Dead Boys and West End Girls: Lily Allen’s Greatest Hits – Ranked! | Lily Allen

20. Fruity Lupe (2025)

West End Girl’s final track is the closest thing to reconciliation in the album’s breakup saga, and it’s not even that close (there’s a quick lyrical reference to wrongdoing on both sides). But in its dreamy, journey-filled backing and the sweetness of its melody lies something else: a sense of closure.

19. Who Knew (2009)

“I tore up the chorus…and I can’t be bothered with paperwork,” Allen brushed off the obvious similarity between Who’d Have Known and Take That Shine. They let her use it anyway, and that’s understandable: Who Knew is an absolutely beautiful sketch of a relationship in its early stages, and seems to glow gently with possibility.

18. Our Time (2014)

A truly wonderful song from Allen’s flawed third album Sheezus, Our Time accurately captures the feeling of anticipation for the weekend to arrive. “Bring some gays and bring some Rizlas, we’ll party like it’s nobody’s business,” she offered, taking her invitation back into my memory in full with the sweet boast: “I’ve got a pretty good record collection.”

17.22 (2009)

Musically, 22 offers a post-Amy Winehouse finger-picking soul with shifting synths. Lyrically it’s brilliant: a character study by Ray Davies that offers a remarkably clear assessment of the societal pressures faced by women approaching their thirties. And if you want an indie track, head to Big Pink’s distorted, dubstep-influenced remix.

16. Friday Night (2006)

It made sense that Allen would be at least partly responsible for the Specials’ reunion: her 2007 Glastonbury performance put Terry Hall and Linvale Goulding together on stage for the first time in 22 years. Friday Night is effectively their 1979 Nite Klub track rebooted for the 21st century. Misery abounds on the dance floor, set to a ska beat.

15. Saab Here (2013)

The uproar over the alleged cultural appropriation in the Hard Out Here video seems to overshadow the song itself. Later, Allen described it as “big” and “saccharine,” but a decade later, it sounds surprisingly good: a dose of catchy electronic pop, with decidedly witty — if not exactly profound — lyrics.

14. Knock ’em Out (2006)

Audibly influenced by the streets, Knock ‘Em Out is a scintillating pop song — its delightful hook comes, improbably enough, courtesy of New Orleans piano legend Professor Longhair — and, moreover, its saga of unwanted male attention contains the biggest list of snubs in pop history: “I’m Pregnant!” “I have herpes, no, syphilis!”

13. Family Man (2018)

Written in 2015, as Allen’s first marriage was failing, but released after the divorce, Family Man is a self-loathing plea for reconciliation that seems to quietly acknowledge its futility – “I hope we make it out / But darling I need my time away from you” – turned into a simple piano ballad.

12. URL Padman (2014)

Sheezus had bad reviews – not least from the artist who made it – but it had its moments. URL Badman first launched himself at online haters. His idealized description of a certain type of 2000s hipster critic is outdated, but the attitude — “I’m not trolling, I’m making statements” — remains largely relevant.

11. Everybody’s In It (2009)

A powerful, searing send-up from the front lines of late 20th century hedonism. Those inclined to a rosy view of the era in question might note how awful it all is – “When are we going to get tired of sticking our noses to the filth…it just doesn’t feel right” – and the turbulent paranoia in the music, the siren-like wailing and so on.

10. Tennis (2025)

The song that turned the phrase “Who is Madeleine?” To an unlikely meme – and setting a tabloid tabloid on a seemingly successful quest to discover her true identity – Tennis is a distilled shot of the deadly cocktail that is West End Girl: traumatic events described in shudder-inducing lyrical detail, set against exhilaratingly beautiful music.

9. The Smallest Things (2006)

“Littlest Things,” co-written with Mark Ronson, was the flip side of the fun situation I found on Smile: another breakup song, gently but sadly capturing the wreckage of a relationship, offering a selection of fond memories that are keenly observed. The lit piano accompaniment comes from the soundtrack of the 1970s softcore porn film Emanuel.

8. LDN (2006)

An overly euphoric single—driven by a sample of Jamaican saxophonist Tommy McCook’s Reggae Merengue that sounds like sunshine in musical form—LDN deftly captures one kind of metropolitan resident’s view of their home city: endless complaining about its ugliness, insisting it’s the best city in the world regardless.

7. Treasure Bang (with Giggs) (2017)

The first single taken from No Shame was an impressive confirmation that with her fourth album, things are back on track: a stark assessment of her partying past from the perspective of a newly sober Allen. Rapper Giggs’ verse was great, especially with the line: “I’m old school, baby – I know Zippy.”

6. Pussy Palace (2025)

There may have been better songs released last year, but for sheer OMG-she-got-there shock value, nothing quite compares to the moment when the gloves really come off in West End Girl. Rarely has Dirty Laundry been aired with more stunning dramatic flair: set to such an addictive tune it only makes matters worse.

5. It’s Not Fair (2008)

“I’m looking into your eyes and I want to get to know you / And then you make this noise and obviously it’s all over”: If you doubt that Lily Allen has at least made a breakthrough, it’s probably worth considering how many other singles were about premature ejaculation.

4. Madeleine (2025)

Where part of Neil Diamond’s song “Girl, Gonna Be a Woman Soon” is pressed into the service of a song about confronting other women. If Madeleine marks the moment when the injured party takes charge of the narrative in West End Girl, she also embodies the terror involved in doing so.

3. Fuck You (2009)

When Olivia Rodrigo brought Lily Allen on stage at Glastonbury to sing Fuck You in 2022, it highlighted Allen’s influence on pop music as of late. And what a great song, damn you, that wraps a bitter dissection of political intolerance – but alas, even more relevant 17 years later – around an absurdly cheerful pop tune.

2. Smile (2006)

Allen’s most enduring early songs – over half a billion streams on Spotify and counting! -Smile was musically irresistible, thanks to its sample of the Soul Brothers’ 1966 reggae classic Free Soul. Most importantly, Allen’s raunchy tale of romantic revenge helped usher in a new era for women in British pop: richer, more articulate, more ambitiously relatable.

1. Fear (2009)

By her second album, Lily Allen had a habit of telling journalists that she had considered giving up being a pop star to open a cake shop. A similar anxiety about her burgeoning fame fueled The Fear, which pointedly and subtly highlighted the bleakness of late-20th-century celebrity culture: she was smart enough to lyrically acknowledge her own complicity in the whole charade and outfit her with a brutal chorus. Its four weeks at number one suggest that British audiences realized something had gone wrong too: there’s something depressing about the fact that you can write the same song today without fear of it being irrelevant.