Billie Eilish: Grounding Pop in Gen-Z's Reality
At 18, Billie Eilish is the first artist with a chart-topping album to be born in this millennium, and she achieved this, as Rolling Stone put it, by doing everything she is not supposed to. To conspiracy theorists, Billie Eilish is the most extravagant industry plant yet; a product of powerful record labels desperation to create the next big million-dollar investment. To me, her rise to pop-stardom is much simpler. All our lives, my generation (and many before us) have been carefully fed perfectly- manufactured music and celebrity culture. There is nothing wrong with the iconic Taylor-Swift-Katy-Perry-One-Direction-Bruno-Mars soundtrack of the Gen-Z childhood, but it is precisely why Billie is such an explosive force in the music industry. Her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released last spring and has already been streamed more than 2 billion times. The week it came out, she had 14 songs in the Top 100 — more than any female artist ever. I’ll admit, part of her allure is because she’s like the cool senior in art class who dresses and acts the way teen girls wish they could: stylish, outrageous, and maybe a little dangerous. Her distinct aesthetic is part of the reason she has garnered tens of millions of fans since she uploaded her first song, “Ocean Eyes”, to Soundcloud at the age of 14. But it’s more than that. Her colorful style, which is emotional, with a hint of pop and a thrillingly sinister edge, has introduced a new sound to our generation. Eilish uses a fusion of genres and an abundance of effects to create an eerie escape for her listeners. Her sound is electric, but the music videos are art in their own right. The shock, scare, and impress - she always delivers something beautiful and memorable. In a few years, we might not remember Ariana Grande’s choreographed dance routine, but no one is about to forget that time Billie cried flowing black tears like a Japanese horror flick. Through her art, Eilish has become a radical reflection of the non-conformity of the youth of today, and one of the best artists to come out of our generation.
Her music is a hybrid of different genres - as many artists are – but it can be sorted into three specific boxes that portray a recurring tone that is enforced in her music videos. The emotions usually sit somewhere between carefree, melancholy, and (most recognizably) in her darker songs she gives life to her fears. The song “bury a friend” has been described as a ‘sonic nightmare’ which uses horror-movie sound effects like tapping, scraping, and clinking to create an audible sleep-paralysis experience. It highlights Eilish’s struggles with something many teens can relate to – being her own worst enemy. The concept is that she is the monster under her bed. In some lines, computer editing has transformed her voice into the deep and unsettling taunts of a nightmare. In the video, the camera follows her, twisting and spinning with flashing lights and choppy cuts to disorientate the viewers as she moves through the horror-movie settings with pitch-black eyes.
On the same album, “All the good girls go to hell” is a more upbeat track that uses a catchy pop sound to deliver a climate change message behind satirical Bible references. She purposely refers to God as female, and humans, ‘the good girls.’ In the first line, she drawls “my lucifer is lonely,” which is a reference to the idea of a Devil and Angel on each of your shoulders. Large coal and fossil fuel corporations seem to have a lighter shoulder, and no lack of ‘devil’ to tempt them. They disregard the lives of potentially billions of people for their monetary gain, a perfect example of the twisted idiocy of human nature. She goes on to mention the California wildfires, ice melting, and humanity causing its downfall – in this case, a fall out of Heaven. In the video, we see her injected with dozens of needles. Archaic angel wings rip from her back, and she falls to Earth (depicted as an extension of Hell) into a pit of tar. As she crawls out, it catches fire and the flame chases her trail of pollution, setting her now-black wings alight. Everyone interprets art in their way, but the main symbolism is something most people pick up. The injections are humanity’s insatiable desire for progress and gain, sometimes through unethical and twisted methods. Even as we try to get away from the mess we have made through political treaties and climate change organizations, the sad truth is that we crossed that line some years ago, and now our mistakes will have devastating consequences for our lives, our children’s, and our grandchildren's. She delivers her message through art in a way that reaches Gen-Z as no boomer could before her.
A slower song that falls under the more melancholy category is “Xanny” (slang for Xanax). It’s a tirade on how desensitized we have become to people's drugs to numb themselves, emotionally and physically. I must be missing something, they just keep doing nothing, too intoxicated to be scared… bring ashtrays to the table and that's about the only thing they share. She goes on to sing about the way we learn to make the same mistakes and blame circumstances. In a day and age when substances like juuling have taken over as the cigarettes of the 60s, and harder drugs are becoming less and less shocking, her disgust for this culture is refreshing. This song is a threatening reminder of the fact that no one can ‘afford to love someone who isn’t dying by mistake.’ – especially jarring when the next song on the radio is about smoking weed and popping pills.
In 2019, Eilish broke the deafening silence following her first album - not with a bang, but a somber hum of distorted piano notes accompanied by troubling words. Over the four gentle notes, she dissolves the “Bad Guy” bravado and carries her listeners down from the empowering high of her album to a vulnerable, melancholic reality. While “Everything I Wanted” could be easily passed off as a disappointment, a bore that you’d skip on the playlist of Eilish’s career, it resonates for much more deeply than any angsty teen pop song could. She sings, Thought I could fly so I stepped off the Golden, mm …. I tried to scream but my head was underwater. They called me weak, like I'm not just somebody's daughter. The incredibly dark lyrics seem disconcerting, melting beautifully off of the lips of a 17-year-old girl, but these lines take the hand of the sad, depressed, or unfortunately suicidal and validate their struggles. As the song builds, the lyrics shift us onto a hopeful path - one that grounds us with the strength of our loved ones. I had a dream, I got everything I wanted. But when I wake up, I see you with me. 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 that you see yourself, you wouldn't wonder why you hear “they don't deserve you".
2020, the year everything we thought we knew took a turn – often for the worse, but the release of My Future was a welcome progression for Eilish. Written from the perspective of the girl in the mirror from “Idontwannabeyouanymore”, the song is a self-reflection on her shift from a melancholic persona towards a positive, more optimistic one. The girl from her 2017 single has found hope, and thus, no longer exists within the mirror. It’s a message to her old self and her audience that ‘her future’ will be a bright one.
Billie Eilish’s sounds and lyrics flow seamlessly into the visual aesthetic portrayed on screen and social media. Whenever she appears to the public, whether it be on stage, Instagram, or interviews, she’s covered in an all-baggy anti-silhouette — a collective middle finger to the structure of teen-pop sex appeal. She exclusively deals in the edgy-teen aesthetic of wearing too many gothic rings and sporting an ever-changing hair color. Bright monochrome outfits make sure that she’s never forgotten. In pictures, we see her signature, at best bored (and at worst, dead) stare into the camera. This look doesn’t particularly appeal to me (and likely most people), and yet some 37 million people like and share every outfit she posts on Instagram. In an interview, Eilish said, “Someone else writes my music, someone else produces it, someone else run my Insta. Everything could be easier if I wanted it to,” she continued. “But I’m not that kind of person and I’m not that kind of artist. I’d rather die than be that kind of artist.” I'm not claiming that every pop-star is swept up into some sort of industry-machine that sucks up talent and pumps out record deals, and neither is Eilish. But having millions of eyes on your every move – whether it be on the red carpet or the grocery store, tends to push people to conform. The judging glare of modern cancel-culture has yet to phase Billie Eilish and her avant-garde persona. To the general public, smiling is seen as a pleasant and acceptable way to pose, but to Eilish even slapping on a faux smile at the cameras is something she won’t do. She never does anything that she doesn’t want to, never is anything she doesn’t want to be; if you can say one thing about her – she’s consistent. She says she doesn’t smile because she doesn’t want to feel weak or small – she is, and will always want to be the largest presence in the room. In the same way, she avoids revealing clothes because they make her vulnerable and exposed. She feels no loyalty to the misogynistic standards society has enforced on previous (and current) generations of pop-stars. Her unapologetic, and semi-nihilistic attitude displays a message to her audience in bright, neon lights; different is the new cool.
Billie is a globally recognized celebrity who has accumulated millions of dollars and fans throughout her short time in pop-stardom. But she’s also funny, creative, confident, vulnerable, alienated, melancholy — in other words, a teen. Behind the edgy is-it-a-dream-or-a-nightmare aesthetic aren’t meaning-less pop songs about romance, partying, and breakups; she has a message about the way our society needs to change. She’s become one of the most iconic artists to emerge from our generation because she represents the new wave. She has the ability to swagger straight through any wall of normality caged around her. Billie Eilish: the embodiment of our generation's desperation to push every standard and boundary society has built. Each one of us strives to use our voice, our outlet to inspire change. Perhaps it's breaking gender stereotypes and marching for freedom of sexual orientation, staging walk-outs in Europe, and writing letters to presidential candidates to push for the fight against climate change or taking action to ban automatic weapons from the general public. Or maybe it’s joining a club and sharing activism posts on Instagram. Either way – we’re young, informed, and riling for change. Gen- Z is like no other that has come before us. Social media and our complicated political mess of a world have bore a new generation - one of radical change, expression, and freedom.