appeared on Holly Wainwright's Substack, Holly Out Loud. Sign up here.

Sometimes, as a writer, you're just casting around for inspiration, waiting for the muse to strike.

And then you find a plastic bag in your husband's secret sex lair, tied at the handles and filled with butt plugs and lube.

And, just like that, the creative block is cleared.

West End Girl, in case you chose this past week for a digital detox, is Lily Allen's new album, and it's a masterpiece of painful, brutal storytelling, with bops. It's also her first record in seven years.

Listening to it — and I encourage everyone over the age of 18 to do so — is like hearing your most unfiltered friend telling you her divorce story. One that starts with a plucky young bride putting the key in the lock of her dream home, and ends with dirty sheets, sex toys, and a booking for a facelift.

Watch: Lily Allen's 'Madeline' came forward…and we have thoughts. Post continues below.

Listening chronologically, we travel through a soundscape of texts to and from one Other Woman, dates our friend went on to try to beat her husband at his own game, and we urge her to step back from the edge of oblivion as she wonders what will get her through this hell — a drink, a Valium — as a recovering addict.

She's been trying to be a 'modern wife', you see, and it nearly finished her:

I've been trying to be openI just want to meet your needsAnd for some reasonI revert to people pleasingI'll be your Nonmonogamummy

Allen — an English superstar of the noughties who's been largely off-radar for the 2020s — is married to a famous man, David Harbour. She met him on Raya, the dating app for fancy people, and he's Hopper in Stranger Things, which means something to you if you are one of the millions of people waiting for Netflix to drop the show's final season in a few weeks.

Lily Allen leans into her West End Girl aesthetic in Perfect magazine. Image: Supplied.

Much of the commentary around West End Girl — which alleges Harbour asked that they open their marriage, agreed to certain parameters, and then smashed them all to pieces — is about how his career is going to survive lyrics like these being among the most listened-to in the world:

I didn't know it was your pussy palace

I always thought it was a dojo

I found a shoebox full of handwritten letters

From brokenhearted women wishing you could have been better

Duane Reade bag with the handles tied

Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside

Hundreds of Trojans, you're so fucking broken

Allen also throws herself under the bus several times on the record, in songs like Dallas Major, about signing up for the apps under a fake name:

So I go by Dallas Major but that's not really my name

You know I used to be quite famous, that was way back in the day

Yes, I'm here for validation and I probably should explain

How my marriage has been opened since my husband went astray

I'm almost nearly forty and just shy of five foot two

I'm a mum to teenage children, does that sound like fun to you?

It feels like a stealth attack on zeitgeist celebrity, but the timing is deeply strategic.

The album was recorded in December last year. The split was announced in February. As the 'surprise' drop ricocheted around the internet, the long-lead media began to roll out — magazine covers, billboards, newspaper interviews, BTS videos for social. This was a meticulously-planned comeback, with the desired result. The album is getting raves and is all over the global streaming charts.

Meanwhile, the Brooklyn brownstone that's the backdrop for much of the drama suddenly hit the real estate market, for US$8million. This is convenient, because the video of the former couple giving a house tour to Architectural Digest is currently everywhere, inviting viewers (and prospective buyers?) to trawl for 'red flags'. The opening track on West End Girl references both the house and even its much-coveted designer, several times.

Listen: Jessie, Amelia and I discuss the new strategies of celebrity splits on Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues below.

Predictably, conversation has turned to whether Lily Allen 'deserves' the wronged-wife sympathy that flowed her way in the first days of West End fever. After all, she's no angel, goes that argument. She's talked about cheating herself, in the past. And about being a drug addict. His 'friends' are leaking about her being the "kind of woman" that makes men "want to tear their hair out." No doubt, David.

But that narrative ignores the self-aware smarts of Allen's writing. This isn't a straight forward 'he done me wrong' story. This is a Notes App-era full-disclosure dump. It's what our digital age simultaneously demands, devours and abhors. It offers participation (who IS Madeleine, anyway?), analysis (was Harbour already hanging at the pussy palace when they filmed that AD moment) and acres of space for argument (is it cheating, though, if you were 'open'?).

And then there's the Stranger Things of it all.

Promo for the new and final season of one of Netflix's first and biggest original shows is due to begin in earnest on November 6. Huge fan events are planned, featuring the full cast. It's safe to assume that the magazine shoots and social assets have all been shot and tucked away, that the David Harbour and Winona Ryder interviews are being edited as I type.

It's possible we'll see the big man stage a mea culpa on one of the major manosphere podcasts very soon. Maybe delivering a variation or combination of: "recollections of events may vary", "Yes, I'm a sex addict, I'm getting help" or "I'm not proud of my behaviour, but there are two sides to this story."

Or, is it possible that Harbour will be disappeared from the press tour altogether, irredeemably tarnished by this reputational wrecking ball?

We'll find out, since in two people's very private business, we've just been handed a celebrity scandal story with some time to run. A new heroine for wronged wives. And a Summery bop of validation for anyone sick of the relentless upgrade options sitting in their partner's phones.

Read more from Holly:

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: Only Andrew, just Sarah and a teenage 'nobody' who rewrote royal history.

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'Embrace your final quarter "nup" energy.'

• HOLLY WAINWRIGHT: 'A "number" conversation almost derailed my relationship.'

Feature image: Supplied/Instagram/@lilyallen.