The Anxious Love Songs of Billie Eilish
Earlier this yr, the singer and songwriter Billie Eilish, who’s twenty-two, grew to become the youngest two-time Oscar winner in historical past, gathering the Finest Authentic Track award for “What Was I Made For?,” a fragile existential ballad that she co-wrote for the movie “Barbie.” (She additionally received in 2022, for “No Time to Die,” a moody and portentous Bond theme.) By the way, Eilish can also be the youngest individual ever to have a clear sweep of all 4 of the primary Grammy classes (Finest New Artist, Report of the Yr, Track of the Yr, and Album of the Yr), which she achieved in 2020, for her début LP, “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?” At that yr’s ceremony, moments earlier than Album of the Yr was introduced, Eilish might be seen mouthing, “Please don’t be me”; onstage, standing alongside her brother Finneas O’Connell, who can also be her co-writer and producer, she appeared bewildered, if not mortified. “We wrote an album about despair, and suicidal ideas, and local weather change,” O’Connell advised the gang. “We rise up right here confused and grateful.” It’s each heartening and barely mystifying that Eilish, who writes sombre, idiosyncratic, goth-tinged electro-pop about her loneliness and tedium, has change into such a lodestone for trade accolades. “Man am I the best / God I hate it,” Eilish sings on “The Biggest,” a forlorn, walloping tune from her compact however highly effective new album, “Hit Me Laborious and Comfortable,” which was simply launched.
Eilish is understood for taking her time in a tune, generally crawling by way of a melody as if it had been a bowl of molasses, and he or she usually chooses to sing in a whisper, letting a observe hold within the air earlier than it dissipates completely. Her vocal type jogs my memory of an evanescing cloud of smoke after somebody blows out a cluster of birthday candles—stunning, fleeting, a bit bit haunted. But, on “The Biggest,” Eilish belts and bellows. “I waited / And waited,” she wails, her voice getting larger and greater. It’s uncommon to search out Eilish in bloodletting mode, however fury and loudness swimsuit her, too. Lyrically, a lot of “Hit Me Laborious and Comfortable” is about wanting a relationship however failing, in some elementary and inescapable method, to maintain closeness with one other individual. It’s an attention-grabbing drawback: wanting one thing, but in addition realizing you might be incapable of getting it. The twists and turns of Eilish’s emotional journey are mirrored and amplified by O’Connell’s manufacturing; these songs are susceptible to sudden adjustments and reinventions, ups and downs. Quicker, slower, shut, far, right here, gone. “L’Amour de Ma Vie,” a brand new tune a couple of soured relationship—“You had been so mediocre,” Eilish sings—shifts from a lovelorn, jazz-inflected torch tune right into a pulsing membership banger, chilly and threatening. In much less assured palms, that transformation is likely to be disorienting, however Eilish and O’Connell are masterly at discovering the connective tissue between disparate emotions and sounds. Why can’t a love tune be light and aggressive, grounded and spectral? Isn’t love?
From the beginning of her profession, Eilish has by no means been notably comfy with movie star, and at occasions she has appeared viscerally repelled by it; the anxiousness and paranoia introduced on by world fame are one other theme right here, and are maybe immediately accountable for Eilish’s romantic angst. On “Skinny,” the craving ballad that opens the album, she displays on coming of age underneath the scrutiny of strangers. “Individuals say I look glad / Simply because I acquired skinny / However the previous me continues to be me and perhaps the true me / And I believe she’s fairly,” Eilish sings, her voice feathery and resigned. (“The Web is hungry for the meanest sort of humorous / And someone’s gotta feed it,” she factors out.) “Skinny” is a beautiful tune, wounded and fragile, with a whiff of Lilith Honest folksiness. It ends with a mournful string determine by the Attacca Quartet, the one different musicians featured on the album in addition to Eilish, O’Connell, and Eilish’s tour drummer, Andrew Marshall.
Eilish writes usually about management, an concept that manifests in pictures of closed doorways and lyrics about feeling caged. (The quilt artwork includes a {photograph} of Eilish sinking right into a deep-blue abyss, slightly below a white door.) “Once I step off the stage I’m a chicken in a cage / I’m a canine in a canine pound,” she sings, on “Skinny.” On “Chihiro,” she is imploring: “Open up the door / Are you able to open up the door?” On “Blue,” which closes the album, she returns to each pictures:
Claustrophobia, darkness, worry—these are all concepts that Eilish and O’Connell luxuriated in on “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?,” however right here they really feel deeper, broader, and extra dramatic. Partway by way of “Blue,” Eilish begins chanting, her voice so flat and filtered that in the first place I believed it is likely to be O’Connell. For Eilish, fame and despair are entangled, heavy predicaments to endure and, she hopes, survive:
Musically, “Hit Me Laborious and Comfortable” lands someplace between “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?” and Eilish’s second album, “Happier Than Ever,” from 2021. Lately, Eilish’s songwriting has felt extra indebted to jazz-adjacent pop singers akin to Peggy Lee and Amy Winehouse than to the spooky despondency of 9 Inch Nails. “Hit Me Laborious and Comfortable” is mature and nuanced, and that feels acceptable—the religious distance between seventeen and twenty-two is huge—however I generally miss Eilish’s giddier and extra puerile facet. Many listeners first got here to know Eilish by way of “Dangerous Man,” the fifth single from “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?” It’s a humorous and creative observe, that includes a campy synthesizer riff and a dramatic tempo change. What made “Dangerous Man” so intoxicating was the clever method it balanced youthful insouciance—that “Duh,” delivered on the finish of every refrain, was so completely saturated with teen-age disdain it felt like getting hit within the face with a water balloon—and a sort of playful, empowered sensuality. Within the tune’s video, Eilish sports activities blue hair, and blood is smeared throughout her face; her eyes are vacant, unfeeling. However she additionally dances round like an infinite goof, carrying an outsized butter-yellow sweatsuit, and leads a gang of dudes down a suburban avenue from behind the wheel of a toy race automotive.
That individual mixture—“Dangerous Man” is equal elements critical and foolish—jogs my memory of quite a lot of issues, however particularly of intercourse, which might be solemn, generally sacred, but in addition utterly absurd. Eilish embraces her carnal appetites on “Lunch,” a brand new tune about pure animal lust:
For all of the hand-wringing in regards to the lagging intercourse drive of youthful People, Eilish has been outspoken in regards to the methods by which that kind of bodily communion might be therapeutic. In a current interview with Rolling Stone, she endorsed the myriad advantages of masturbation—“Individuals must be jerking it, man”—and of feminine sexual pleasure extra typically. “I believe it’s such a frowned-upon factor to speak about, and I believe that ought to change,” she stated. “You requested me what I do to decompress? That shit can actually, actually prevent generally, simply saying. Can’t suggest it extra, to be actual.” “Lunch” is a bizarre, pulsing observe, vigorous and attractive. It’s additionally my favourite tune on the brand new album, partially as a result of Eilish sounds extremely free, which is to say, she seems like herself. ♦
