Billie Eilish’s genius music video gives me chills every time I watch it. If you’ve ever seen one of her music videos, you’re familiar with the creepy and horrifying quality she likes to depict by crying black tears or having a spider crawl out of her mouth – but this video is something different. Pitchfork claims this is her second self-directed music video, the first being the video she created to “xanny,” in which she sat on a white bench in a white room and was repeatedly burned by the ends of cigarettes being put out on her face. The video for “everything i wanted” has this same minimalistic yet haunting quality that makes goosebumps crawl up my body every time I watch it.
Courtesy: Giphy
The “everything i wanted” music video begins with a written statement by Billie saying “Finneas is my brother and my best friend. no matter the circumstance, we always have and always will be there for each other.” Her brother, Finneas, helps her create, write and produce most of her music. He also has various singles of his own under the title FINNEAS. As you can tell from the nature of these words, Finneas means everything to her. Throughout the course of the song, you can tell that she wrote it about him and how he will always be there for her when no one else is. He is also by her side for the entirety of the music video; he sits in the passenger seat of a sleek black sports car that Billie is driving. They ride on what looks like a highway past a dark city skyline.
As they drive past the city, they go through a tunnel and end up driving on top of a sandy California beach, plunging directly into the ocean. Throughout this entire video, both Billie and Finneas have completely blank, straight faces, but as they sink into the water and Billie sings the lines “but when I wake up, I see you with me,” they hold hands and look into each other’s eyes. As water fills up the car, they remain completely calm and satisfied in each other’s presence.
Courtesy: Wikipedia
The lyrics of this song depict two dreams Billie has had of committing suicide, one by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (which I believe connects back to the highway she was driving on) and the other of her drowning. She goes on to describe how she’s afraid no one will notice or care if something bad like that happened to her, but when she wakes up her brother is there to reassure her. She writes “And you say, ‘As long as I’m here, no one can hurt you / Don’t wanna lie here, but you can learn to / If I could change the way you see yourself / You wouldn’t wonder why you hear they don’t deserve you.’” This song is a beautifully constructed ode to her brother and the unbreakable bond that connects them. “My brother and I wrote this song about each other and I wanted to create a visual that emphasizes that no matter what, we’ll be there for each other through everything,” Billie stated at a press conference. “This is the second video I’ve directed of mine. We worked so hard, for hours and hours on end. I love it, I hope you do too.”
Courtesy: Giphy
When the single was originally released, I immediately fell in love with the soft, melancholic nature of the song, but this video captured me and drowned me in the ocean with them. The somber blue and purple tones throughout this video were breathtaking, as well as the emotion Billie so brilliantly created with how she directed this video. I truly hope Billie continues directing her future music videos because she has a gift and I want to witness what other pictures she paints in her brain. Don’t miss Billie performing at the 2020 Grammy Awards and if you haven’t seen her new music video yet, please go watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgBJmlPo8Xw
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