Tag: billie eilish

For someone who is often seen as an “anti-Taylor,” the motif presented in Billie Eilish’s latest visual offering from Hit Me Hard and Soft, “Birds of a Feather,” is all about something Swift dissects in “invisible string,” from her 2020 folklore album. That something being, more specifically, that everybody has “their person” that they’re inextricably bound to, whether they know it early on or not. And while Swift might have written “invisible string” with Joe Alwyn in mind, it doesn’t change the fact that, even after someone’s gone from your life, whether literally or metaphorically, their influence on and connection to you remains.

To highlight this point, Eilish’s video for “Birds of a Feather” features her alone in a deserted office building setting (after all, this is the girl who loves The Office enough to have sampled extracts of dialogue from it for 2019’s “my strange addiction”) as an invisible presence pulls her in every direction. Like “Chihiro” (both the song and video), there is a haunting, otherworldly quality to the “narrative.” On that note, Eilish has undoubtedly been in a “way existential” mood for this record, with the video for “Chihiro” being more exemplary of that than, say, the ultra no-frills look of “Lunch”—though, to be fair, the technical aspects of that video are nothing to balk at.

As is the case with “Birds of a Feather,” which might be ostensibly “simple” in terms of its concept, but was “intricate” enough for Eilish to concede to actually letting someone else direct her—which hasn’t happened since 2021’s “Lo Vas a Olvidar” with Rosalía…and that was ultimately because it wasn’t entirely Eilish’s song. Just as it wasn’t with the remix for Charli XCX’s “Guess.” In that scenario, the director who managed to break through Eilish’s trust issues in terms of giving creative control to someone else (which stemmed from some ideological clashes while making 2019’s “when the party’s over”) was Aidan Zamiri, who Eilish had no choice but to work with on the “Guess” video, since Charli XCX was running the show on that one (side note: Zamiri also directed XCX’s “360”).

Zamiri apparently did such a good job that Eilish tapped him for “Birds of a Feather,” yet another very physical video (since, like Madonna, Eilish believes you need to suffer for your art). A physicality that begins at the twenty-four-second mark, when her arm is pulled violently upward, almost as if to match her own form of violent love, the kind elucidated in the opening verse, “I want you to stay/‘Til I’m in the grave/‘Til I rot away, dead and buried/‘Til I’m in the casket you carry/If you go, I’m goin’ too, uh/‘Cause it was always you/And if I’m turnin’ blue, please don’t save me/Nothin’ left to lose without my baby.”

The intensity of those words is summed up by Eilish (during an AmEx segment called “Story of My Song”) saying that she wanted the first verse to feel “a little toxic” and “lovebomb-y.” And yet, if one can get through the so-called lovebombing phase of the honeymoon period and realize that such passion can still not only endure, but also give way to a deeper kind of love the more that time goes by, then perhaps they really are birds of a feather with this other person. Even in the wake of their death. So connected by this “invisible string,” as it were, that they can still reach the object of their affection from beyond the grave.

As the ghostly presence in the office building keeps making itself more known to Eilish, a breeze whips her hair before her arm is grabbed even more severely and the chair she’s sitting on raises itself so that it’s only standing on two legs. Zamiri then furnishes viewers with an overhead POV shot of Eilish, almost as though we’re meant to experience what her spectral lover is as they whip her around in a circular motion on the chair.

After the ghost from beyond seemingly gets bored with treating Eilish’s body like a ragdoll in this particular setting, it drags her, still in the chair, across the room, at which time the force of the movement becomes so strong that she falls out of the chair and slams right through the wall and into the next room while (totally unfazed) singing, “I’ll love you ‘til the day that I die.” In the new part of the office setting, Eilish’s hand is still extended as though she’s holding onto someone else’s. This before falling to the ground in a pile of glass shards, at which time her own eyeglasses shatter. Clearly, this is a savagely passionate love.

But that doesn’t stop Eilish from picking herself up off the ground and ending up in another part of the office. In fact, this whole office theme is enough to make one believe that Eilish is secretly talking about the toxic relationship between employee and employer, with the latter having a forever hold on the former. Which is definitely one possibility considering that Eilish herself has said, “With music, my whole thing is that it’s for the listener to decide what it means. And it doesn’t matter what I wrote it about, what Finneas wrote it about, it really doesn’t matter as long as you interpret it however you need to.” This includes “Birds of a Feather” as an “ode” to corporate slavery dynamics within the context of the video.

As Eilish delves into the second verse, one is also reminded of Ariana Grande’s “pov,” during which she sings, “I wanna love me/The way that you love me/Ooh, for all of my pretty/And all of my ugly too/I’d love to see me from your point of view.” In Eilish’s version of that sentiment—the one about how the people who love us see us in a far better light than we see ourselves—it goes, “I want you to see, hm/How you look to me, hm/You wouldn’t believe if I told ya/You would keep the compliments I throw ya.”

In another moment that gives Ghost a run for its money, Eilish is positioned in one of the rooms filled with fluorescent light (as all offices are) while the darkened room next to it, presented almost like part of a split screen, seems to accent the divide between life and death. That those we’ve lost are not ever really gone, but simply in another dimension. One that only the greatest of loves can ever truly transcend. Just ask Orpheus. Or Beetlejuice. Toxic or not, their love for the person they obsessed over was strong enough to traverse the realm that divides the living and the dead.