An impeccable mix of haunted earworms, zinging lyrics and dancefloor delights that end too soon, the American superstar’s third album seems to pull back from tantalising new horizons
oth soft focus and strobe lit, Billie Eilish’s third album finds the former teen prodigy, now 22, possibly hedging her bets for what might be the first time. She has built a mainstream pop career as an outsider auteur; Lana Del Rey, but for green-haired feminist insomniacs. For her 2019 debut,, dived deep into old-timey heartbreak, male toxicity and body positivity, with Eilish channelling vintage starlet vibes with pointed irony.
and What Was I Made For? generated its own gravitational force, prompting a surfeit of media activity and a few more awards to add to her heaving mantelpiece. Skinny, this album’s opener, feels like part two of What Was I Made For?, pondering Eilish’s own existential unease. She has fallen in love. People think she’s happy because she’s lost weight. “And I still cry,” she sings. “The old me is still me, and may be the real me, and I think she’s pretty.
That’s not to say the remainder of the album is sub-par: Eilish has set a high bar, twice, and tracks that meander past the first time can often reveal themselves as bops on repeated plays – like the cool, throbbing R&B of Chihiro, named for the protagonist of Hayao Miyazaki’s, a feast of sinister fairground sounds where Eilish takes on the role of a stalker and whispers a phone number at the end, as though winking at her old penchant for barely singing audibly.
Getting together, and falling apart, are abiding themes on a record about love, which Eilish explores with growing sensitivity. But there are no culture-warping gauntlets thrown down in the manner of 2021’sclearly wants to make a virtue of its subtlety, a strategy that Eilish gets away with, due to the chef’s kiss production work and her lyrical zingers.
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