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On the hypnotic “GOLDWING” - which starts as a hymn based on a Hindu verse - she warns a novice: “You’re sacred and they’re starved/And their art is gettin’ dark/And there you are to tear apart.”
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On “NDA,” she acknowledges a real-life stalker (“Had to save my money for security") and on “OverHeated,” an encounter with paparazzi leads to an examination of surgery and “plastic" bodies.Įilish also reaches up to expose unequal power structures, often returning to the theme of innocence polluted. Using that as a launching pad, Eilish goes on to explore fame and it's dark sides. The 16-track album that clocks in at just under an hour kicks off with “Getting Older” and a 19-year-old prodigy's cutting, clear-eyed observation that "Things I once enjoyed/Just keep me employed now.” It's a superb album, ambitious and mature - a young woman pulling the fire alarm while we all stare at the flames. And before the collection is done, she returns to the phrase “I’m happier than ever” but qualifies it with “When I’m away from you.” So it's complicated.įew people do complicated like Eilish and “Happier Than Ever” is a fascinating look at a messy, famous pop star's life, as diaristic as Taylor Swift but more self-critical and emotionally candid.
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But there's a tear running down her cheek on the cover. “I’m happier than ever,” she sings on the first song. The bouncy meter of Finneas’s keyboards on “Getting Older” belies Eilish’s ambivalence about the dulling effect that her career has had on her personal life: “Things I once enjoyed/Just keep me employed now.” And while her primary targets on the song are stalkers, the media, and predatory music execs, she saves her harshest assessment for herself, with frank self-analysis worthy of Alanis Morissette or Fiona Apple: “Can’t shake the feeling that I’m just bad at healing/And maybe that’s the reason every sentence sounds rehearsed/Which is ironic because when I wasn’t honest/I was still bein’ ignored.“Happier Than Ever,” Billie Eilish (Darkroom/Interscope Records)īillie Eilish seems to be in a good place on her sophomore album. “Would you like me to be smaller, weaker, softer, taller?/Would you like me to be quiet?” she asks on “Not My Responsibility,” a spoken-word piece about the public’s objectification and consumption of the female body that originally debuted during Eilish’s 2020 world tour. Of course, Eilish faces the added obstacle of pursuing happiness while under the glare of the spotlight, and fame or its tangential effects on her life are referenced on nearly every song here. “I’m happier than ever, at least that’s my endeavor/To keep myself together and prioritize my pleasure,” Eilish sings on opening track “Getting Older.” She succeeds at that endeavor on the industrial-pop “Oxytocin,” a reference to a neurotransmitter that, like dopamine, is associated with physical or emotional gratification, and “Billie Bossa Nova,” which presents a more mature, sensual side to her persona. The title of Happier Than Ever is, in part, a statement of intent.
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And when the songs don’t seamlessly segue into one another, they’re thoughtfully sequenced to trace Eilish’s path to happiness-or something close to it. The album also nudges Eilish beyond the trip-hop and trap sounds that dominated her past work, resulting in a more sonically diverse set that allows the singer-whose downbeat vocals have often been compared to Lorde’s-to explore the more textured, melodic aspects of her voice. Happier Than Ever is discernably more upbeat, a tone set by the album’s first single, the jazzy “My Future,” which finds Eilish pondering some semblance of self-love in the midst of romantic independence: “I know supposedly I’m lonely now/Know I’m supposed to be unhappy without someone/But aren’t I someone?” So while the title of Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever might seem like the pinnacle of zoomer snark, an impression bolstered by the 19-year-old singer-songwriter staring tearfully into the near distance on the album’s cover, it is, in fact, a sincere-and presumably accurate-evaluation of her state of mind.Įilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, is populated by dark, brooding bangers and dark, brooding dirges, peppered with only occasional moments of levity, like the tongue-in-cheek “I Wish You Were Gay” and inside jokes between the artist and her brother/producer Finneas. From an academic perspective, happiness is relative, the result of one’s material or emotional needs being met after a period of dissatisfaction.