Body of Work
March 11, 2020 9:07 AM Subscribe
She can give them all the finger as she limps to the bank, burdened with her piles of cash and platinum records. Many of her lyrics are implicitly and explicitly sexy/sexual, but that's not enough either, and still this twisted industry will demand their pound of flesh :-/
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:59 AM on March 11, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:59 AM on March 11, 2020 [12 favorites]
She is fascinating: her process, her work ethic, her aesthetic, even her relationship with her brother. For instance, see: Billie and Finneas Eilish break down her hit song BAD GUY for Rolling Stone (11 minutes and 41 seconds, youtube). They are both compulsively watchable, and come across as competent musicians.
posted by MiraK at 10:09 AM on March 11, 2020 [25 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 10:09 AM on March 11, 2020 [25 favorites]
NME's coverage of this is also on point.
posted by hanov3r at 10:11 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by hanov3r at 10:11 AM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
They are both compulsively watchable, and come across as competent musicians.
I don't connect with her music much but I'd agree with that. I even found the stunt interview she did with Vogue's AI
elicited some interesting & candid answers.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
I don't connect with her music much but I'd agree with that. I even found the stunt interview she did with Vogue's AI
elicited some interesting & candid answers.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:17 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm not familiar with her music, but her image makes me happy. She's not slovenly--she's clearly choosing fashions and colors that appeal to her--but she's concealing. It's like the '90s look without the wholesale appropriation of the Delia's catalog fake-vintage business. If she wanted to be conventionally feminine while still concealing herself, she could have reached for that look, signaling that she still intended to follow the most important rule of fashion under patriarchy: striving to please the eye.
I am proud of Billie Eilish for having such strong boundaries at her age that she can say, look, it's a game I can't win and I don't want to play. It's like when Sinead O'Connor shaved her head, and it's for the same reason. Poor Sinead was ahead of her time in so many things.
I do wish that I had worn more revealing clothes as a young woman. But anything too high or deep gave me a sense of real fear--a topmost fear that I looked fat or that my skin looked too mottled, and a deeper fear that I didn't, and that I couldn't handle whatever that might provoke. (And I would be responsible for provoking it, or at least I believed that inside me, whatever my mouth said.) It's a scary business, young-womaning in public.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:23 AM on March 11, 2020 [81 favorites]
I am proud of Billie Eilish for having such strong boundaries at her age that she can say, look, it's a game I can't win and I don't want to play. It's like when Sinead O'Connor shaved her head, and it's for the same reason. Poor Sinead was ahead of her time in so many things.
I do wish that I had worn more revealing clothes as a young woman. But anything too high or deep gave me a sense of real fear--a topmost fear that I looked fat or that my skin looked too mottled, and a deeper fear that I didn't, and that I couldn't handle whatever that might provoke. (And I would be responsible for provoking it, or at least I believed that inside me, whatever my mouth said.) It's a scary business, young-womaning in public.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:23 AM on March 11, 2020 [81 favorites]
I was only tangentially aware of her, but liked what little I ever heard. Then, while channel surfing one night, I landed on, of all things, Austin City Limits, and Billie was the performer. Wow! I enjoyed her show immensely. One thing that struck me was her humility. At one point in the concert, she tells the audience that she wasn't sure anyone in Texas would want to come see her. The house was packed full, of course.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:43 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 10:43 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
Nothing is ever enough for these vultures so fuck 'em.
Billie Eilish is great. She's driven, she's successful, she's weaponized vocal fry.
posted by ODiV at 10:46 AM on March 11, 2020 [19 favorites]
Billie Eilish is great. She's driven, she's successful, she's weaponized vocal fry.
posted by ODiV at 10:46 AM on March 11, 2020 [19 favorites]
"They are both compulsively watchable, and come across as competent musicians."
I think they're better than competent. My impression over time is that they are both talented musicians and songwriters and divide this task pretty evenly, but Finneas is also really talented as a producer—and their closeness and shared sensibilities make this combination very fruitful. Meanwhile, Billie has a lot of talent in visual media—she's been basically the art designer for her videos and recently began directing them herself.
But beyond all that, I'm really struck by the weird combination of how they are typical white suburban millenials and also at the same time not. They are both very self-assured and seem to really know who they are and what they want alongside indications of some kind of trauma. They're both smart and a bit off-kilter in that way often associated with the home-schooled.
I have trouble understanding how this all works with the level of fame she's achieved since she was 14. There's something very 21st century about her in that half the time I wonder if she doesn't actually exist and is instead totally the invention of some big data neural network, while the other half of the time I think she's entirely authentic in the sense that she's the most organic product of her time and place that we've seen. She could only exist in the age of social media and teens streaming all the seasons of The Office seven or eight times over as comfort food (as she has).
She's been adept at navigating through the cross-currents and rocky shores of being a teen female pop star because she's a native of social media where everyone says everything about everyone all of the time. She's disarmingly unaffected and direct, but that tracks.
And I might be wrong about this, but the ways in which she's so unlike the stereotypical "teen girl pop star" really rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:10 AM on March 11, 2020 [17 favorites]
I think they're better than competent. My impression over time is that they are both talented musicians and songwriters and divide this task pretty evenly, but Finneas is also really talented as a producer—and their closeness and shared sensibilities make this combination very fruitful. Meanwhile, Billie has a lot of talent in visual media—she's been basically the art designer for her videos and recently began directing them herself.
But beyond all that, I'm really struck by the weird combination of how they are typical white suburban millenials and also at the same time not. They are both very self-assured and seem to really know who they are and what they want alongside indications of some kind of trauma. They're both smart and a bit off-kilter in that way often associated with the home-schooled.
I have trouble understanding how this all works with the level of fame she's achieved since she was 14. There's something very 21st century about her in that half the time I wonder if she doesn't actually exist and is instead totally the invention of some big data neural network, while the other half of the time I think she's entirely authentic in the sense that she's the most organic product of her time and place that we've seen. She could only exist in the age of social media and teens streaming all the seasons of The Office seven or eight times over as comfort food (as she has).
She's been adept at navigating through the cross-currents and rocky shores of being a teen female pop star because she's a native of social media where everyone says everything about everyone all of the time. She's disarmingly unaffected and direct, but that tracks.
And I might be wrong about this, but the ways in which she's so unlike the stereotypical "teen girl pop star" really rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:10 AM on March 11, 2020 [17 favorites]
And I might be wrong about this, but the ways in which she's so unlike the stereotypical "teen girl pop star" really rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
I mean, that's kind of the subject of this post, isn't it?
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:27 AM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
I mean, that's kind of the subject of this post, isn't it?
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:27 AM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
BRB, ordering shiny green burlap sack and matching head wrap to be my new work uniform.
posted by medusa at 11:29 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by medusa at 11:29 AM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
If I understand her poem, a lot of the problem isn't just the industry, it's the public.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:40 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:40 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
When I was in high school in the 80s I could tell that some girls were practicing defensive fashion among our extended circle of marginalizeds, though I didn't 100% recognize until several years later. It's hard to move around in a predatory environment without (m)any examples of success, since older marginalizeds graduated and mostly disappeared as they fled the suburbs (for the most part). Some wound up being successes, several not, and a surprising number evolved into the mainstream family shapes that they were reacting against after they got tired of family pressure but before the world forced or seduced them into normalcy. tl;dr: Facebook is weird for me.
I think this mechanistic process operates at many levels of society and success and supplies the pressure (in addition to rape and Puritan cultures in the US) that Eilish is dodging. Perhaps with the video statement from her concert she could be said to be directly confronting it, but absent that it seems to me that she's merely choosing not to participate, which agitates those who would exert the pressure. In prison, independence is seen as a sign of aggression.
I really like this Penny Fractions post that was linked in the Guardian article, about the Eilish origin story and its relationship to both the streaming world and the record industry.
posted by rhizome at 2:55 PM on March 11, 2020 [12 favorites]
I think this mechanistic process operates at many levels of society and success and supplies the pressure (in addition to rape and Puritan cultures in the US) that Eilish is dodging. Perhaps with the video statement from her concert she could be said to be directly confronting it, but absent that it seems to me that she's merely choosing not to participate, which agitates those who would exert the pressure. In prison, independence is seen as a sign of aggression.
I really like this Penny Fractions post that was linked in the Guardian article, about the Eilish origin story and its relationship to both the streaming world and the record industry.
posted by rhizome at 2:55 PM on March 11, 2020 [12 favorites]
If I understand her poem, a lot of the problem isn't just the industry, it's the public
It's both, and they feed on each other, right? The industry gives the public what the industry thinks they want, and the public consumes what the industry gives them and then expects that all the time.
posted by hanov3r at 3:18 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
It's both, and they feed on each other, right? The industry gives the public what the industry thinks they want, and the public consumes what the industry gives them and then expects that all the time.
posted by hanov3r at 3:18 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
I have a go-to for this; It's ok for a girl to like pink, but not ok to expect every girl to like pink.
People should be appreciated for what they are remarkable for. Anyone attacking others for what they're not should ask themselves why they need to bang a round peg into a square hole.
posted by krisjohn at 4:12 PM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
People should be appreciated for what they are remarkable for. Anyone attacking others for what they're not should ask themselves why they need to bang a round peg into a square hole.
posted by krisjohn at 4:12 PM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]
Billie Eilish vs The Wings of Death: 10 up, 10 down. 👍
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 5:51 PM on March 11, 2020
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 5:51 PM on March 11, 2020
I'm really struck by the weird combination of how they are typical white suburban millenials and also at the same time not.
They are very much not. At age 18, Ellish was born in the 21st Century. Millennials all came of age around the late 90s and early 2000s, easily a generation ahead of what we currently call Gen Z.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2020 [16 favorites]
They are very much not. At age 18, Ellish was born in the 21st Century. Millennials all came of age around the late 90s and early 2000s, easily a generation ahead of what we currently call Gen Z.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2020 [16 favorites]
Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to replace body-shaming with policing how women talk, a topic that has historically been Yet Another Way to discount women’s words.
posted by Etrigan at 4:21 AM on March 12, 2020 [16 favorites]
posted by Etrigan at 4:21 AM on March 12, 2020 [16 favorites]
Mod note: Comment and a couple replies removed. If all you've got to say is you don't like x superficial thing about someone, just go ahead and skip the thread!
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:16 AM on March 12, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:16 AM on March 12, 2020 [5 favorites]
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posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:54 AM on March 11, 2020 [44 favorites]