“Eyes Wide Shut” by ILLENIUM ft. Avril Lavigne & Travis Barker, Tuesday, June 6, 2023

The electronic dance music of the ‘10s couldn’t be farther from ILLENIUM’s self-titled album, released last month. Following up 2019’s Ascend, the eponymous record delves into pop-punk and hard rock along with more familiar sounds of pop and R&B. Although ILLENIUM started his career remixing Alternative artists like Florence + the Machine and Lana Del Rey, he found success in working with pop acts. But today’s song is a prime example of how rock became popular in the early ‘20s after nearly 20 years of being untrendy.

I SAY I’M FINE, BUT I’M MISERABLE. In an interview with Zach Sang shortly after releasing his self-titled album, ILLENIUM talked about his rock influences which he could now proudly bring to his DJ career. But rather than assembling artists like his rock heroes, something an artist may have done twenty years ago when artists’ peak careers were shorter, Illenium features three veteran acts: All Time Low, Avril Lavigne, and Travis Barker. Today we’ll discuss the latter two who appear on the track “Eyes Wide Shut.” These days, there seems to be a universe assembling around the blink-182 drummer. It seems that Travis Barker acts as a rock evangelist, bringing pop artists into the fold, transforming them into pop-punk, emo, or hard rock acts. For example Barker took acts like Willow, the daughter of actors Will and Jada Pincket-Smith who was known for a trap single "Whip My Hair," released when she was only ten years old. With Travis Barker, Willow leaned into the hard rock sound of Evanescence, but even going harder, creating an anomaly in pop and rock music. Similar to the Olivia Rodrigo phenomenon, Gen. Z doesn't seem to feel confined to arbitrary titles of genre.

I’M WIDE AWAKE IN MY DREAMS. Unlike Travis Barker, the main featured artist on "Eyes Wide Shut," Avril Lavigne, has a more "Complicated" relationship with the pop-punk music scene. When Let Go dropped in 2002, Avril Lavigne certainly garnered fans, but many of those fans were on the fringes of the "scene." Lavigne's early career never fully impacted rock radio for several reasons. Was it that her music was derivative and formulated with the latest "cool" sounds? Was it that the singer was a pop star in disguise? Or was it the fact that she was a woman in a male-dominated field? Lavigne's music post-Let Go continued to be rock or rock-adjacent to mixed critical and fan-reception. Lavigne certainly hasn't been without musical missteps, the WTF 2013 single "Hello Kitty" is probably the best example.  However, a duet with Marylin Manson on the same eponymous album showed a new versatility in the singer's catalogue. And since her career nadir of "Hello Kitty," Lavigne has begun ascending in both critical reception and re-evaluation by the "scene." Collaborations with Travis Barker, a spot on the When We Were Young Festival in 2021 certainly show us music snobs that the singer was 1) never a Britney Spears with a guitar but a real punk rocker and 2) capable of growth, and 3) who the fuck cares she's in our sister's stereo? Seriously, down with the misogyny! 

Read the lyrics on Genius.