When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Dark Pop
Is Billie Eilish an industry plant? That term, "industry plant," is a favorite of displaced music fans that don't like when previously unheard of people become near-instantly famous. Lady Gaga comes to mind. Because these artists didn't spend a decade wallowing in the music underground, known only to obscurists and purists, there must be some kind of conspiracy. That term, "industry plant," is a word that meant something once, but now is just a tagline for trolls to use on anything they hate.
So, is Billie Eilish an industry plant? The point is, if the music is good, does it matter? If Eilish is a plant, then whatever A&R person picked her up should be paid lottery amounts of money every week for life. If Eilish is a plant, then whoever wrote her lyrics (p.s. it's her) should be winning Nobel prizes for literature. Yes, her brother, who writes or co-writes all the music on When We All Fall Asleep, is a well-worn "industry" producer, and certainly nepotism played into him giving Eilish a chance. But the problem is that most nepotists don't stick the landing.
This crew is Mary Lou Retton.
Originally, and for years now, Billie Eilish sounded like one of countless other "dark" "depressed" singer-songwriters: your Lana Del Reys, Lordes, and what have you. However, as Elish's career moved on, her sound became increasingly complex, and the darkness began leaking from her lyrics to her electronics, until eventually we got dark-wave pop masterpieces like "You Should See Me in a Crown" and "Bury a Friend;" songs so brilliant they might define the next generation of pop.
And if we go back to Eilish's lyrics, we can see those have grown more complex as well. Her first songs followed the typical "I'm sad because I'm and artist and no one understands" formula of the aforementioned "depressing" singers. But on When We All Fall Asleep, we get songs like "Bad Guy" that not only stands as an above-average sonic thesis statement for the album, but also transforms a song seemingly about a literal bad guy (i.e., man), into an introspective exploration of the bad part of Eilish's own personality--a metaphorical bad guy. Or the song "Xanny," which uses the tropes of barbiturate drug use in pop and rap to explain why Eilish is leaving her friend group: she's not into drugs, and your overuse of them makes you a boring cliche.
Billie Eilish might be an industry plant, and she might be one in a line of "depressed" singers, but her style (especially visual--seriously watch her music videos), delivery, and utterly unique take on how to present the overtly dismal make her, and When We All Fall Asleep, one to keep an eye on, for sure.
