Billie Eilish - "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" Album Review
Billie Eilish. Love her or hate her, no doubt you’ve seen her everywhere. Her 2017 EP “dont smile at me” proved her worth as a versatile artist who could blend chart-topping genres like pop, rap, and alternative rock in a unique way, and set the young prodigy on a meteoric rise to stardom. While she might not be a household name yet with older people, she has generation Z’s full attention.
Containing smash hits like “Ocean Eyes” and “Bellyache”, the EP had helplessly romantic teenage songwriting from Billie and out-there production from her brother Finneas that had her newfound fans begging for more. She’s sold out tours, skyrocketed her follower count on social media platforms, launched a clothing line, and shown her lovable personality through interviews and her very own radio show on Apple Music. It’s hard to believe it’s only been two years since the release of the EP, but she and her team have figured out how to make a splash in today’s world. However, fans knew that “dont smile at me” was just the beginning. After almost three years since her first commercial single, four promotional singles, eight music videos, and even a song for an Apple commercial, her first official album is finally here.
The album (and its mouthfull of a title) was made with that same varied style she’s known for, with Billie saying in a Beats 1 interview, “If you put 14 people who like different genres into a room and plop ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ in front of them, I want every single person in that room to like at least one song.” With the album’s release, the questions arise of whether it lives up to expectations, how it compares to “dont smile at me”, and if it could make her a bigger star than she already is.
The album comes out the gate swinging with “Bad Guy”, a fusion of girl punk and techno pop, with a bassy hip-hop switch-up towards the end. The track introduces many of the themes you’re going to hear throughout the rest of the album; driving bass, Billie’s not-your-average-girl demeanor, ear-catching vocal effects, and the near-whisper cadence of her singing that lulls you into her beautiful nightmare. “You Should See Me In a Crown” is another empowering moment on the album. It’s a rollercoaster ride of buildups and drops with a barrage of rapidfire hip-hop drums mixed with grimy bass synths. It’s a creepy yet anthemic ego boost of a song that has her taking on a villainous approach to asserting her dominance.
Billie often enjoys exploring the seldom talked about sides of young love through her music, exemplified by tracks like “8”, where she uses a child-like voice to happify feeling invisible to her love interest, with a folksy hook to boot. “Wish You Were Gay” shows the unique way in which Billie deals with rejection, wishing that her crush was homosexual so he’d have a better reason to not reciprocate feelings. It’s questionably provocative, and I really like the transitions between the verses and the chorus, which sounds like something you’d hear a drunken barroom chant.
It wouldn’t be Billie Eilish without some songs to get you in your feelings. In “When The Party’s Over” and “Ilomilo”, Billie laments about the pains of separation. Her feelings of longing and sorrow are amplified by the mournful hums and emotional falsettos. While Billie ends up coming to terms with the distance between her and her lover on the tailend of each track, she can’t help but repeat the same sentiment of dissatisfaction with the way things are between them.
“My Strange Addiction” is a clever track that frames Billie’s partner like the TLC documentary series of the same name. Throughout the track, “The Office” (another TV show popular with Billie’s demographic) is sampled in snippets. Playful lyrics, a catchy bassline, and a chugging drumbeat that sounds like something by Daft Punk or Gesaffelstein make up this fun track. Billie is also between a rock and a hard place on the song “Xanny”, a melancholic slowdown where Billie fills the shoes of a black sheep, or, more specifically, the only sober one at a drug-fuelled party. Amongst chilling harmonies, Billie eschews drug use and abjures peer pressure and giving in conformality, but doesn’t sound overly preachy. She boldly proclaims at the end of the chorus, “Don’t give me a xanny, now or ever”, a lyric that earned her a nomination for best influence at the parent’s choice awards.
Melancholy and drugs are two of the many monsters under Billie’s bed, and she literally deals with the devil on the pious “All The Good Girls Go To Hell”. The lyrics twist lots of biblical figures and imagery into a track about divine power saving mankind from themselves. Even though the production reminded me a little too much of “My Boy” from her EP, I have a feeling this one will grow on me over time. It definitely has the most creative songwriting on the album. Speaking of monsters under the bed, Billie takes on that perspective in the sinister “Bury A Friend”. The thumping kicks and haunting sound effects fit very well with the themes of sleep paralysis and nightmares, from glass breaking to staple guns to invisalign attachments being drilled off. It also contains the album’s namesake question, along with several other creepy rhetoricals.
The final tracks on the album are two beautiful acoustic ballads that almost transition into each other as one cohesive thought. The first being “Listen Before I Go”, an atypical expression of heartbreak that has Billie wanting her lover to listen to her before an imminent suicide attempt. The song ends with sounds of police sirens and distant commotion, that shut off before the next song, now that Billie has her lover’s attention. Before she goes, she recounts her feelings about their complicated relationship on “I Love You”, a ballad that chronicles her battle with and acceptance of her feelings.
The album wraps up with a dark recap in the form of “Goodbye”, where Billie cites some memorable quotables from each track on the album in reverse order. Her lyrics are never too complex, and she has a good way of exploring whatever topic she decides to tackle that’s not too predictable yet not shrouded in mystery. She certainly has mastered the way music can connect with young people emotionally, and her whispery vocals make it feel like she’s on the edge of your bed, singing just to you.
Only right now, in this decade, could we get an artist like Billie Eilish, and “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” demonstrates where pop music is headed. People are tired of the repetitive, overdone, out-of-touch artists that never leave the charts. Billie is the voice of her listeners, expressing the fervent, bottled-up emotions of youth culture. Unlike most pop records, the production is handled in a minimalist style, sticking mainly to heavy 808 bass, warbly synths, and acoustic guitars and pianos. Many times throughout the album, silence is used to provoke feelings of suspense or toy with the listener’s expectations, an interesting choice that fits the incalculable nature of sleep and dreams.
One gripe I have with the album is its pacing. It’s good that each track on the album sounds very different from the next, but the mood changes so many times that it doesn’t really leave you feeling anything until the end. One sad song leads into an angry song that leads into a happy song and it bugs me a bit, especially since she wants the album to be listened to in order. The middle is especially where it gets its own motives mixed up.
Like many artists nowadays, Billie has become a multimedia brand. In fact, to celebrate the release of the album, she teamed up with Spotify to open a weekend long “experience”, an immersive museum of sorts where each room is dedicated to a track on the album. It serves as an immersive trip through Billie’s thought process and inspirations, with a dash of photo ops and other social media-friendly activities, like a foam pit of “blohsh” logos you can dive into, or a room full of adoptable puppies (no, I am not kidding).
The closer this album came to being released, the more I heard various arguments questioning the legitimacy of Billie as an artist. I’ve heard the term “industry plant” thrown around, essentially being a fake-it-’til-you-make-it moniker for artists that blow up with insider help and have no control over their artistic statements, existing solely to make revenue for corporate-driven labels. While Billie isn’t making the music she puts out by herself (the entire album was written and produced by Billie and Finneas), there are way less contributors than you’d see on the record of a more “obvious” industry plant, or any pop record for that matter. Industry plant or not, it ultimately comes down to the quality of an artist’s music that keeps their career alive or turns them into a flavor-of-the-month artist that wanes in relevancy quickly. “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” proves that Billie Eilish is here to stay.
