“No Time to Die” by Billie Eilish, Wednesday, May 10, 2023

 

Around 2018, before I started paying attention to new music, I asked my middle school students who they were listening to these days, and it made me feel very old. There were a few singers I knew--Charlie Puth, Troye Sivan--but the two top artists I had no idea who they were. The first was Anne-Marie, who, admittedly hadn't made it really big in America. I actually thought that the students liked the easy-listening singer Anne Murray, so I had to play her music for them!

WAS I STUPID TO LOVE YOU?  The other artist was Billie Eilish, who hadn't yet released her eventually Grammy-winning album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?  In the early days, though, I was turned off by the singer's aesthetic: the gothic and neon, the adolescent morbidity. And the styles of her song titles bothered me. I felt that I had entered a new musical world where nothing made sense, that I was looking at the world through the eyes of Generation Z, and I felt not like a Millennial but rather the stereotypical Boomer. Was that going to be my relationship with music, or worse, my relationship with the upcoming generation, an inability to understand "kids these days"? I can't tell you the first time that I heard "Bad Guy" because it seemed like I had heard it years ago in 2013 in a bar where the missionary kids would go--not to drink--but to dance. I couldn't understand the music, like you had to be drunk to enjoy it. "Bad Guy" was played everywhere, and it grew on me, whether the gym or when shopping. It was the sound of the time. I didn't like it, but that style didn't grate on me like it did in the early '10s. Meanwhile, critical opinion about Eilish's talent was comparable to acceptance of Nirvana in the early '90s.  While Eilish received acceptance on pop and dance radio, her genre may be best described as Alternative--a messy genre in which genre-bending is maybe the only requirement.

THE BLOOD YOU BLEED IS JUST THE BLOOD YOU OWE. What made me get Billie Eilish was the Apple TV+ documentary, Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry. The documentary film, which I watched on my free trial of Apple TV+ when the platform didn't have much to watch, gave an intimate portrait of the teenage singer starting from the recording her debut record When We All Fall  Asleep, Where Do We Go? with her older brother and fellow musician Finneas and follows the growing hype of Billie's debut album, her touring and the toll touring took on her health, and finally the opportunity bestowed on only a select few artists: recording a theme song for the James Bond series, the titular track to the slated for 2020 No Time to Die. How Billie Eilish went from just a hipster Gen. Z writing songs about how messed up the world is for her generation to a fleshed out musical genius was seeing her family dynamic, particularly the collaboration with her brother Finneas O'Connell. And also seeing Billie performing around the world and injuring herself, even at a young age, emotionally getting so involved in her shows--crying over some of the lyrics as she sang on stage, trying to dance even through the pain of a sprained ankle--showed me that she is an artist and that the imagery is a vehicle to show her art rather than a gimmick. I still have yet to do a deep dive into her music, but seeing the authenticity will help me in the future when I do. Sorry I doubted you Billie!

Read “No Time To Die” by Billie Eilish on Genius.