“Shit sucks, dude”. That’s how up-and-coming LA singer-songwriter Billie Eilish described the experience of being 15 (even when you are a pop prodigy with a promising career ahead of you) in an interview with JUICE Magazine last month. On "idontwannabeyouanymore", the latest track on her debut EP dont smile at me (August 2017) to merit a music video, she describes her physical and emotional growing pains in far more strikingly poetic terms: ‘If teardrops could be bottled/ There'd be swimming pools filled by models/ Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore/ If "I love you" was a promise/ Would you break it, if you're honest/ Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before/ Idontwannabeyouanymore’.
Unlike Lorde, another precocious alt-pop singer-songwriter that she is often compared to, Eilish’s considerable songwriting skills has not placed her at a distance from the regular emotional hurdles of her (typically less eloquent) peers. Her recent output has retreated slightly from the upbeat and uptempo nature of early breakout songs like “Bellyache”. Songs like “Bored” and “bitches broken hearts” explore the vulnerabilities and mundanities of teenage life in a minimalist tapestry of evocative vocals, vivid imagery, pianos and hip hop beats.
Eilish may have contextualized "Idontwannabeyouanymore" as being “from the perspective of me towards me”, but it its lyrics extends beyond the personal. The chorus hints at the physical insecurities and anxieties that anyone growing up in an image-obsessed culture has to confront, while the line ‘Kind of mood that you wish you could sell’ hints at a cynical perspective towards the ubiquitious commodification of our emotions (possibly through via music labels and social media). The ballad paints such a dreamy picture of the box she finds herself trapped in that we all need its hypnotic spell to be broken when Eilish repeats the song’s titular denial thrice, at the very end.
