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Tag: Billie Eilish Finneas

  • Love Is An Invisible String In Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” Video

    Love Is An Invisible String In Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” Video

    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.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Retroactive Irony of Billie Eilish’s “Wish You Were Gay” in the Wake of Her Newly-Embraced Queerness

    The Retroactive Irony of Billie Eilish’s “Wish You Were Gay” in the Wake of Her Newly-Embraced Queerness

    In 2019, Billie Eilish was still in her “I love dick” era, which is why “wish you were gay,” initially written when she was fourteen, appeared on her debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Placed on the record as track six, between “all the good girls go to hell” and “when the party’s over,” “wish you were gay” is, in many ways, one of the most sonically divergent tracks on the record, perhaps precisely because it was among the first to be written, back in 2015, when bandying the word “gay” around in certain ways was still decidedly safer (in terms of avoiding “being canceled”) in a world where Gen Z hadn’t yet come of age.

    By 2019, using it in such a casual manner as a means to invoke Eilish’s feelings of rejection and inadequacy was not exactly “kosher.” Worse still (and more than somewhat ironic, considering Eilish’s presently unveiled queerness), Eilish was accused by some in the LGBTQIA+ community of queerbaiting. Even though the message of the song itself isn’t at all about positioning herself as gay (even if the title might belie that). In fact, she’s about as “straight woman” as they come on this track in terms of wanting the male object of her affection to be a homo so as to spare her pride from being wounded. In this sense, too, the queer community took offense over the supposed trivialization of gay men as a “joke” song. And yes, Eilish did inform PopBuzz during a 2019 interview, “The whole idea of the song is, it’s kind of a joke.” One that only resonated with the straight girls she was appealing to at that time. Back when she was still convinced that she was one. Though, later, in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, she would discuss how most people assumed she was at least a little bit gay, commenting, “I know everybody’s been thinking this about me for years and years, but I’m only figuring out myself now.” And yes, the clues were there, like, for a start, Eilish’s sartorial style…or the pajama party in the video for “Lost Cause” that comes across as much more lesbianic than Ariana Grande’s similarly-premised “34+35 Remix” video.

    In another part of the interview, Eilish addresses how Variety essentially outed her in two ways back in late 2023. First, in the article that accompanied her “Power of Women” cover. Apparently taking that title to heart, Eilish mused, “I’ve never really felt like I could relate to girls very well. I love them so much. I love them as people. I’m attracted to them as people. I’m attracted to them for real,” adding, for good measure, “I have deep connections with women in my life, the friends in my life, the family in my life. I’m physically attracted to them. But I’m also so intimidated by them and their beauty and their presence.”

    When Eilish subsequently attended the Variety Hitmakers event in December, she was asked if she “intended” to come out in such an overt way in the article. Eilish replied, “No I didn’t. But I kind of thought, ‘Wasn’t it obvious?’ I didn’t realize people didn’t know. I just don’t really believe in it. I’m just like, ‘Why can’t we just exist?’ I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I just didn’t talk about it. Whoops.”  Later, in the abovementioned Rolling Stone article, Eilish would reflect of that moment, “I went into Billie Eilish interview mode, [like], ‘Oh, I don’t care. Yeah, I’ll say whatever. Wasn’t it obvious?’ And then afterwards I was like, ‘Wait. It wasn’t obvious to me.’” She also mentioned, “I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.” Perhaps, in part, because it totally negates the sentiment behind “wish you were gay.” Which, on another ironic side note, turned out to be accurate in that the boy she was yearning for actually did turn out to be gay. All of which is to say that the song is a hotbed of unwitting mockery on so many levels.

    As for the millennial progenitor of the song, Katy Perry’s 2007 single, “Ur So Gay” (the Gen X one is probably Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer?”), it would also fail at avoiding being offensive. Not that Perry, especially at that moment in the culture, seemed too concerned about whether it was homophobic or “gay-baiting” (again, because of the title that misleads one into believing the content isn’t all about “straight girl problems”). Funnily enough, Perry would provide another “Eilish connection” in 2023, when confirming that her label, Unsub Records, sent her an email proposing a potential collaboration with Eilish on her first single, “Ocean Eyes.” Perry’s response, “…it was just a blonde girl and I was like, ‘Meh, boring.’ Big mistake. Huge mistake.” And yet, it might have ultimately spared Eilish the stain of working with someone so pop that would have altered the entire sound of the track, ergo, potentially the entire trajectory of her career (and maybe even her hair color, which could have remained blonde all along). Though it wouldn’t spare her making the same mistake as Perry with a song like “wish you were gay.” Granted, there is far more vitriol in the Perry lyrics, “You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys.”

    Despite channeling a Gen Z version of Perry’s venom on “Ur So Gay,” the song would end up becoming a joke itself once Eilish came to terms with her identity. Even so, at the height of its release, she would do her best to mitigate accusations of the song being offensive by saying, “It’s kind of like, ‘I’m an ass and you don’t love me. And you don’t love me because you don’t love me and that’s the only reason and I wish you didn’t love me because you didn’t love girls.’ It could be a girl interested in a girl and maybe that girl likes girls also but she doesn’t like her back. And then it’s like ‘Well damn. I wish you were straight!’ You know what I’m saying? It could be exactly the other way.” Perhaps, with Eilish’s newfound sense of identity, a re-recording called “wish you were straight” is, in fact, in order. As for the aforementioned Josie Cotton song, it, too, sparked some venomous reactions, though mostly from religious straights who were fearful that she was trying to turn men gay (oh the 80s and “homo panic” as an offshoot of satanic panic).

    And yet, Cotton is doing the same thing Eilish does on her now ironic song. As Stewart Mason of AllMusic summed up “Johnny Are You Queer?” (and, effectively, “wish you were gay”), “…throughout, the joke is on the petulant girl, not Johnny: ‘he’s not interested in her that way, so clearly he must not like girls’ is (deliberately) a laughably arrogant premise.” And maybe enough to turn a girl queer herself.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “2019 Me”: Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft Shares Deliberate DNA With When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

    “2019 Me”: Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft Shares Deliberate DNA With When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

    In the almost three full years since Billie Eilish released her sophomore album, Happier Than Ever, the world has only gotten a little more blurry, to put it euphemistically. Or maybe, the truth is, it’s fallen into sharper focus for being what it is: the type of place that makes someone like Eilish and the generation she’s part of an anxiety-ridden ball of nerves. Someone who spent a formative part of her last year as a teenager in lockdown. But it’s not only the pandemic that gave Gen Z its warped sense of time. There are many contributing factors, though, chiefly, being affixed to a screen for so much of one’s day. It’s hard to “make memories” that way—at least ones that will prove to be lasting in a way that marks, therefore differentiates time. 

    Among the screen’s many hazards, in fact, is that it causes all of time to kind of run together, with one day not really varying from the next. The only way to tell what’s different, really, is that one is looking at “new content.” The relativity (or lack thereof) of time to Gen Z seems worth bringing up in regard to Eilish’s third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft—mainly because she’s already talking about wanting to get back to “2019 me.” In other words, the girl who brought us When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? As though that person, that “era” was from so long ago. By the same token, there are many ways in which 2019 was a lifetime ago, not least of which is because it was the last year before Miss Rona took over and altered many people’s psychological framework for good. It seems that 2020 and beyond has caused some kind of chasm in the space-time continuum, wherein everything feels absurdly accelerated—life-altering world events now seeming to happen every few weeks as opposed to every few years.

    So perhaps it’s no wonder that Eilish’s concept of time is much different from, say, a baby boomer’s. For example, Madonna didn’t want to return to her nineteen-year-old self/image until, what do you know, 2019. With Madame X, she decided it was time to return to that version of herself, the version that set the tone for who she would be for the rest of her career: the queen of reinvention. That’s why Martha Graham gave her the nickname “Madame X.” Per Madonna’s account, Graham told her, “I’m going to give you a new name: Madame X. Every day, you come to school and I don’t recognize you. Every day, you change your identity. You’re a mystery to me.”

    Being a mystery was, at one point, Eilish’s key goal in life. It was part of what kept her so isolated and afraid to make herself known or open up to new people/potential friends (like Zoe Kravitz, for example). As Eilish put it in her latest Rolling Stone interview, “I used to be so obsessed with this mysteriousness, and I think that’s one hundred percent why I didn’t make any friends, because I didn’t want anyone to know me, because I wanted everyone to think of me as this mysterious, cool person. I loved the idea of people feeling that way, but then I thought, ‘Oh, here I am sitting alone in my room, loving the feeling that everybody thinks I’m really cool, but I’m not actually getting anything out of that. I’m not enjoying anything in my life at all.’” Besides, it’s obvious that her legions of fans will continue to think she’s “cool” no matter what she does—even when she cosplays as a goy toy pinup. That Happier Than Ever-aligned shoot for British Vogue retroactively coming across as Eilish’s last grand attempt at “playing it straight.” Of appealing to a cliched “male fantasy” (to use a phrase that serves as the final track’s title on Happier Than Ever). But it seems Eilish knows better now, has decided that the only fantasy she wants to fulfill are those of the sapphic variety (which itself is still a straight male fantasy). 

    Before Eilish has her big coming out moment (you know, apart from the forced one she had on the Variety red carpet), she “reintroduces” herself with Hit Me Hard and Soft’s opening track, “Skinny.” As it’s been pointed out, “Skinny” clearly shares the same DNA as Eilish’s sleeper hit of 2023, “What Was I Made For?” Indeed, “Skinny” was conceived before “What Was I Made For?,” serving as a launching pad for the latter. On it, Eilish laments the continued weight (pun intended) that society places on people’s bodies—more specifically, whether or not people’s bodies are “thin enough” (call it her more genuine take on Beyoncé’s “Pretty Hurts”).

    Thus, Eilish melancholically sings, “People say I look happy/Just because I got skinny/But the old me is still me and maybe the real me/And I think she’s pretty.” So it is that Eilish establishes this motif of “getting back to herself,” the girl we recognized circa 2019. Eilish correspondingly noted, “This whole process has felt like I’m coming back to the girl that I was. I’ve been grieving her. I’ve been looking for her in everything, and it’s almost like she got drowned by the world and the media. I don’t remember when she went away.”

    And, speaking of drowning, that is precisely the image Eilish goes for as her cover art for Hit Me Hard and Soft (stylized in all caps on certain streaming platforms…like her first album). Considering her fear of water as a child, shooting the underwater photos was a cathartic process in many ways (and yes, water imagery appears frequently in Eilish’s work, which is somewhat surprising considering she’s a fire sign). As for the title, no, it’s not meant to usurp the millennial phrase coined by Britney, “Hit me, baby, one more time,” but rather, it was a happy accident. Per Rolling Stone, “She mistakenly thought the name of a synth in Logic Pro was called ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft.’ ‘I thought it was such a perfect encapsulation of what this album does,” she explains. ‘It’s an impossible request: You can’t be hit hard and soft. You can’t do anything hard and soft at the same time. I’m a pretty extremist person, and I really like when things are really intense physically, but I also love when things are very tender and sweet. I want two things at once. So I thought that was a really good way to describe me, and I love that it’s not possible.’” Unless, of course, the hardness and softness is delivered alternatingly—as it is throughout the record. 

    As such, for those who might have gotten too comfortable with the slow-tempo, ethereal sound of “Skinny,” Finneas phrases it best when he says, “If you’re remembering ‘What Was I Made For?’ and then you hear [it], you go, ‘Oh, okay. I understand this world.’ Then the drums come in [on “Lunch”], and it really is the kill-the-main-character-type beat. It’s like Drew Barrymore being in the first five minutes of Scream and then they kill her. You’re like, ‘They can’t kill Drew. Oh, my God, they killed Drew!’” But they do kill “Skinny” gently, with the song transitioning into “Lunch” via string arrangements that are filled with nods to “Born to Die.” Not a coincidence, surely, as Eilish never understates Lana Del Rey’s influence on her own work. This much was further solidified when the two joined forces onstage during the first weekend of Del Rey’s headlining Coachella performance. As they wrapped up a duet of “Ocean Eyes” and “Video Games” (each singer’s first single, respectively), Del Rey announced, “Voice of a generation right here.” And that generation, “ladies” and “gentlemen,” is queer as fuck. 

    Going back to the 2019 era Eilish wants to capture, it was on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? that Eilish’s sentiment was “wish you were gay.” That wish came true for herself rather than the boy who didn’t return her affections back then. And yes, “Lunch” is sure to become a go-to at lesbian bars and clubs the world over, with Eilish leaning (her face) into vagina readily (or, as John Bender once said to Claire Standish when she asked, “Where’s your lunch?,” “You’re wearin’ it”). And, finally, on her own terms. Like Chappell Roan with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, this creation was what got her in touch with her queerness. Eilish recounted of writing it, “That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real. I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” It’s that hunger that manifests literally and figuratively on “Lunch.” Thus, the eating metaphors abound with phrases like, “Tastes like she might be the one,” “It’s a craving, not a crush” and “Somebody write down the recipe.”

    Elsewhere, Eilish proves that “consent is sexy” to her generation, managing to slip in a nod to permission with the lyrics, “Clothes on the counter for you, try ‘em on/If I’m allowed, I’ll help you take ‘em off.” She also offers, “You need a seat? I’ll volunteer.” Flexing her financial prowess, Eilish is sure to showcase her masc/zaddy tendencies with the assurance, “I could buy her so much stuff.” While “Lunch” is a triumph in terms of Eilish “owning” who she is, there’s still that bittersweet realization that she never really wanted to “get into all that,” remarking, “I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.” And yet, she turned the “Variety outing” into a positive with the themes explored on this album. Indeed, it seems very pointed that the cover art should feature Eilish in front of an open door, ready to emerge from the one she’s been hiding behind. 

    Apropos of that visual, Eilish chants, “Open up the door, can you open up the door?” on “Chihiro” (the title being a reference to Spirited Away, one of the films that have majorly influenced Eilish). As Finneas delivers another uptempo backbeat, Eilish explores the theme of turning to a stranger for comfort. Especially one who seems so familiar. That much is apparent in the Spirited Away-inspired lyrics, “But there’s a part of me that recognizes you/Do you feel it too?” and “I don’t, I don’t know why I called/I don’t know you at all/I don’t know you/Not at all.” The haunting quality of the track is matched only by its bizarre danceability. Of the sort that continues on “Birds of a Feather.” 

    And not only is “Birds of a Feather” quite danceable despite its macabre language (e.g., “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”—what does one expect from the girl who wrote “Everybody Dies”?), it also happens to showcase Eilish at her most Taylor Swift. That is, in terms of wielding a common phrase and making it her own (with Swift, there are many, from “bad blood” to “familiarity breeds contempt”). And yet, it doesn’t take long for the Lana influence to take over with the mention of the color “blue.” A shade that Del Rey wields more than any other in her music. In Eilish’s hands, blue is used to say, “And if I’m turnin’ blue, please don’t save me/Nothin’ left to lose without my baby.” It won’t be the last time blue is invoked on Hit Me Hard and Soft, and it reveals just how much Eilish, synesthete extraordinaire, has embraced it as her color, admitting, “Dude, what’s so interesting to me is that blue has always been my least-favorite color. Which is so stupid because my hair was blue for years. But I didn’t mean for it to be—that was an accident… But over the last couple of years, I’ve just been like, ‘Wait, blue is so who I am at my core.’” After all, blue is the warmest color, n’est-ce pas?

    She is, additionally, LDR at her core. Continuing the homage both overt and subtle (“hard and soft,” if you will) with “Wildflower,” a title that feels like another unwitting Lana reference (whose 2021 album, Blue Banisters, features a song called “Wildflower Wildfire”), as does “The Greatest,” the same title as a signature track from Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell. With “Wildflower,” the tempo slows down again and Eilish opens with another common phrase: “Things fall apart.” The song then details a haunting love triangle that thematically reminds one of Eilish’s own version of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed.” For Eilish can’t stop obsessing over the girl who used to be with the one she’s currently with, pronouncing, “But I see her in the back of my mind all the time/Like a fever, like I’m burning alive, like a sign.”

    The predilection for comparison to another person’s ex that shines through once more in the lyrics, “I’d never ask who was better/‘Cause she couldn’t be/More different from me/Happy and free in leather.” That is to say, Eilish is much more comfortable in free-flowing, cotton-based fabrics. At the three-minute-thirty-eight-second mark, it seems as though the song is ending, but, in a trend that mirrors “Happier Than Ever” (and that will come back again on “L’amour de Ma Vie”), the song reanimates with a different tincture as Eilish sings (in the tone of what comes across as a specter), “You say no one knows you so well/But every time you touch me, I just wonder how she felt/Valentine’s Day, cryin’ in the hotel/I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, so I kept it to myself.” 

    The morose aura persists on “The Greatest,” with Eilish rueing the day she grew attached to someone so emotionally distant. Hence, she provides a chorus dripping in sarcasm and self-loathing when she says, “Man, am I the greatest (greatest)/My congratulations (congratulations)/All my love and patience/All my admiration (admiration)/All the times I waited (waited)/For you to want me naked (naked)/I made it all look painless/Man, am I the greatest.” At around the three-minute-ten-second mark, Finneas helps change the nature of the song as Eilish belts out a power ballad-y interpretation of: “The greatest, the greatest, the greatest/I loved you and I still do/Just wanted passion from you/Just wanted what I gave you/I wanted and waited.” Her voice goes quiet again as she delivers an outro version of the chorus that goes, “Man, am I the greatest/God, I hate it/All my love and patience/Unappreciated/You said your heart was jaded/You couldn’t even break it/I shouldn’t have to say it/You could’ve been the greatest.” Which is exactly what Lana Del Rey once told Azealia Banks in the midst of a Twitter feud in 2018 (specifically, “u coulda been the greatest female rapper alive but u blew it”).  

    Eilish switches vocal tack on “L’Amour de Ma Vie” to more closely echo Madison Beer’s vibe, commencing the “Spinnin”-esque number with a sultry tone that assures, “I wish you the best for the rest of your life/Felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes/But I need to confess, I told you a lie/I said you/You were the love of my life.” Needless to say, Eilish only offered that up as a consolation to the person she ended things with, not realizing they would somehow manage to hurt her more with their behavior after she tried to show them kindness. Thus, she states it the refrain, “It isn’t askin’ for a lot for an apology/For making me feel like it’d kill you if I tried to leave/You said you’d never fall in love again because of me/Then you moved on immediately.” 

    At the three-minute-thirteen-second mark, Eilish and Finneas “Happier Than Ever” it up again by bifurcating the song into two parts. Accordingly, Eilish’s vocal pitch changes as she again points out, “It isn’t askin’ a lot for an apology/For makin’ me feel like it’d kill you if I tried to leave/You said you’d never fall in love again because of me.” And here her voice becomes even more high-pitched as she repeats, “Then you moved on” as a heartbeat-like drum enters the fray and the tempo picks up, changing the sound entirely into an 80s-inspired ditty as Eilish chirps, “Ooh/You wanted to keep it/Like somethin’ you found/‘Til you didn’t need it/But you should’ve seen it/The way it went down/Wouldn’t believe it/Wanna know what I told her/With her hand on my shoulder?/You were so mediocre/And we’re so glad it’s over now.” Things get decidedly Grimes-y during the outro, with Eilish shrugging, “It’s such a pity/We’re both so pretty.”

    On the song that follows, “The Diner” (which one could argue is a sort of companion piece to “Lunch”), Finneas jars us yet again with the abrupt sonic shift into music that is decidedly carnival-like. Indeed, “The Diner” is among the most When We All Fall Asleep-type songs on the record. On the ostensible “necessity” of revisiting “the past” (even if one as fresh as 2019) for this album, Finneas commented, “When Billie talks about the era of When We All Fall Asleep, it was this theatricality and this darkness. What’s the thing that no one is as good at as Billie is? This album was an exploration of what we do best.” And that exploration is all too palpable on “The Diner.” In the Billie voice we recognize from such songs as “bury a friend,” she croons, “Don’t be afraid of me/I’m what you need/I saw you on the screens/I know we’re meant to be/You’re starrin’ in my dreams.” Ah yes, the dream (/nightmare) motif that Eilish became known for is back and better than ever, with the singer revisiting some terrifying, stalker-y themes (as present on Happier Than Ever’s “NDA”)—this time from the perspective of an actual stalker. And who would know better about that ilk than Eilish? (Even though this song is meant to be in the spirit of the fictional “dark little stories” Billie and Finneas are known for coming up with à la “Bellyache.”)

    So it is that she delivers such “Stan”-esque lines as, “I’ll go back to the diner/I’ll write another letter (I’ll write another letter)/I hope you’ll read it this time/You better.” The evocation of this “old-timey” sort of communication (including “I memorized your number/Now I call you when I please”—with Gen Z having no concept of that being the norm “back in the day”) not only speaks to the unique form of “devotion” this stalker has, but also Eilish’s own “old soul” stylings (much like, again, Lana Del Rey)…even though she once egregiously misinterpreted the meaning of “Picture to Burn.” These “old soul” inclinations are further emphasized by the fact that she and Finneas were intent on making an “album-ass album” (ah, such California parlances). Something you could actually enjoy listening to from beginning to end. This being a task that is decidedly against everything her generation represents.

    Finneas touches on that in the same Rolling Stone article, commenting, “We’re not even at ‘song’ anymore. We’re at the line from the second verse that blew up on TikTok. We’re mostly watching content in vertical that was made an hour ago—some person telling you their thoughts about something from an hour ago.” But both Eilish and Finneas come across as staunchly against adhering to that “method.” And this is precisely why Eilish refused to release any singles from the album, explaining, “I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.”

    And yes, it would be kind of weird for a song like “Bittersuite” to be in the middle of the proverbial room alone. Already announcing itself with an “Express Yourself” meets The Weeknd on After Hours or Dawn FM type of opening, this particular song has perhaps the most otherworldly quality of all. In addition to mimicking something that could be found on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, Eilish conjures easy comparisons to the second song on Happier Than Ever, “I Didn’t Change My Number,” singing in the same intonation during the verse, “I’ve been havin’ dreams/You were in the foyer/I was on my knees/Outside of my body/Watchin’ from above/I see the way you want me/I wanna be the one.” The themes of feeling disconnected/dissociated are on full blast here, with Eilish further ruminating on her inability to fall in love with someone “no matter how bad I want to.”

    That revelation seems to be the direct cause of slowing everything down around the one-minute-thirty-second mark as yet another song on the album splits into two parts, with “Bittersuite” becoming as carnival-like as “The Diner” when Eilish starts to sing the chorus, “I don’t need to breathe when you look at me, all I see is green/And I think that we’re in between everything/I’ve seen/In my dream, have it once a week, can’t land on my feet/Can’t sleep, have you underneath all of my beliefs/Keep it briеf/I’ll wait in the suite/Keep me off my feet.” 

    In another surreal portion of the track, Eilish relishes becoming self-referential as she languidly utters, “We can be discrete…/L’amour de ma vie/Love so bittersweet, mm/Open up the door for me, for me.” The “discrete” line refers to “The Diner,” while “L’amour de ma vie” is a direct mention of a previous song title. What’s more, “love so bittersweet” alludes to “Bittersuite” itself and “open up the door for me” is a nod to “Chihiro.” Clearly, Eilish is feeling secure enough in her songwriting prowess to allow herself to be this meta. 

    Taking us on a few more meandering sonic journeys before ending, “Bittersuite” finally gives way to “Blue,” which has decided “Get Free” by LDR characteristics. This extends, most obviously, to Eilish paralleling the verse, “I wanna move/Out of the black (out of the black)/Into the blue (into the blue)” with “I try to live in black and white, but I’m so blue.” She then repeats phrases from previous songs on the album again, including, “Birds of a feather,” “mon amour,” “open up the door,” “I’m still overseas” and “a bird in a cage.” She even wields a phrase that Madonna took ownership of in 1986, singing, “True blue, true blue/I’m true blue.” Finneas splits the track again at around the one-minute-fifty-five-second mark, giving the second half its own separate personality as Eilish quavers, ​“You were born bluer than a butterfly/Beautiful and so deprived of oxygen/Colder than your father’s eyes/He never learned to sympathize with anyone.”

    At certain points, it sounds like Eilish is trying to drum up sympathy for a nepo baby when she subsequently intones, “You were born reachin’ for your mother’s hands/Victim of your father’s plans to rule the world/Too afraid to step outside/Paranoid and petrified of what you’ve heard.” Her soft, ethereal tone then switches to something slightly more sinister—“demonic” even—when she sings, “But they could say the same ’bout me/I sleep ’bout three hours each night/Means only twenty-one a week now, now/And I could say the same ’bout you/Born blameless, grew up famous too/Just a baby born blue now, now.” Who knows? Maybe this is her empathy song written with her beloved idol, Justin Bieber, in mind. 

    Whatever the case, “Blue” tops anything on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? with regard to creating an alternate realm that mirrors Eilish’s rich, often morbid world. And if that was the primary objective of her debut, Hit Me Hard and Soft does it one better, with Eilish achieving the goal she set out to with this record: returning to “2019 me”—with an even spookier 2024 twist.

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Billie Eilish Said “I’m the Problem” Before Taylor Swift and, Historically, That Tends to Track

    Billie Eilish Said “I’m the Problem” Before Taylor Swift and, Historically, That Tends to Track

    Perhaps because it’s so unusual to encounter a Gen Zer doing anything either original or “first” (not that anything really can be at this point), listeners have been quick to forget that, earlier this year, Billie Eilish already immortalized the lyrics, “I’m the problem” on her single, “TV,” released in July via her two-track EP, Guitar Songs. While Taylor Swift may have already written “Anti-Hero” at that juncture, the rule goes that whoever releases something before another musician tends to be the “owner” of that lyrical phrase. And yet, Eilish, despite her equitable popularity to Swift in such a short span of time (although the two seem vastly different from a stylistic perspective, the singer-songwriter shtick is prominent in both), has largely been forgotten for helming, “I’m the problem.” That is, ever since “Anti-Hero” inaugurated the barrage of singles that will inevitably be released from Midnights.

    Maybe the effortless forgetting of Eilish as the OG “responsibility-taker” for being something of a “problematic” person (in addition to a jobist) stems from how she couldn’t be bothered to note, “Maybe I, maybe I, maybe I’m the problem” in a catchy pop song format the way Taylor has with the chirpier phrase, “It’s me, hi/I’m the problem/It’s me.” Perhaps just going to show that the millennial knows best when it comes to toeing the line between pandering to the generations they’re sandwiched in between. Whereas Gen Z seemingly just wants to burn the whole world to the ground (but is ultimately too apathetic to do so). All while claiming to be “much different” from the millennials they balk at while simultaneously grafting pretty much every pop cultural element from them (except in this anomalous case of Taylor grafting from Billie, unless, of course, the former has documentation [obviously, she does] of the exact date she initially started writing “Anti-Hero”). And yet, not so “different” as to avoid “covert narcissism disguised as altruism,” as Taylor words it. In Eilish’s case, that comes in the form of asking hopefully, “Did you see me on TV?”

    The lack of divergence from previous generations of women on Eilish’s part has also been frequently revealed by the “pull” of older men—all while putting out the contradictory message of being “weird” a.k.a. anti-heteronormative. Yet Eilish is perhaps even more heteronormative (which, ironically, “wish you were gay” also corroborates) than Swift if her history of fetishizing “mature” dick is any hint.  

    And yes, she continues to be “the problem” after dressing up as a baby for Halloween while her older boyfriend, Jesse Rutherford (best known as the lead singer of The Neighbourhood), opted to show up as an old man. Although the two might have thought it was a “cute” way to “poke fun” at their almost eleven-year age gap, it only highlighted how little Eilish actually cares to cater to her own easily outraged generation (in addition to highlighting the retroactive ick factor of one of The Neighbourhood’s biggest songs being called “Daddy Issues”). Something she also made apparent when she appeared on the cover of British Vogue in what amounted to Marilyn drag (and actually, Billie Eilish might have been a better choice for Marilyn in Blonde than Ana de Armas—granted, nothing and no one could have saved that monstrosity). This after building her “brand” on championing the “offbeat”—as Wednesday Addams might in the twenty-first century.

    As for Taylor, the extent of her own “experimentation” comes in the form of sampling the “dream pop”/electropop stylings of the 2012 era that the likes of Chvrches, M83 and Phantogram already perfected. But, as Taylor has shown us in ousting Billie with the “I’m the problem” adage, she’s capable of “erasing” anyone she wants to whenever she comes along to perform something with her own musical interpretation of what’s already been done before. Plus, Eilish is more reluctant to admit her wrongdoings/overall frailty on “TV,” only gradually coming to the conclusion at the very end of the song that, “Baby, I, baby, I, baby, I’m the problem.” Taylor, in contrast, is far quicker to take the blame for, well, everything. Especially when it comes to being “too big to hang out” with (just as Lorde noted of herself on “Liability”). And while “TV” is a song that focuses more on the general “sickness of the culture,” “Anti-Hero” is about being overcome by one’s own insecurities and giving in completely to that low self-esteem.

    Eilish, instead, appears to have low esteem for everyone else when she offers lyrics like, “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial/While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade.” However, one notable similarity regarding insecurity that is present on both tracks pertains to weight—apparently a subject that transcends all generational divides in spite of Gen Z’s frequent touting of “body positivity.” While Eilish sings, “I’ll try not to starve myself/Just because you’re mad at me,” Taylor (formerly) showed that insecurity with a scale in the “Anti-Hero” video that reads, “FAT” when she steps onto it. Except, of course, she wasn’t allowed to have her own feelings displayed for long because of the scandalized Gen Z types that would accuse her of being fat-shaming to others.

    As for Eilish and her own problematic nature, she’ll take a less direct approach in confronting it, as manifest in the “TV” lyrics, “I’ll be in denial for at least a little while.” The same way Swifties will be about Eilish sonically coining “I’m the problem” before Taylor.

    Genna Rivieccio

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