Billie Eilish Deserves Your Respect
Why 13-Year-Old Girls Have Backed the Right Horse
Lately, 13-year-old girls haven’t had a great track record for backing ground-breaking musicians, but this year, they have. This year, they are supporting Billie Eilish, a 17-year-old girl who has become the first artist to top the Billboard 200 born in the 21st century (and after 9/11). While many question how “f**ked up” she is (she put a live tarantula in her mouth!!!), her fans and a legion of critics and songwriters realize her remarkable talent. Dave Grohl even called her the future of rock.
I bought her recent debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (her capitalization, and the lack thereof, is always stylized), after being impressed with her music videos, making it the first album I’ve ever purchased while it was atop the Billboard charts.
I am thrilled to report that it is a triumph; in fact, it might even be the decade’s best, and it’s certainly among the bravest. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a perfect album, but its faults come from ambition, not concession.
Her brother, Finneas O’Connell (21, known as FINNEAS), recorded and produced the album in his childhood bedroom, and the siblings wrote every song themselves. Each song is angular yet catchy, and the album blends a variety of distinct genres. Billie’s voice is versatile and sublime, and her brother’s production is wonderful despite their ambition. But, more than anything else, it is the lyrics that make Eilish astonishing.
I’d argue that greatness can be attributed to lyrics for a few reasons. One attribute of great lyrics springs from originality and targeting of subject, and/or finding a unique way into that subject. Eilish succeeds wildly on this front. On “all the good girls go to hell”, she tackles global warming and theodicy, calling humanity ignorant and St. Peter a fool while God condemns ‘all the good girls’ to Hell to convince Satan to take Her side. That’s a level of intellectual engagement you’re just not going to hear from a Katy Perry bop. On “wish you were gay”, to convey her longing for the affection of her (male) crush, she begs, “To spare my pride, / to give your lack of interest an explanation, / don’t say I’m not your type. / Just say that I’m not your preferred sexual orientation.” That quatrain provides an in I haven’t heard to a common subject only Gen Z could think up. On “xanny”, Eilish defies mainstream party culture, declaring herself a teetotaler and rebukes recreational Xanax, writing, “I’m in their second-hand smoke / Still just drinking canned Coke. / I don’t need a Xanny to feel better,” identifying and maligning all three vices (smoking/alcohol/drugs) within the first half of her refrain. Most pop stars would never criticize their base for fear of alienating them, but Eilish doesn’t care, and she is a better artist for it.
Secondly, a great song conveys character or perspective and story, either from the third (e.g., “Eleanor Rigby”) or first (e.g., “Psycho Killer”) person. Eilish writes most of her songs from fictional perspectives, and that allows her to make storytelling her primary aim, even if her stories don’t have plots. “listen before i go” is a first-person narrative of a woman who commits suicide, telling her loved ones, “[You] tell me ‘love is endless’. / Don’t be so pretentious. / Leave me like you do.” The chorus feels like a death sentence, adding, “’Sorry’ can’t save me now. / Sorry, I don’t know how. / Sorry, there’s no way out, / but down.” The honesty on display, autobiographical or not, is unflinching, and rare among any musician today. Meanwhile, her 2017 song (written when she was 15!), “bellyache”, is told from the perspective of a serial killing teen chewing gum beside her friends’ corpses. You couldn’t come up with a less typical subject for a 15-year-old girl to take on, and, like “Psycho Killer”, it is effectively paired with upbeat music, both disguising the lyrics’ brutality and reflecting her psychopathic lack of empathy.
However, many songs satisfy the two categories above; the third category however, cannot be taught or learned (reliably). A family friend of mine, Neil Steinberg, a columnist at the Sun Times, once commended Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, by complimenting her word choice, writing, “[Michelle’s] first kiss was ‘splishy.’ Time ‘loops and leaps’.” Choosing the right words, creating unique phrases, and making effective use of allusion and intertextuality, is often what separates the good from the great, and Eilish and O’Connell are great. “ilomilo” is based on an obscure video game, while “you should see me in a crown” is a Moriarty quote. In “my strange addiction”, she sings, “to be talking to you, belladonna; / should have taken a break not an Oxford comma.” Belladonna is both another name for deadly nightshade and an Italian address for a beautiful woman. In the second line she says she should have stopped when she had the chance rather than go on, which she conveys by invoking contentious grammatical rules. In “bellyache”, she ingenuously sings, “My V is for vendetta”. ‘V is for vendetta’ has entered our lexicon as a symbol of revolt thanks to the graphic novel/film of the same name. However, Eilish distorts this phrase simply by placing a possessive pronoun before it. Suddenly, ‘V’ refers to her sex, characterizing it (and herself) dangerous, perfect for a teen murderess.
The list just goes on! She describes a drug user as, “…someone / who isn’t dying by mistake” (“xanny”). She describes herself as a, “might-seduce-your-dad type” (“bad guy”). Of Heaven, she writes, “the pearly gates look more like a picket fence” (“good girls”). She masterfully embeds countdowns into “wish you were gay”, including, “If three’s a crowd and two is us, one slipped away”. Of her boyfriend she sings, “My boy loves his friends like I love my split ends, / and by that I mean, he cuts them off” (“my boy”). In “COPYCAT” (2017), she croons, “Call me callous, call me cold. / You’re italic. I’m in bold.” Lines that clever are extremely rare and deserve to be cherished.
Lastly, we must address, “bury a friend”. I’ve never heard a song quite like it (not to mention its incredible music video). The track is written from the perspective of a “monster under the bed”, but instead of just talking about spiders and boogeymen, she turns inward. The monster isn’t a ghoul, it’s herself: she is her own worst enemy. As such, the song begins with chorus of questions including, “Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me? / When we all fall asleep, where do we go?” This chorus is a fascinating way to begin a song and lends the album its enigmatic title. The verses add to the feeling of self-doubt, as she sings, “Say it, spit it out. What is it exactly / you’re paying? Is the amount cleaning you out? Am I satisfactory? / Today, I’m thinking about the things that are deadly; / the way I’m drinking you down like I wanna drown, like I wanna end me.” That’s right. This song, too, tackles suicidal thoughts, and is bolstered by the refrain, which morphs her self-doubt into self-hatred through her imagery and a twisted sort of euphony, singing, “Step on the glass. Staple your tongue. / Bury a friend. Try to wake up. / Cannibal class; killing the son. / Bury a friend. I wanna end me.” The glass shatters like her self-respect; her tongue is stapled because she has lost her confidence; the friend that she’s burying is her self-worth. ‘Cannibal class’ reflects her emotions being devoured. Furthermore, she destroys her own ABAB rhyme scheme to allow “I wanna end me” to feel like a credible threat. The phrase is on its own, and the speaker abandons the second person address to look to herself since she is both aggressor and victim. (Billie has a different interpretation but art is meant to be interpreted, so.) Somehow though, Eilish, with this horror-themed song about suicidal self-loathing, orchestrated largely by distorted sound bites and dental drills, has tweenage girls begging for more. Surely, this is some sort of miracle.
In short, Eilish deserves your praise and respect, if only for her lyrical prowess. If Eilish is the future of pop, then its future is bright, and, Gen Z, if Eilish is your representative, yours is even brighter.
Be sure to follow me on Medium, leave a comment, share, or hit the clapping hands if you liked this article. Below, I linked to her full album (or you could buy it and support art) and Eilish’s RapGenius lyrics, if you want to follow along.
Full Album
All Eilish Lyrics:
https://genius.com/artists/Billie-eilish
