This last Thursday, 16 year old electropop sensation Billie Eilish released a new music video to her single, when the party’s over. In the video, she cries tears of black, which hits you emotionally in all the right places. The song is about a relationship, where she claims to be no good for the other person, and that she’s become acquainted to losing them over and over again. She sings so beautifully and filled with misery all at once, and it comes from such a vulnerable place. The song is depressing, and the electronic sound of it makes it perfectly orchestrated and original at the same time.
Eilish is a pro when it comes to writing and performing sad electronic music. One of her first hit singles, ocean eyes, is slow and harmonic, and truly portrays Eilish’s vocal talents. She sings about falling for someone’s “ocean eyes”, and you can truly feel her misery. In another hit single, lovely, featuring up and coming artist Khalid, they talk about “someday (they’ll) make it out of here”, here being however you interpret it, maybe out of your neighborhood onto bigger and better things, or even out of a depression. The song is slow and somber, assisted with a piano and orchestra. When asked about the song on Apple Music’s Beats 1, Billie explained, “We called it (lovely) because the song was sort of really freaking depressing so then it’s like oh, how lovely. Just taking everything horrible like you know what this is great. I’m so happy being miserable.” Such I found particularly interesting, because a lot of people don’t typically enjoy being miserable because, well, who on earth would want to feel miserable all the time? A lot of people don’t like to feel sad or listen to melancholy music that often, but others, including Eilish and myself, don’t mind those kinds of emotions, and like to experience those emotions through someone else’s sorrowful music.
One of her songs that I really resonated with is entitled idontwannabeyouanymore. In an interview with Genius, she explained that the song was about facing her insecurities and addressing her lack of self confidence and low self-esteem. The lyrics spoke to me personally, because I feel like most songs where people sing about themselves, it’s about how awesome they claim to be or how much better they are than the people who actually listen to their songs. It’s difficult to acknowledge that you’re insecure and that don’t like yourself, because you feel like people will judge you for feeling that way. To me, I feel like making yourself aware of the things you don’t like about yourself will get you one step closer to accepting who you are. Eilish writing an entire song about those particular feelings made me respect her even more as an artist.
Not all of Eilish’s songs are so sorrowful. In one of her more recent electronic hits, you should see me in a crown, she sings from a much more confident perspective compared to her previous records. In the song, she sings about taking over the world with her newfound fame, boosting her self-esteem in the process. Such shows her incredible development as a performer and as a person.
That song and many more are expected to appear in Billie’s upcoming and unnamed debut album, which is expected to be released in early 2019.