billie eilish

It’s no contest between Billie Eilish and LDR right now.

I think BE just is arriving at the right time and tbh there are so many kids out there who are over so much of what they *perceive* as the usual gorgeous rich pop star bullshit and Eilish feels more real and her extreme I can’t even-ness is something they’re really into. This is just based on now several separate conversations but the young kids (8-11 yr old range) I’ve heard discuss her feel like she’s one of them and is more understanding of them.

i saw her in boston and the merch lines were long, the mr. yuk-green sweatshirts were everywhere, and the moms were singing along too

there are so many kids out there who are over so much of what they *perceive* as the usual gorgeous rich pop star bullshit

kids OTM

if been waiting for the backlash to the luxury brand name dropping IG infuncer bullshit forever but it just keeps going.

I think Billie Eilish is a result of the low key backlash, I mean there are millions of kids out there who looked at all these megastars and didn’t see anyone who represented an empathetic figure who looked and acted like them. BE is like an extreme representation of what a lot of kids are feeling and at least one kid said exactly that to me kind of directly.

Vape Store (crüt) at 11:44 12 Jul 19

(For the record Gaga felt like the equivalent pop star from 2009 and that played out, sonically as well as individually).

I mean... maybe for a few years? Gaga hasn’t felt relevant since the early ‘10s

was never big on Gaga but I felt like A Star is Born was a pretty huge deal and brought her back into the pop culture convo

it was a good movie really exceeded my expectations

I wonder if LDR's album was delayed at all by the record company due to Eilish's continually rising star? she says it'll be out in September now but it was supposed to be out at the beginning of the year. The one time I saw LDR btw (before the last album) she played the Shoreline in the bay area, it was sold out, and the crowd was insane; I was completely not expecting that.

Shallows is a banger

she prob hasn't even heard the xx

This is really interesting, I never would have made this connection... I hear the musical similarities, but I feel like they occupy entirely separate aesthetic universes somehow.

LDR's kind of weird because a lot of of her continuing fame comes from her huge social media presence. Also massive on youtube.

there are so many kids out there who are over so much of what they *perceive* as the usual gorgeous rich pop star bullshit and Eilish feels more real and her extreme I can’t even-ness is something they’re really into.

def true for my 12yo stepkid, a diehard BE fan. These are kids whose parents started instagram accounts for them even before they could hold a phone, and have grown up realising that they can't look like Ariana or Taylor no matter how much they tried.

Eilish, eye-rolling at everyone in her sneakers and baggy outfits, feels more real to them, like a cool girl at school they could actually hang out with.

related: this girl Joana Ceddia is the biggest Youtuber/IG-er among kids right now, and the most striking thing about her is how much she *doesn't* look like an IG influencer - charmingly goofy/intentionally "ugly" selfies shot in her badly lit bedroom with no filter.

I can see her possibly running into a followup problem. Either she goes for a more streamlined pop approach, losing a lot of the support from critics and the indie audience or she goes even more leftfield, losing her mainstream following by msking her "The Dreaming" or "Neither Fish or Flesh".

Being this experimental at such a young age, I can see her following the second path and becoming a David Sylvian/Talk Talk style mainstream-gone-cult act.

I checked out a few of her videos... they’re well done and I agree more compelling than just listening to the tracks alone; and I get the anti-fashion thing & see why kids like her.

It’s still not something I could personally get into, and feels so specifically sub-Lorde to me, but yeah.

The videos are what first got me into her. "Hostage" is one of her best, I think. The astonishing Radio One Big Weekend set sealed it; her Glastonbury set didn't quite get there, but friends who were there tell me her vocals were buried in the mix, so that must have lessened the impact.

To quote treesh from upthread, there's a (mild) bleakness to billie eilish's aesthetic that I don't hear in Lorde at all so the former has my preference by default. I haven't seen any of her videos.

“Hostage” is a good video, I like the song too

The Glastonbury crowd was a broad range of ages but there was definitely a large group of (mostly) young girls and some actual children who knew every single word and sang them all back to her very loudly. You could just tell that there was a real and intense connection and that something was happening.

The Bieber verse/chorus on the "Bad Guy" remix has such flat and familiar flexes compared to everything that makes this song work.

Yeah, the remix is awful.

SO ICY

this album is really good!

it’s funny reading this thread and seeing all the surprise that something this popular could be this good and weird, because listening to her record yesterday — and this was afaik my first exposure to her — my first thought was “the teens are into this? it seems that every young woman I know is into her

geir otm

I might have drinked a couple ot glasses of wine tonight, but speaking as a very cynical person: this video of her reacting to her fans covering her songs and then her fans reacting to her reactions makes me love everyone involved. Great idea by glamour, her fans react very honestly and she seems overall very charming and cool. Kind of weird this is a really long video (almost 20 mins!?) when the real audience that is directed to would lose interest way before it ends. Hell, I lost interest and was loving the idea but 20 minutes is just too much... love the concept, but I would either trim it down or divide it into two or three parts.

https://youtu.be/21Z4RIOFhMA

I kind of hate that fucking youtube keeps pushing Billie Eilish content on my feed daily just because it knows I mostly tune in for music-related content. She’s making her familiar and likeable to me even though I still feel very lukewarm about her music.

Sorry if my post is hard to read. English is not my first language and my opinions are not very interesting.

your English is better than a lot of native English speakers and I, for one, always enjoy your posts, Moka.

the "reacting to Billie listening to my cover" video got me, too. very cute all around.

<3

finally gave this album a couple listens and i like it! she's definitely a direct descendant of lana del rey in terms of music and persona (as expressed thru the music--i'm unfamiliar with the social media/celeb news side channels) but manages to make it her own.

I hear absolutely no connection to Lana Del Rey here

Me neither, I don't really get where that's coming from...

idgi either.

Be it only in terms of perceived (in)authenticity, they're treading very different grounds imho.

they're more like each other than, say, ariana grande or any of a half-dozen other woman-led vocalist acts

that is, discounting the new charlie's angels song tie-in (?)

Haven't heard it myself yet, but I overheard my daughter and her friends dissing the new collab with Justin Bieber? They didn't blame her, just him, whose voice was apparently "wrong" for the song.

Me, I think Billie Eilish fits comfortably in the mode of singers that sound like they just woke up, which is not a bad sound.

not a baaaaaad sound

DUH

Daughter and her friends OTM

They sound nothing alike obvs but I get Lady Sovereign flashbacks when I see Eilish.

This feels very Lana-ish as far as showing power and agency through performative choices:

I like it when you take control
Even if you know that you don't
Own me, I'll let you play the role
I'll be your animal

You guys and your "lyrics," I swear! ;D

(It also sounds like Ke$ha, does she remind you of her as an artist?)

to clarify, it's mostly in her vocal delivery and ~vibe~ that i hear LDR but it might be that i'm just ignorant of some common ancestor of the two. also, i'm a LDR fanatic so the comparison is meant as a compliment! i'll do some more listening and come up with some concrete examples in the next few days

Her vibe is more Fiona Apple than LDR to me

For me, Lorde is such a hugely obvious musical antecedent, I have a hard time calling anyone else to mind.

Just listen to "Watch" (from Eilish's 2017 EP) -- if you had told me this was a Lorde track, I would have absolutely believed it (it's a great track, btw):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dobJDxPEzM

I've found that like BE's earlier stuff a whole lot more than the new album.

(It also sounds like Ke$ha, does she remind you of her as an artist?)

If you can find some topping-from-below lyrics from Ke$ha, go for it...

Realized that the Ellish/Lana connection I was making was partly between Bad Guy and the "I'm your man" persona in "Mariner's Apartment Complex."

LDR? Are you guys serious?

the only LDR I hear is in the croony bridge to "Bad Guy" which is clearly a joke, since the track goes sicko mode trap breakdown after it

the connection might be dependent on how familiar you are with ldr deep cuts? i don't want to make any assumptions though.

i hear some "ride" in "when the party's over", some "lolita" in "you should see me in a crown". the chorus of "my strange addiction" reminds me of one i can't put my finger on. borrowing classic rock melodies is another of ldr's tricks and i definitely heard the "people are strange" melody somewhere on the album. to a lesser extent, i hear some trip hop w/ modern beats vibez on the album which (as far as i know) ldr helped pioneer. also she cites ldr as an influence so there's that too

In fairness, I despise virtually everything I’ve heard by Lana Del Rey so I have invested zero time in investigating her deep cuts

TBF, me neither.

I don't hear it myself, but fwiw BE herself says LDR is one of her favourite artists and a major influence.

It's not so much about their sound as their relationship to men.