Occasionally a producer or writer who is known primarily to music insiders suddenly emerges with a calling card that puts the wider world on notice. For Blue May , that card is Lily Allen ’s “West End Girl,” an astonishing album that may not just be one of the year’s best but be thought of as one of the decade’s best, when these 10 years are all said and done. Whether it registers as a commercial blockbuster or not, it is certainly as truly buzzy as a record gets. And if most of the chatter is about the revelations Allen seems to be making from one moment to the next about chagrinning events in her personal life, the delivery system for all those riveting thoughts is a full album’s worth of deliriously brilliant pop music, forged by a team led by May as executive producer.

Is it the k

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