Mehki Raine
Early in the writing of “bury a friend,” Billie decided she needed a voice calling her name to jolt the song into action. She also knew whose voice she needed: her friend Calvin’s. A rapper from London, Calvin Parkinson first went under the name of Crooks and then Mehki Raine. Billie came across him on Instagram, as he kept tagging her in his photos and asking, “Where’s Billie at?” She thought he was cute and funny, and they became good friends.
When asked to choose her best albums of 2018 for Billboard magazine, Billie had picked Dog Eat Dog World, the album by Mehki Raine (although she was still calling him Crooks). She remarks on his deep British voice, but it is clear how the unsettling low-key production, unorthodox rapping style, and poetic word play would also appeal to her. Dog Eat Dog World has since racked up over forty thousand spins, with Mehki Raine’s 2019 album Black Sheep also being well received.
The video for “bury a friend” was released on the same day as the single. Once Michael Chaves was enlisted as director, the course it was going to take was clear. Chaves’s short film The Maiden had won the Best Super Short Horror Film Award at Shriekfest and his scary movie The Curse of La Llorona was showing in theaters as they made the video. Of course, Billie brought her own ideas to the party. She sketched out the nightmare scenario, and Chaves delivered with a video that was reminiscent of late-night horror movies.
Although she writes from the perspective of the tormenting beast, it is sometimes unclear who is being tormented.
Calvin was flown over to play the sleeping figure who calls her name, while Billie plays the monster under the bed. She is dressed in white shirt and pants that are definitely Billie-style but also project an image of asylum inmates. It is a disturbing vision; her blacked-out eyes in the under-the-bed scenes are creepy, and the images of her naked back pierced by a dozen syringes and her juddering, suspended feet are truly scary.
In its first twenty-four hours the “bury a friend” video racked up more than thirteen million views on YouTube, with the single receiving four million spins on Spotify. In fact, the single made an immediate impact all around the world. This time, it wasn’t just in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that it made the Top 3, but in Scandinavia and eastern Europe too. It became Billie’s first Top 10 hit in the UK and reached 14 in the US, her highest position yet on the Billboard 100. She was even making an impression in Asia, registering on charts in Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea.
In its first twenty-four hours the “bury a friend” video racked up more than thirteen million views on YouTube.
It was the perfect time for Billie to set out on the road again as she took her 1 by 1 Tour to Europe for seventeen sold-out dates. She gave “bury a friend” a live debut at the first date at the Kesselhaus in Berlin, and it was immediately apparent that it was to be a crowd favorite. As with so many of their other songs, she and Finneas managed to turn an intense, quiet track into a stage stomper brimming with energy. The fans played their part too. They already knew every word and provided backing vocals, taking great pleasure in bawling the “I wanna end me” line. “WHEN I WAS OLDER” was also included in the set list for the first time. Although the live arrangement of the song was similar to the subdued recorded version, Billie still found an opportunity to dance around the stage during the break.
The fans played their part too. They already knew every word and provided backing vocals, taking great pleasure in bawling the “I wanna end me” line.
The tour progressed through Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Everywhere she went, it was the same. She was still playing standing-only venues to excited crowds, mainly of teenage girls with a sprinkling of boys and older fans, packed in front of the stage while chaperoning parents hung back. The whole show would be like karaoke, and Billie joked that she could just lie motionless on the stage (or even not turn up) and they would still have the time of their lives.
Billie did her meet and greets in every city, interacting with as many fans as she could, and then she would climb onstage to give it her all. And yet, she later confided, for someone on the cusp of being a global superstar, these were dark times indeed. She referred to the tour in Europe as her lowest point. She had seen what fame had done to other young performers and worried she was going to have a breakdown. Thankfully, she managed to get through the tour and found herself in a better place.
By the end of February the tour had reached the UK. Her first stop was the legendary Maida Vale Studios in London, where everyone from the Beatles to David Bowie and Nirvana to the White Stripes had played for the BBC. She was there to record six songs for BBC DJ Annie Mac, a supporter of Billie since the early “ocean eyes” days. Billie, for the most part seated on a stool, wore a black-and-white skeleton hoodie with black shorts and a fistful of gold rings (including a stunning snake ring). In this short set, with Finneas and Andrew playing behind her, she performed a different version of their songs. It was neither the energized live style nor the stripped-back acoustic versions but instead a softer version of the recorded releases, with Billie’s vocals at the fore.
Billie, for the most part seated on a stool, wore a black-and-white skeleton hoodie with black shorts and a fistful of gold rings.
This was a performance ranked among her best by many fans, especially as it included a previously unheard number, a cover of Phantogram’s 2016 hit “You Don’t Get Me High Anymore,” which Billie introduced as “one of [her] favorite songs of all time.” The original, a pounding electro-rock track, is slowed down so that Billie can beautifully but agonizingly pull out the frustration that nothing is good enough, and it translates perfectly. Perhaps the biggest compliment was that it sounded just like one of her and Finneas’s songs.
Midway through the 1 by 1 Tour of the UK, “wish you were gay” was released as the fourth single from the forthcoming album. Although Billie had been playing the song regularly in live shows since it was first heard on the livestream in June 2017, this was the first time it had been issued officially. The single keeps the original acoustic guitar but adds an insistent slap beat and brings in a synth punch to build a crescendo. Although it is a hurting song, trying to salvage pride in the face of rejection, it is also playful, especially with the clever countdown contained in the lyrics.
The single maintained Billie’s profile in the charts, but not all the reaction was positive. Some members of the LGBTQ community did take offense. Since she had first played the song live, Billie had been aware that some people might not interpret the song in the way that she’d meant it. In June 2018 she had gone on Instagram to explain and defend it, saying that it’s “so not meant to be offensive in any way. It literally means I wish he was gay so that he didn’t like me for an actual reason.” To back up her case she had even decided to donate some proceeds from her Blohsh apparel line to the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide and crisis prevention program for at-risk LGBTQ youth.
She had gone on Instagram to explain and defend it, saying that it’s “so not meant to be offensive in any way. It literally means I wish he was gay so that he didn’t like me for an actual reason.”
Before they left the UK, Billie and Finneas played one special acoustic show at the intimate Pryzm club just outside London. The small, all-age audience was made up of competition winners. They were dedicated fans, and Billie was genuinely thrilled to be playing for them. The connection between an artist and their supporters can rarely have been so close. When Billie talked of having recurring nightmares where they stop liking her, they responded with so much warmth and love, and when the show came to a close, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the stage, but dived head-first into the front three rows and tried to hug them all.
Heading home in March 2019, Billie and her team stopped off in Barcelona for the final show of the tour. In the audience that night was the Catalan singer Rosalía. Although Rosalía is eight years older than Billie, they had much in common. They shared a creative s
pirit nurtured in bedroom recordings, so-called overnight stardom that actually took years of hard work, and a reputation for saying exactly what they thought. Rosalía had taken flamenco to new levels, fusing it with R & B, and had become a massive star of Latin pop, even being dubbed the Rihanna of Flamenco. In 2018 she had a breakthrough hit with “Malamente” and was about to release “Con Altura,” a collaboration with reggaeton star J Balvin that would be an international chart-topper.
They must all have felt exhausted after finishing such an intense tour, but they were about to embark on the biggest adventure so far.
In an interview accompanying the Annie Mac recordings, Billie revealed she had already met up for a studio session with Rosalía a month earlier. She talked of singing really high harmonies and said she had sung “some notes I had never even thought about.” She clearly liked the Latin singer, saying that she really knows what she wants and that she’d thought, “Wow, you’re the only other person I’ve really met that’s like this.” After seeing Billie’s show in Barcelona, Rosalía tweeted that “seeing you perform inspired me sooo much” and tellingly teased that she couldn’t wait to finish their song. To date, it is still to be released, but fans still hope to hear them sing together sometime soon.
As Billie and her team returned to California, it must have felt so strange. They had received a rapturous welcome in every country they had visited and played shows at large venues, yet every hall could have been filled ten times over and she was getting more and more popular by the day. Similarly, they must all have felt exhausted after finishing such an intense tour, but they were about to embark on the biggest adventure so far—the launch of a debut album and a world tour. It was enough to bring anyone to tears.
Chapter Twelve
Fourteen Pieces of Art
With only two weeks to go before the release of one of the most highly anticipated albums in years, Billie’s return to the SXSW Festival in March 2019 created an expectant buzz.
In Austin she headlined the festival, playing the Uber Eats House, the very same venue where she and Finneas had played on the patio two years previously. It was a small, twenty-one-plus show, and there were plenty of music-industry VIPs present. “I know you guys are over twenty-one,” Billie joked, “but you still know how to jump, right?”—and indeed many older Billie fans proved they could be just as loud and knew just as many words as the younger fans did. The stage show was still evolving: Billie had mastered how to have an audience eating out of her hand from the get-go; the fierce lighting system added excitement and atmosphere; and now they had added a massive screen that played high-definition videos behind her while she sang.
Visuals had always been prominent in Billie’s mind in her songs and performances. Now she had the means to fully express them and she grasped every opportunity. When she was in Japan, she had met artist Takashi Murakami, who she called an “incredible visionary,” and a collaboration was born. His animation skills were combined with her vivid imagination, and after eight months’ work, the result was a second official video for “you should see me in a crown” (the first being the version with the spider in her mouth). The anime-style, neon-colored animation takes Billie from performing on a stage to a familiar nightmare scenario inhabited by grotesque monsters and a giant spider. It incorporates both Billie’s Blohsh figures and Murakami’s signature colorful flower icons, and is clearly driven by Billie’s vision with Murakami’s talents emerging through the caricature and movement of animated Billie and the way he brings the scene to life.
Visuals had always been prominent in Billie’s mind in her songs and performances.
On March 28, the eve of the release date, Billie went on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show in the US, where she performed “bury a friend.” Once again, she showed that to make an impression she did not have to perform to fans who had been listening to her music on repeat. The late-night show audience was clearly captivated by her short but devastating set. Even as the intro started up, she was jumping and striding around the stage, dressed in a black top that spelled out “DIE” in dripping-blood-style wool threads and shorts with similar threads and “smiley” faces with black flowing from their eyes. The set gave off a spooky feel as dry ice swirled around a white bed, but then at the midsong break a sheet fell behind Billie. Finneas and Andrew continued to play in silhouette from behind the sheet, but disappeared as the shape of a monster shadow appeared. It was a superb spectacle, and given the way Billie ended the song—with an impassioned yell of the album title—it seemed she knew it too. As a last performance before her life changed forever, it was a pretty good one.
“Bury a friend” was an apt song to perform just hours before the album dropped. When they made that song, it inspired not only the concept and visuals but also how Billie wanted the work to be perceived. The album had been three years in the making, and yet it was the question posed in “bury a friend” that tied it together; every song, Billie said, asks the question: When we all fall asleep, where do we go? She explained that many songs on the album derived from nightmares, super-real dreams, or even sleep paralysis (when you wake from sleep but feel paralyzed and may hallucinate), a frightening state that Billie claimed to have experienced five times.
Every song, Billie said, asks the question: When we all fall asleep, where do we go?
The album was not a selection of songs thrown together, but a carefully considered collection of tracks that worked individually yet fed into and off one another. Billie described the tracks as “fourteen pieces of art” to DJ Annie Mac; but, speaking to Tidal magazine, she also explained how the album made sense as one piece of art. Musically, there are jumps from genre to genre, and lyrically the subject and perspective changes with each song, but there is an overriding sensibility—an authenticity and darkness—that links them.
Billie and Finneas had been creating the songs specifically for the album (incredibly, still recording in his bedroom) and both of them talked about it with immense pride. For a seventeen-year-old (and a twenty-one-year-old) it was an extraordinary achievement. Billie loved it so much that, during the Jimmy Kimmel Live! recordings, made the night before the album dropped, she supposedly wobbled and had to be talked out of canceling the release by a member of her team. It was her baby, which she and Finneas had loved and nurtured, and you could understand her misgivings about sending it out to face judgment by the world.
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? features the four singles: “you should see me in a crown,” “wish you were gay,” “when the party’s over,” and “bury a friend.” Dedicated fans may also have been familiar with an early version of “8” and “listen before i go,” which had been played live at many shows. That still left eight brand-new tracks. Or maybe seven, because the first track, “!!!!!!!,” lasts just fourteen seconds. The opening track is actually an afterthought. Having completed the album, Finneas and Billie decided it needed something more to offset the darkness of many of the songs. They used this short dialogue around a running joke they shared about Billie taking out her Invisaligns (clear braces) before singing. Comparing the noise her doing this made to the signature cigarette-lighter-flick sound that begins rapper Lil Wayne’s tracks, they would joke about how the sound of her removing her Invisaligns could become Billie’s own signature.
“Bad guy” was always going to be the album’s actual opener, even before any of the other track listings had been worked out. It’s easy to see why. If in some of their previous tracks they had shown a seed of pop genius, then “bad guy” is when it blossoms. Finneas’s production is clinical, and he exhibits fantastic control over the samples and the sound, while Billie’s vocals smoothly coast from sweet to sarcastic to threatening. The tune is infectious from the start, with a walking bassline augmented by a simple beat and finger clicks that feed into a perfect sing-along chorus—that has no words. After the success of “bury a friend,” Finneas declared that if they could get away with demolishing the structure of a song like that, they cou
ld do anything. And here they do, with not only a vocal-free chorus but also with a break forty seconds before the end of the song at which point the tempo, tune, and mood change completely—meaning that, in effect, they finish the track with a different song.
Billie’s lyrics for “bad guy” are smart, witty, and charming and almost insist on being sung along to. As she alternates between being playful and flirtatious, and sardonic and cruel, the lyrics brilliantly ridicule the male tough-guy image. However, as she trips out rhyme after rhyme, she undercuts her own argument with boasts and the glorious “Duh” that ends the prechorus. All in all, it adds up to a three-minute diatribe against fake personas that manages to be simultaneously fun and cutting.
Billie’s lyrics for “bad guy” are smart, witty, and charming and almost insist on being sung along to.
Next up is “xanny.” Billie doesn’t always write from firsthand experience or her own point of view, but she makes it clear that this song about her friends’ drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol use is personal. As an onlooker, she describes these habits as selfish, irrational, boring, and life-reducing (in terms of both fun and health). The song’s verse and chorus are distinctly different: the chorus is filled with disconcerting distortion, while the verse, with its tinkling piano and sultry delivery, brings to mind a smoky jazz club and the crooning of a singer like Ella Fitzgerald. In “A Snippet into Billie’s Mind,” a short series on her YouTube channel in which she talks about some of the songs, Billie explains that “the verses are like what smoke looks like and the choruses are like what it feels like.”
After “you should see me in a crown” comes another piano-based track in “all the good girls go to hell.” This time, it is played up-tempo, taking the song into the realm of pop. With Billie interrupting her own semi-spoken delivery with bursts of sweet-sung melody, the track teases with the idea of letting loose but ultimately stays on the restrained side. Peppered with intriguing and ambiguous lines, the song hints at man replacing the devil as God’s foe as we doom ourselves through the destruction of our Earth, and images of hills burning, waters rising, trees disappearing, and waters or our air being poisoned powerfully express the theme of climate change.
Billie Eilish, the Unofficial Biography Page 10
