“L’AMOUR DE MA VIA” by Billie Eilish, Thursday, September 26, 2024

After “Lunch” and an afternoon in the park observing “Birds of a Feather,” it’s time to spend the rest of the afternoon settled into a small café.  The entertainment is provided by a girl singing a song that sounds much older than her years. The song vaguely seems like a popular European jazz song from the 1940s. Perhaps it was a hit on a regional radio station. The young singer croons of a breakup. But then you black out and awaken in a discotheque. It’s the same day but several hours later. People are dancing. You notice on stage the singer looks familiar. She’s the same girl from earlier at the café. But her hair is different. She’s wearing a wig? But she doesn’t sound cool like before. She sounds empowered with her electronic voice and angry. You have just experienced one of the weirdest moments in pop music in 2024. Billie Eilish’s “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE.”

FELT SORRY FOR YOU WHEN I LOOKED INTO YOUR EYES. Many of the songs on Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT are rumored to be autobiographical, though, when speaking with Zane Lowe for an Apple Music interview about the album, Eilish complained that pop music is too often straightforward. She said of the songs on HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, “I didn’t want the songs to be like ‘Oh I know what that song’s about.’” She goes on to say, “We live in a world [where] somebody puts a song out and everyone’s like, ‘So this is who this is about and this is the entire story of what happened.’ It doesn’t even give the listener a chance to interpret it how they want to interpret it and how they naturally hear it.” Of course, Eilish’s fans quickly started piecing together the details of her personal life that the songs on her latest album seemed to reference, and there seems to be a love triangle at the center of the album. In “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE,” Eilish writes a send-off song to wish her ex “the best.” The song is dripping with sarcasm which attempts to deflect the pain the speaker feels. In an ultimate blow to the subject’s ego, Eilish confesses, “I lied when I told you . . . were the love of my life.” Eilish gives her bitterest words to frame the speaker of the song as the winner of the breakup. 

YOU WERE SO MEDIOCRE. “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” is rumored either to be about Eilish’s ex Jesse Rutherford, the lead singer of the band The Neighbourhood, or about Eilish’s relationship with fashion influencer Devon Lee Carlson. Rutherford and Eilish were rumored to have dated for seven months between 2022 and 2023. There were rumors of cheating, which both Eilish and Rutherford denied and both claimed to have parted on good terms. The Neighbourhood’s lead singer is ten years older than Eilish and was criticized for releasing a song a year ago in the song “POV,” which talks about someone, allegedly Eilish, listening to his band since she was 13 and that the singer has “daddy issues.” The rumor goes that while dating Rutherford, Eilish realized her bisexuality and became involved with a girl, thought to be Davon Lee Carson. A Daily Mail article claims that “insiders” around Jesse Rutherford viewed Eilish’s song “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” as a “slap in the face” at the end of their relationship and that Eilish. To complicate matters, Rutherford had dated Carson for six years before he dated Eilish, and Eilish and Carson had become friends. Eilish’s relationship with Carson is not as well documented as her relationship with men with the two not appearing as a couple at public events. Of course, the two are entitled to their privacy. But as Eilish is a newly-out bisexual star, lyrics on HIT ME HARD AND SOFT have caused some fans to speculate who are the girls that the singer has been associated with. Visibility is important, but let’s also remember that songs can mean something else to the listener.
 

Read “L'AMOUR DE MA VIE” by Billie Eilish on Genius.

Read “L'AMOUR DE MA VIE” by Billie Eilish on Genius.