That particular monolog deals with the body-shaming, male-gaze lust and every double-standard in-between she’s dealt with, and if it feels a bit op-ed compared to the rest of the album, she’s earned the right to editorialize. “I feel you watching… always,” she whispers in the middle of “Not My Responsibility,” and it’s a breaking of the fourth wall so intense you almost feel Eilish in front of you, scrutinizing you back. The whole record is not about that, but she’s such an interesting self-commentator, you almost wouldn’t mind as it was.
That’s a trap often best left avoided - but Eilish makes it work for her, in the considerable parts of the album that do go there, with a lot of trenchant observation and self-aware humor to go with the heightened levels of post-celebrity self-consciousness. It’s an old truism that artists have an entire lifetime to write their first album, then sometimes spend the remainder of their lifetime writing about how unhappy the first album’s success made them. Fortunately, the stuff that haywire daydreams are made of can be as intriguing as lucid nightmares. Suicidal thoughts and night terrors no longer figure in, like they did on the first album on “Happier Than Ever,” Eilish, at a post-self-harming 19, is dealing with the everyday indignities of what’s left to put up with when you know you’re going to stick around.
Narcissistic boyfriends and older men who took advantage of her youth also figure in - with some uncertainty left over how those categories might overlap. The Grammy-winning single “Everything I Wanted” (which Eilish has left as a stand-alone and not included here) was a tip-off that she had a few feelings about famousness, and Eilish doesn’t stint on them here. But, maybe to her personal detriment and our benefit, it’s a pretty pissed-off record. “Happier Than Ever” is a title with probably multiple levels of sincerity and irony: Eilish has allowed that she is happier… emphasis on the – ier. But was it possible that - to turn a Bruce Banner phrase around - we wouldn’t like her if she’s not angry? As it turns out, we don’t have to find out, at least yet. The sensible-shoes maturity of “My Future” cemented that impression. So much of what we’ve heard about her since “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” made her a global sensation in 2019 is about how she’s in a better place and overcame some of her adolescent demons with a strong family support system. “My Future,” on its one-year anniversary, turns out not to be too indicative of where the rest of the material was headed - yes, maybe, in its fairly subdued tone and as a showcase for Eilish as a vocal stylist, but not so much in its general feeling of contentedness. (Note to other singers who might take from her ubiquitiousness that never leaving the public eye is a good idea: Don’t try this at home.) All that intermediary music and a documentary and an Internet-breaking Vogue cover, too, and she still doesn’t feel overexposed. But Eilish has enough to say, and a riveting enough voice to sing it in, that the album doesn’t feel like it’s been spoiled by all the bread crumbs along the way. It does feel a little weird hearing “My Future” roll in as the fourth track after three previously unheard ones, exactly one year to the day after it was released as a single, like a brand new album is being interrupted by a greatest-hits collection. Seeing as how six of the 16 tracks previously entered the sphere and have been picked to death (five as singles and a sixth, the spoken-word piece “Not My Responsibility,” as a video), you might have wondered how many think-therefore-I-am-pieces about Eilish the world had left in it by the time release day rolled around.
BILLIE EILISH NEW ALBUM FULL
So much of the album has already been out there that it seemed possible the full release might seem anticlimactic.
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