Billie had chosen the very first show of the tour at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California, to introduce a special new song. As she returned to the stage for the encore, she sat at the piano and announced she was going to play a song about a friend who had recently died. She said the song was about “a powerful person that no matter what was going on in his life, he was always there for me. He made me feel OK when nothing else did.” A hush came over the audience as Billie went into the tenderest of ballads. However, the tension was soon broken when a microphone fell and caused her to giggle. She then said, “We’ve got to get sad again,” and started afresh on a heartrending song of love and loss. At the end she was hugged by Finneas as she wiped away a tear and made a cross with her arms. The crossed arms smbolized an X for her friend XXXTentacion and the song was titled “6.18.18,” the date, almost four months ago to the day, of his death. Billie would never play the song again. Perhaps she felt she just needed to sing it once, perhaps she wanted to sidestep the controversy surrounding the rapper, but as you can see on YouTube, it is a poignant and beautiful song.
XXXTentacion
SoundCloud rap is a genre that fuses hip-hop, trap, and rock and is incredibly popular on the streaming platform. Florida’s XXXTentacion (real name Jahseh Onfroy) was one of the most popular SoundCloud rap artists. His single “Look at Me!” was uploaded to SoundCloud around the same time as “ocean eyes,” when he was just seventeen, and broke into the Hot 100 in February 2017. Later that year his debut album, 17, was a Top 10 hit in North America and across Europe, and in March 2018 his second album, ?, went to Number 1 in the US. Just months later, on June 18, 2018, XXXTentacion, still only twenty, was fatally shot after being targeted in a robbery.
XXXTentacion’s music was loved by thousands of young people, many of whom gained strength from his lyrics articulating his struggles with depression. However, there was another side to him. Both in his lyrics and life he seemed to revel in violent acts, and his songs sometimes displayed alarming misogyny. His life was dogged with controversy; he served time in juvenile detention and prison; and various charges of gun possession, violence, and domestic abuse were leveled against him.
Billie Eilish had a different view of XXXTentacion, whom she called Jah. She considered him a good friend. On the day he died, she went to Instagram to say, “All you ever did was care. i love you jah. this is so, so painful.” She clearly felt he had helped her through some dark times and in a later tribute said he “was like a beam of light and just tried to do everything for other people.” It was an opinion that would prove controversial as many articles and social-media comments criticized her glorification of such a violent person. Billie, however, would defend her views in an interview with the New York Times, saying, “I want to be able to mourn. I don’t want to be shamed for it. I don’t think I deserve getting hate for loving someone that passed.”
As the tour continued, Billie threw in some less controversial surprises. Most nights, it would take the form of a cover song on which she accompanied herself on the ukulele. Fans were treated to numbers as varied as Childish Gambino’s “Telegraph Ave (“Oakland” by Lloyd);” “Body Count,” a cover of her friend Jessie Reyez’s song; Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit;” and her childhood party piece, the Beatles’s “I Will.” Perhaps the sweetest moment of the tour came in Austin, Texas, when Billie brought a young fan dressed in her yellow “bellyache” outfit on to the stage. The “Mini Billie,” which happened to be the girl’s Instagram name, was named Elsie and was just three years old, but she delighted Billie and the crowd as she danced along to the song.
Despite the growing number of fans, Billie still did her best to meet as many of them as possible. They would thrust letters and gifts—stuffed Blohshs, home-designed T-shirts, drawings—at her, knowing she loved their creative endeavors. One particular piece of fan artwork even provided inspiration for Billie. A Montreal fan’s drawing of Billie crying black tears immediately appealed to her, and she decided to use it as the basis for the “when the party’s over” video, which was uploaded on October 25, 2018, a week after the single had been released.
Despite the growing number of fans, Billie still did her best to meet as many of them as possible.
Billie set about planning the video, and those childhood hours spent filming in her backyard were not wasted. She sat her mom by a table in the yard with a glass of water and told her to pretend to be her. Then she worked it out shot by shot, drawing and writing down every action, edit, and camera movement, before sending it to the actual director, Carlos López Estrada, who was tasked with bringing to life what would be a truly gothic nightmare.
The completed video is unique and astounding, yet so simple. Billie, sporting her dramatic blue hair, is dressed all in white with silver wrist bangles, rings, and a long chain wrapped around her neck like a necktie. She sits intently contemplating a pedestal on which rests a glass of black liquid, which she eventually gulps down. For a brief second she stares straight at the camera before thick black tears begin to flow down her cheeks, and she then spreads them over her face and clothes. In a masterful portrait of anguish and inner torment, Billie sings very few of the lines, but acts out the drama with an exquisite balance of apathy, pain, and even sensuality.
For a brief second she stares straight at the camera before thick black tears begin to flow down her cheeks, and she then spreads them over her face and clothes.
Billie had been happy to suffer for her art. First, she had to drink the glass of charcoal water mixed with xanthan gum (special effects meant at least she didn’t actually have to drink the whole glass). To achieve the effect of black tears, she had tubes running up her back, over her forehead and pushed into the corner of her eyes. The black liquid was then pumped through the tubes—not just once but for six painful takes over a twelve-hour day.
“When the party’s over” describes how ending a relationship can seem the right thing to do even if it hurts you. It was written by Finneas, who came up with the idea when he was driving home alone, having suddenly decided to leave the house of a girl he was dating. Since the beginning of the year, it had been a staple of the live set, when Billie would sing to Finneas’s piano accompaniment, but the studio version was highly produced and textured. The piano sound was less evident, but Billie’s layered voice created a wall of emotion.
Finneas wrote on Twitter that they knew they had to do something unforgettable with it, since so many fans knew the song already. He said how hard it was to record as they built it up using hundreds of vocal layers. On Instagram, when Billie posted the artwork, a sketch by acclaimed Swiss tattoo artist Manuela Soto Sosa of a young girl crying, she said how the track had been “impossible to record.” Later, she would tell Fader magazine that it took ninety takes just to get the first word, “Don’t,” to sound how she wanted it to.
The production, along with the video and the growing awareness of Billie as an accomplished artist, ensured that “when the party’s over” was her most successful single to date. It reached Number 29 on the Hot 100, Number 21 in the UK charts, and made the Top 10 in Norway, Sweden, Ireland, and Estonia, as well as in the ever-loyal Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The production, along with the video and the growing awareness of Billie as an accomplished artist, ensured that “when the party’s over” was her most successful single to date.
“When the party’s over” was featured in another Vevo LIFT recording. This gave a taste of the 1 by 1 Tour with a live performance recorded in November in Brooklyn, New York. It was an intimate show on a white rectangular stage in the middle of a small but pumped audience that was given space to dance. Finneas and Andrew were in their repeated-Billie-motif outfits while Billie wore an oversized black-and-white checked Chanel tracksuit. Along with the new single, they played “bellyache” and “when the party’s over” in the short set, which many declared was among Billie’s best-ever live performances. The sound is top quality; Billie sings perfectly and see
ms energized by the freedom of the encircled stage and the receptive audience of enthusiastic fans, who yelp and scream between songs but allow her voice to be heard.
On November 20, the tour finale brought Billie back to LA for a three-night celebration at the historic Fonda Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. However, she had one more local booking earlier that day, in nearby Santa Monica. In a well-kept secret, Billie and Finneas launched a new track called “come out and play,” performing it to a small, seated audience in the Apple Store. Warm and sweet with a lullaby feel, the song finds Billie singing to an acoustic guitar and a soft beat with a slowly rising crescendo. The words “Don’t hide” are repeated in the chorus: the most direct Billie gets in terms of gently persuading listeners to show their true selves.
The Apple connection was that the song was the soundtrack to the company’s holiday TV commercial, set to be broadcast over the forthcoming Thanksgiving holiday and in the weeks up to Christmas. The ad itself—part of the Share Your Gifts campaign—was delightful. The Pixar-style animation painted a beautiful winter scene and focused on a curly-haired, freckle-faced young woman who kept hiding her creative talents. Eventually, thanks to her big shaggy dog, her carefully locked-away illustrations are taken by a gust of wind and distributed to passersby who, of course, are appreciative and deeply impressed. Because of their ties with Apple, Billie and Finneas had been sent a very early version of the animation and asked to write a fitting song as a soundtrack. The theme of being proud of your creativity was perfect for Billie, but she cleverly expanded the idea to a reassurance for those suffering from social anxiety.
The theme of being proud of your creativity was perfect for Billie.
They played the track again that evening at the Fonda Theatre, but it was overshadowed by another appearance from Khalid. This time, not only did he and Billie sing “lovely” together, but she also joined him for a duet of his “Young Dumb & Broke” hit. Nevertheless, “come out and play” was an immediate crowd favorite; the commercial brought Billie’s voice to thousands who hadn’t heard it yet, and the song joined “when the party’s over” in charts around the world.
“Come out and play” was an immediate crowd favorite; the commercial brought Billie’s voice to thousands who hadn’t heard it yet.
In October, Billie had played a couple of concerts as an opening act for Florence and the Machine in the US. They had gone well, with the two acts complementing each other and the audience appreciating Billie’s set. The plan was for Billie to rejoin Florence and the Machine’s High as Hope Tour in Australia in the New Year, but in December it was announced that Billie was withdrawing due to “international scheduling conflicts.” It seemed puzzling as Billie had no concerts planned until her European tour began in February, but she herself was more forthcoming, writing on Twitter that “unfortunately we all came to realize recently that we need some more time to finish something very important before going back out and doing more shows.” Her fans had a good idea what that something might be. She had been promising a full album for some time, and here was the biggest hint that it was imminent.
Chapter Eleven
The Monster Under The Bed
I was totally silent and totally still and tears just streamed down my face.
In her famous Vanity Fair annual interview, that was how Billie Eilish recalled reacting to first seeing her schedule for the forthcoming year. In January 2019 she had six million Instagram followers and had recently been selected as one of a handful of teenagers on the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which recognizes young business and industry highfliers. She was the youngest-ever artist to top a billion spins on Spotify, and “ocean eyes” had entered the Top 100 in the US and the UK, a full year after release. Now she was looking at a list of over one hundred concerts, including some of the biggest festivals in the world.
Billie had turned seventeen two weeks earlier, celebrating her birthday with family and friends at an ice-skating rink (she hired the whole rink because she couldn’t go without being mobbed—and she missed skating!). No wonder she felt overwhelmed. She was still a teenager. In her Instagram videos she dances and goofs around with people her own age, something she must have missed out on so much as she spent her younger teens touring, giving interviews, and recording—essentially working.
At the end of 2018, Billie had bought herself a present—her first car. Eschewing BMWs and Mercedes and the other pop-star vehicles of choice, Billie bought a matte-black Dodge Challenger, the car she had been obsessed with since she was twelve and that she had insisted on having in her “watch” video. “It’s my best friend, my girlfriend . . . I call it The Dragon, after my favorite mythical animal,” she told Vogue magazine, before adding, “My mom made sure it has all the best safety features.” She needed Maggie’s approval because an adult was still legally required to sit with her while she drove—Billie wouldn’t get her full license until the summer. Nevertheless, she would proudly pose with it for photos and boasted of driving it alone, even if it was just to park it around the back of the house.
Billie bought a matte-black Dodge Challenger, the car she had been obsessed with since she was twelve and that she had insisted on having in her “watch” video.
Nobody was expecting to hear much from Billie in January. She had canceled the Florence and the Machine concerts in Australia, and the European tour would not start until February. It was clear that the month had been put aside to complete work on her long-awaited debut album, so it came as a great surprise on January 8, 2019, when, through Instagram, she teased a new song due to be released the following day. The track was called “WHEN I WAS OLDER” and the cover art said it was inspired by the movie Roma and featured a scene from the movie, showing a young woman on the beach running toward the sea.
Roma had been the hit movie of the winter in theaters and on Netflix, and was nominated for ten Oscars (at the ceremony in February, it would win three). The movie followed the tough but quietly endured life of Cleo, a young live-in maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s. The enthralling, emotional, and intimate portrait mirrored the style of many of Billie’s songs, so an invite from Roma’s director, Alfonso Cuarón, to contribute a song to an album of music inspired by the movie made complete sense.
In Roma, Pepe, a young boy prone to fantasizing about previous lives, utters the line, “When I was older I used to be a sailor, but I drowned in a storm.” Billie and Finneas took the first part of that line, and images from the movie, and created a song and soundscape that retains the essence of Roma. Billie’s silky but melancholic, introspective vocals (with a rare use of autotune) perfectly capture Cleo’s mood, while Finneas is in his element as he samples student protest chants, a dog barking, and the sounds of ocean waves and raging fires from the soundtrack in a haunting, minimalist instrumental. “Nothing about this song would exist without the film,” they said, “which is exactly what we love about it.”
Most reviewers considered “WHEN I WAS OLDER” to be the standout track on Music Inspired by the Film Roma, which was quite a compliment considering renowned artists such as Patti Smith and Beck had also contributed. While not reaching the heights of her recent singles, it was well received and kept fans happy while they awaited the big news. Billie kept them in suspense. On January 13, she captioned a photo on Instagram saying “mastering the album today” and then, three days later, she posted a single word: “March.”
Most reviewers considered “WHEN I WAS OLDER” to be the pick of the tracks on Music Inspired by the Film Roma.
On February 28, Billie went on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to announce the title of the new album, which was to be called When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? She also shared a sixteen-second teaser video of her singing a new song, which ended in the album title. The brief video was somewhat alarming, though, with Billie singing while black-gloved hands grabbed at her head, face, and neck. The following day another post appeared, this time alongside a ghoulish photo of Billie in all white, sitting
on an unmade white bed in a spotlight. With her white bulging eyes and unnerving grin, the image looked as if it had come straight from a horror movie. The message repeated the album title and promised a new song the next morning.
After the short wait, “bury a friend”—a track that Billie herself would describe as an incredibly weird song—was revealed. Written by Finneas and Billie in a couple of free days after their Lollapalooza performance on Finneas’s twenty-first birthday, it is a disjointed but atmospheric and surprisingly catchy piece. Perhaps influenced by the pain Billie was in after injuring her ankle, it hints at cruelty and violence, but has an almost playful, childlike feel. The instrumental track reflects this with a jaunty shuffle beat interspersed with the sound of drills recorded during an orthodontist appointment, screams, and other disconcerting noises.
The lyrics are based around the concept of the monster under the bed. Billie’s starting point for the whole song was a drawing she made of a monster, and although she writes from the perspective of the tormenting beast, it is sometimes unclear who is being tormented. Like the instrumental track, the song’s words are littered with horror allusions, but also reverberate with self-doubt and despair. The final piece of the jigsaw is supplied by Billie’s delivery: semiwhispered with stilted and sometimes childlike pronunciation (the perfectly affected “ashleep,” for example) with vocal echoes that enhance the haunting atmosphere.
Billie Eilish, the Unofficial Biography Page 9