Billie Eilish – 2021
★★★☆☆
For Billie, “Happier Than Ever” was a period of transition. She had already made a massive splash in the industry with “WWAFA,WDWG?” (which for simplicity’s sake, I will just be referring to as her debut for the remainder of this review), finding a massive hit in ‘bad guy’ and sweeping the Grammys in its most sought-after categories, particularly Best New Artist and the paramount Album of the Year. Suffice to say, she was already destined for stardom following this album. That said, her success did not come without criticism. Her debut was labeled as needlessly angsty or dull by detractors, like something you’d fish out of r/im14andthisisdeep. To their credit, it’s not entirely false. Her debut was catered to that kind of listener, and while it had its moments, one couldn’t be blamed for being turned off from this album on account of it taking itself far too seriously. The cover alone would be ridiculed endlessly if it hadn’t been 2019.
Needless to say, 2021 marked Billie branching out to a new style. The cover of “Happier Than Ever” was a stark contrast from her debut, feeling much more sophisticated in its colors and like a departure from “that edgy style.” The album opens with ‘Getting Older,’ which feels like an introspection or monologue more than anything else. This reappears a couple times during the album, particularly ‘Not My Responsibility’ and ‘Male Fantasy,’ which serve as good moments for the album to break itself up a little. They turn out to be some of the best songs on the album, being clear windows into what Billie intends for this album and where she really was when she made it.
Unfortunately, Billie continues to fall into some of her most common pitfalls on this album. There are still moments on this album that are either delivered in a way that comes off as “edgy for the sake of it” or lines that simply don’t land. ‘I Didn’t Change My Number’ is the earliest example of this, where the instrumental is already jarring coming in from ‘Getting Older’ and Billie’s angsty “maneater” attitude on the song doesn’t really work on it, it just feels too extra. The outro on this song is also really poor, the synths feel like they were meant to build to something but immediately got nipped in the bud as the song ended.
This isn’t to say that Billie should never try an edgier sound, she actually hits the mark perfectly a couple songs later on ‘Oxytocin,’ which is handily my favorite song off this album. The instrumental is fantastic and almost hypnotic at some points, and Billie writes one of her best choruses on the album. The song feels harrowing in the exact way that an edgy Billie song should feel.
The middle of the album is where “Happier Than Ever” seems to struggle the most. After ‘Oxytocin,’ we hear tracks like ‘GOLDWING,’ ‘Lost Cause,’ and ‘Halley’s Comet,’ all three of which feel like they contribute almost nothing to the wider album and make getting through this part of the album such a slog. The intro to ‘GOLDWING’ overstays its welcome a good bit, and the rest of the song doesn’t really do much to justify that. ‘Everybody Dies’ and ‘Your Power’ have similar issues, both tackling heavy subject matters but not really leaving me with anything in the end, as Billie doesn’t really do a lot to really send the messages of these songs home. ‘NDA’ takes the aforementioned issues and further worsens them, with one of the most jarring instrumentals I’ve heard from the singer-producer duo so far, like if Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’ was played in a K-Mart.
To take a brief pause from the scrutiny, “Happier Than Ever” ends on a high note with the title track, a fantastic one. Opening very softly with something reminiscent of a 50s pop song. Suddenly, it bursts forth into a massive crescendo, with a potent guitar solo backing her. She drops some of the best vocals of her career before falling back into an instrumental outro. It’s one of Billie’s most emotionally charged songs and would later go on to predate a lot of songs like it, especially some of the more emotional songs from Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan, who emulate the sound and writing of this song on much of their recent work.
When compared to her debut, the needlessly angsty moments on “Happier Than Ever” have much fewer excuses or reason to be around. On her debut, those moments were the substance of the whole album, what you saw was what you got. Here, they often break down the album or feel like they were added to pad out a tracklist. It’s strong at times, but still ends up being a missed beat in her discography.
Favorite Track(s): Oxytocin, Happier Than Ever
Written by Michéal Doran
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