Modern music can be a hard field to penetrate. Not because it’s difficult to make good songs, but because there’s an overabundance of people posting their music online. A study from MusicRadar revealed that more music was uploaded in a single day of 2024 than there was for the entirety of 1989. 

With this over-saturation comes a handful of artists able to break through in major ways. One of the youngest to do it in recent memory is the 23-year-old LA native by the name of Billie Eilish. 

Despite her young age, Eilish has taken the music industry by storm for the better part of 8 years ever since the release of her magnum opus single “Ocean Eyes” 

Since that release, she’s been on a rocket ship to the moon, with that rocket picking up speed in the last 4 years. With 3platinum albums, 9 Grammy wins, and 32 nominations, she’s atop the pop music world. With her sudden rise to the top, I think it’s time for us to look back, at the young, but eventful career of the queen of Pop music. 

When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? (2019) 

This was the debut album for Billie and a debut can not get better than this. We’ve had some smash hit debuts before, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” and Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” just as an example, but none truly registered the magnitude of social impact as Billie’s did. It was so good in fact that Apple Music put this inside the top 30 of 100 best albums. The only other debut album higher than hers was “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” which topped the list at #1. 

This album received such high praise for a reason. Eilish had a very unique approach to this record as her subjectively creepy quirkiness set the album apart from competitors and pushed the boundaries of how modern pop music is perceived. The vocals, although could be considered disturbing, were perfectly paired with the incredible production of Finneas O’Connell, Billie’s older brother and producer. 

The album somehow blurs the line between modern and old-fashioned and pushes the boundaries of modern pop standards. Culturally, the record had a significant impact. Dorian Lynskey of “Q” wrote that the album served as a that “will speak powerfully both to her peers and to anyone who remembers how youth can sometimes feel like an overwhelming weight.” 

Billie Had made her mark, and it was time to follow it up. 

Happier Than Ever (2021)

2020 served as a mixed year for many artists in the music scene. The COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay at home, but it also opened the door for more dedicated and thought-through projects to emerge. One of those projects was Billie’s second album “Happier Than Ever”. 

Happier Than Ever is her longest project to date in terms of track list with 16 tracks spanning over just less than an hour. Phonetically, this is a knockout punch. Musically and aesthetically, on the other hand, the record lacks a consistent flow as well as overall consistency. It feels like the album is offering a buffet of music styles, with some of them being overallvery bland. 

An example of this comes with the first 4 songs. They all serve drastically different messages from Aging and reflection, To privacy and growing up in the public eye, to love and longing, and then self-love. These 4 are a microcosm of the entire record. 

In a vacuum, each of these songs has its potential to rise to greatness. When in the LP/Album format, they lose their touch and don’t contribute to the overall message of the record. Does it make the overall album bad? No. Does it hinder its value? Absolutely. 

To show the album some praise, there are some tracks that I like. The message conveyed in “Getting Older” is something that many of her fans and other people her age can relate to, “Therefore I am” is classic Billie and overall my favorite song on the entire record, and “My Future” also serves as a song that has a beautiful message that resonates with Billie’s core audience of young adults and teenagers. 

‘Guitar Songs’ and ‘Barbie’ (2022-23)

Despite not releasing a full-length record, 2022 and 2023 were arguably Billie’s biggest years to date. 2022 saw the release of her 2 track EP titled “Guitar Songs”. The EP handles the theme of grief in two ways, grieving a relationship and grieving a person. 

‘TV’ was a painfully relatable track for much of her audience. The song begins, describing a depressive episode, with her being unable to sleep due to a falling out with an ex-partner. Billie goes on to sing “Sinking in the sofa while we all betray each other” bringing up a question in a later lyric stating “What’s the point of anything?” John Parables of the New York Times described it as a demonstration of “the ways entertainment nurtures distraction, alienation, and apathy”.

In the chorus, she goes into the effects her romantic relationships have on the ability to spend time with her friends as well as pondering how her status as a celebrity has affected said relationships with friends with the lines “All of my friends are missing again, that’s what happens when you fall in love”. 

She then goes on to question the public’s priorities with the line “The internets gone wild watching movie stars on trial, while they’re overturning Roe V Wade” In reference to the 2022 Johnny Depp v Amber Heard defamation trial. She questions why the public seems more concerned with the trial rather than a constitutional right to abortion being overturned. 

“The 30th” goes deep into Billie’s experience of losing a really close friend in a car accident. Despite being less universalthan its counterpart on the EP, it still resonated deeply with her fans. The track tells a story of a bystander in a car accident, and the fear and pain that comes with being uncertain if the person involved will live or die. 

Where this track shines is the progression in the bridge. As the song reaches its conclusion, the chords start to build and build and the vocals begin to overlap, simulating a racing mind and a growing reaction of panic and anxiety. 

2023 saw the writing and release of the award-winning song “What Was I Made For?” which was written for the film “Barbie”. Eilish went deep into her inspiration and process of creating the track in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe saying “I find it hard to write about my exact feelings in my life so, What Was I Made For? would’ve never been written even though every single lyric is about my life” 

In the same interview, Billie elaborated on how the song came to life, revealing that the process was almost therapeutic. “It’s like I was channeling something bigger than myself,” she shared with Lowe. “Writing ‘What Was I Made For?’ felt like I was asking the universe these big, existential questions through the guise of a song for a movie. It was freeing because I could express my own confusion and pain through the character of Barbie, which, in a way, mirrored my own journey of self-discovery and purpose.”

‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’ (2024)

There are very few albums that I view as perfect. This is one of them. With her third studio album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” Billie dives into the complexities of her evolving identity, side by side with moments of raw vulnerability with bursts of fearless expression.

The album truly does live up to its namesake. It hits you hard with tracks such as “Skinny”, “Wildflower”, “The Greatest”,and “Blue” tackling themes of Body Image, Love, Self-Worth, and Heartbreak respectively. 

The record then swings in the opposite direction, hitting you softly with tracks such as “Birds Of A Feather”, “L’Amore De Ma Vie”, “Lunch” and “Chihiro” exploring themes of commitment, unrequited love, indulgence, and Transformation respectively. 

Critics praised this album for being the most complete version of Billie we’ve ever seen. Helen Brown of The Independent praised the album for how it “whispers its way through a marvelous maze of music to deliver some big emotional wallops”. Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised the record for its “beautiful” melodies and “distinctive” lyrical touches. 

Normally variations in themes of songs like this would hinder a record’s performance. However, the songs individually thrive on a level Billie hasn’t done before. Looking at the record on a song-by-song basis, it’s hard to find a record that can stand toe to toe with it. Even the tracks that can be considered “Filler” are phenomenal and deserve as much praise and adoration as possible. 

Billie’s music career is still very young, but I feel like this album will end up becoming her Magnum Opus. The album just feels unapologetically Billie. It feels truly like her and I am so here for it. 

Eilish is 23 years old and is already 3 albums into her career. She still has a very long time to go, and with how much she’s progressed and how much she’s evolved in 5 short years, I am incredibly excited to see where she goes from here and what she comes up with next.