Billie Eilish: How The Hostage Became The Bad Guy
After she exploded into the mainstream in 2019 with a flurry of hits and an unapologetically rambunctious sense of sensibility. Billie Eilish was a wild revelation that no one could foresee coming and even more so, no one could see falling out of favour anytime soon.
After gracing the world with her underground, breakout hit “Ocean Eyes” over half a decade ago (yes, really), her stock would continue to inflate as her star simultaneously rose to unprecedented heights.
But as they say, what goes up must come down.
At the mere age of 18 she’d disrespected the industry, flipping it on its head in a flippant manner as she broke the mould and changed the landscape of pop as a genre in general – becoming a global sensation, encapsulating the world we live in and earning five Grammys in one night for doing so.
When she penned one of the most acclaimed tracks of the decade in “Bad Guy” it seemed she would naturally regress at such a delicate age, with the expectation of her career subsiding somewhat likely being a factoring thought as she moved forward.
What wasn’t expected though was just how quickly her image would change, her musical styling would wain and more than anything, just how long it’d take the “Bad Guy” to become everything people didn’t want. Betraying her portrayal of a vulnerable, cathartic teenager and becoming the standard run-of-the-mill imbuement of genericism we see over-saturate the market today.
As the hype died down and her two smash-hit albums (Don’t Smile at Me, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go) lost momentum, it seemed understandable that the star would begin to burn out. To everyone’s surprise though, she tried to soar even higher, and that’s when she ultimately got too close to the sun.
She was initially out of this world, but that alone didn’t mean she was a full-fledged superstar just yet.
Releasing the first follow-up to her career-defining multi-platinum album in the form of a song titled “My Future” – which was a lukewarm effort at best – she followed that up by bringing her trademark resplendence to the subsequent sequel “Therefore I Am” and therefore she clawed her way back to both relevance and her patented lack of elegance, shutting down critics (of her body, not her music) in an empowering “disregard you” (for lack of a cleaner way of saying it) type of song which looked like a solid return to form. Her single that followed was nothing short of a substandard airplay-friendly song that is now expected of the atypical radio station.
Then she released “Lost Cause” – a very bitter, self-serving song disguised as an anthem of vindication and self-validation – one that paints with a very different brush than the one that show her true colours.
Eilish in the Lost Cause video: Surrounded by a load of girls who look more at home in an old-school R n’ B joint rather than something that came from the artist that we’d come to know.
Or maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe she decided she didn’t want to be her anymore and instead became a copycat of the money-focused musicians surrounding her in her newfound home. Alternatively, she may have run out of fuel, causing her previously desirable fire to slowly but surely burn out. Or maybe she simply wasn’t the genuine embodiment of teenage fragility that she perpetuated herself as.
In a seemingly tumultuous, albeit not definitively career-ending move, the girl with the world at her feet may have just kicked it too far away from herself. The song’s mixed response, criticisms and serious lack of her satirical witticisms, make for something that’s both unpleasant to listen to and something that’s hard to digest; especially for those who have found her prior work very much resonating with them.
The returns for this song were very split down the middle with some people praising her hysterically as if she’d just solved the world hunger crisis, whereas others were less generous in their sharp disapproval of the ambiguous track, with some even proclaiming that she’s poking fun at her fans.
Although unlikely, this could be Eilish’s “You Oughta Know” – a song that was detriment to her career, but was more accepted over time.
That’s if the so-called “critics” of the world weren’t allegedly paid to write positive fabrications about a multitude of popular personalities and creative media. Despite there being no proof that people are paying for reviews, something really seems amiss. The reviews from the aforementioned critics are really misaligned with the overall quality of the song itself. Almost like they’re afraid to go against what’s currently popular within the modern zeitgeist – whereas the consumer reviews feel more humanistic rather than robotic.
In a review by Coco Romack for MTV, he described the song as a “low-key empowerment anthem” and compared it to American TLC’s 1999 single “No Scrubs” and English singer Dua Lipa’s 2017 single “New Rules”. Later highlighting the line “I know you think you’re such an outlaw / But you got no job,”. Which ends the critique of the actual musical elements of this song. He further continues to comment on the video and completely dismisses the song and the actual quality of the song itself. Having nothing to say about it; almost like he hasn’t really listened to it.
A reviewer by the name of Cry from AlbumOfTheYear.org was very much more honest.
Then there were some reviews that flat-out refused to fall for what seems like an immature charade.
The problem presented by modern artists like Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber and Eminem (as talented as they all may be) and opposed to the likes of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and The Beatles (despite themselves being caught in the centre of controversy or just being intriguing to the average person), is that the personality has more of an impact than the work they produce and no matter how their careers begin, they always end with them becoming commercial products rather than the artist(s) they originally endeavoured to be and because of what they’ve done in the past or undergone in reality, nobody wants to call them out when they do something less than stellar – which is normally an indication that the artist has nothing to say anymore and is instead just staying for the money at this point.
Most of them have replicated something reminiscent of “The Simpsons Model”. A theory that entails something that was once amazing, coveted and endeared by many in its heyday, being unparallel and unchallenged completely at its time, but would eventually be an absolute shadow of its former self. Until it becomes something so far removed from what made it good in the first place that it has become completely unrecognisable the more it continues. Out of respect for what has been done by them in their respective industries, they run far longer than they should and because of this, we collectively end up with a terrible taste in our mouths, ending it on a very bittersweet note when it could’ve (and should’ve) been a very sumptuous conclusion rather than a repellent one that causes franchise fatigue and dismay amongst [now] former fans.
To conclude, with one of the most vitriolic fan bases in current circulation, a fan base that would probably jump in front of a fully loaded minigun if someone even so much as even looked at her wrong. Billie Eilish’s fans may be more of a detriment than a blessing to her at this point, just like she may be to them (as she may be making a joke of them as claimed by certain reviewers), ironically caught in a bad romance just like the victim in the song. Creating an issue that alludes to her being impenetrable and too impervious for the general public to have a genuine opinion of her that doesn’t automatically put her on a pedestal. If people are always looking at you through rose-tinted glasses and telling you that your metaphorical faeces don’t emit an odour then the artists’ quality may begin to diminish, they may become lazy or uninspired because they needn’t strive to achieve more anymore, their music becomes subpar and we may potentially become entrapped in a wave of mediocrity that we will no doubt end up drowning in.
If we can’t criticise one another in a constructive, impartial manner, then we ourselves are doomed to become the hostage(s) in an increasingly, ironically, cynical society.