‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ Apparently the top of the charts.
Or at least, that’s where our 17 year old Billie Eilish is going with her most recent album. Released only a handful of weeks ago on March 29th 2019, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” has already claimed the number one spot as of writing, with an entire week in the position already. Achieving a difficult task in the process, debuting at number one not only with her album, but her first album nonetheless. Passing artists such as Ariana Grande, Post Malone, recently passed Nipsey Hussle, and the man of emotion himself, Drake. Eilish’s album has given us two singles out of it already, “You Should See Me In A Crown” and “When the Party’s Over” which were released prior to the album. Which no doubt assisted the teen’s new album sales.
Throughout the 42 minutes it’ll take to hear the album in full, one can notice a soft, melodic tone laced in it. Starting from the interlude “!!!!!!!” (Seven exclamation points), we can easily feel the fun and how easily this came to the young star. “I have taken out my Invisalign and this is the album” Shows us through the background laughter, how simply this heartfelt album came to Eilish. Following as the second song, we have the ear candy song “Bad Guy” which does differentiate the album a bit, with a bassy, sub-woofer exercising song that does insinuate the possibility that Eilish is in a physically abusive relationship, though listening to the song in itself, we can hear that the “guy” in the relationship is not as in charge as he believes, and Eilish is the one in control of it all, listing off how she can pull psychological strings, rather than physical ones instead.
Nextly, the hugely popular and first single from the album, “you should see me in a crown” which oddly enough, was inspired by a show that Eilish and her sibling where watching, where the main antagonist spoke these words. Implying they would cause chaos if given power over others. During an interview with BBC Radio 1, Eilish stated that while watching the TV series Sherlock, Professor Moriarty uttered the phrase “You should see me in a crown” which resonated deeply to Eilish and her sibling. (Fun Authors note, the spiders on Eilish’s face during the video are real spiders. Yikes. She was inspired by a spider wrangler she had met prior to shooting the video.)
Following in the outpour of popularity from “you should see me in a crown” the fourth song in the albums lineup, the sixth is a track titled “wish you were gay” which was actually recounted by Eilish herself during an Instagram live video. Where she explained the song is about how it felt for her to be rejected by a boy she liked, at the time, Eilish believed he didn’t like her due to the fact that she was a “shityy person”. She stated that she needed an excuse for him not liking her, such as him possibly being gay. Ironically, after the song was written and a demo was created, Eilish learned he was indeed homosexual after all.
The second single from the album, labeled “when the party’s over” was described by Eilish herself as not a sad or depressing song about putting distance between herself and her at the time lover, it’s a song with a more angry and aggressive tone than how it sounds. Though with this newfound background information, I must personally admit that the line; “Don’t you know I’m no good for you? I’ve learned to lose you, can’t afford to” has a much different meaning when listened to with an aggressive tone, compared to the sad, almost emotional tone I originally heard. Though personally, I choose to believe the angrier tone fits the song a bit more.
At the roughly 16 minute mark, the second single, arguably the most popular song on the album “bury a friend” is playing. Which happen to debut itself at number fourteen on the Hot 100 chart for the week of February, ending on the sixteenth. Some speculated that this song was in fact about an ‘entity’ that exists near Eilish and her relationship with it. Though on a UMUSIC article, Eilish put it all out onto the table; “When we made ‘bury a friend,’ the whole album clicked in my head. I immediately knew what it was going to be about, what the visuals were going to be, and everything in terms of how I wanted it to be perceived. It inspired what the album is about. “bury a friend” is literally from the perspective of the monster under my bed. If you put yourself in that mindset, what is this creature doing or feeling? I also confess that I’m this monster, because I’m my own worst enemy. I might be the monster under your bed, too.” Which from a personal perspective, is fairly creepy due to the fact I have little room underneath my bed. Nor is it all that comfortable with the storage totes hogging up the space.
Personally, as someone who comes from a growing up background of Slayer, Iron Maiden and Testament, with a recent knowledge in the current pop punk scene, it was interesting to sit down and listen to Eilish’s album. Considering I knew personally nothing about the artist, the music, the intention or anything. All I went in knowing was that Seattleite Dave Grohl himself gave Eilish the thumbs up, so I guess she has to be a little decent? After hearing the album on what feels like a nonstop repeat for an entire weekend, I learned a lot about the 17 year old, explicitly about the relationships and the tough times that she’s been through. Choice wise it wouldn’t be the go to album for my day (that honor goes to just about any Modern Baseball album. I’m emo, I know. Get over it.), though if my playlist does add her into it as a filler song I won’t skip any of them. If giving a rating is apart of my job, I’d have to easily give this a four and a half out of five. Good job on the fresh album Billie and I hope to hear more from you soon!
Theron Puckett
Resident coffee addicted Evergreen student.
Erebus Media 