Billie Eilish – WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (2019)

In contemporary music terms, this album is mega. It catapulted Billie Eilish into the realm of pop stardom and she recently received many awards for this effort. However, does it stand up to the hype? Let’s find out.

We start off with !!!!!!! which is pure nonsense. Some brief speech about Billie Eilish’s Invisalign being removed is here before we go smack bang into the rest of the record. This bit is rather unnecessary, to be honest. If you listen, you’ll find out why.

The first key song is bad guy, a huge hit at the time. It’s easy to see why it’s very catchy and poppy. “I’m the bad guy – DUH!” sings Billie Eilish in the middle of this. Still, it sounds very much like this could have been better. The midsection is somewhat a surprise. Still, one cannot help think that this could be worked on more.

xanny is a cry for help. It’s, once again, not very good. So far, this album seems pretty ordinary, and proof of the sharp decline of popular music since the 1990s. The lyrics are awful, the intent of the song is much the same. This album seems pretty rubbish at this point, let’s hope that it improves after this. The vocals at the end are nice, though.

you should see me in a crown comes next. It starts off with a knife being sharpened. This number seems quite a bit better, at least it actually has some proper musical value and structure here. Seemingly, Billie Eilish is a tomboy type. Even though this song is better than the others, it isn’t really good at all, we deserve better music than this in 2020.

The next song all the good girls go to hell reveals Billie Eilish as a satanist. Okay, that’s her choice, but really quite a stupid statement from someone who was 17 at the time of the recording. The instrumentation is good, but this song is trite otherwise. Next song, please. The bass guitar towards the end is pretty good though.

Next up is wish you were gay. May as well hit the snooze button here, this is so dull one could fall asleep listening to this. The fact that this sounds so trite, it will show up in music history as one of the most overrated albums ever made. But, what else is good nowadays anyway? This is the beginning of the end of good music folks. Billie Eilish cannot really sing that well either, her voice lacks power here. A musical joke.

when the party’s over is a dark piece about a bad experience after said party. The whole thing is so bad that it is only saved by a nice grand piano part. Describe it any way you can, this is terrible music folks. We, as the consumer quite frankly deserve better.

8 has some ukelele and a processed vocal here to begin with. At least it sounds a bit better than what we expect on this album. It sounds like dark reggae here, and the guitar part is kind of nice. It’s still awful, but at least has a little bit of value here. It’s okay but only okay.

Next up is my strange addiction. It’s Billie Eilish meeting Acid House and sounds ordinary. Obviously, over time, the music industry has used increasingly negative methods to create and record artists. Even indie bands have more credibility than this, it’s not worth hearing this pathetic song.

After that bury a friend which mentions the album title. It’s more minimalist, which seems to suit Billie Eilish better. If the recording producers had this in mind, this album would be ten times better than it is. As a result, this song is an improvement, but only slightly so. The bass is fairly prominent on this album, which is interesting.

ilomilo follows. It has a nice percussion loop, to begin with before a bunch of sound effects enter. This one is a lot better and surprisingly underrated from the album. Still, it’s difficult to get through this song all the same. The xylophones fade this one out.

listen before i go is really unnecessary and horrible, especially considering it’s directly talking (and glorifying) suicide. The best thing that could have happened is having this song ditched straight into the rubbish bin, who honestly would listen to it? Only hardcore fans, that is who. Bad, just bad. Like a cricket bat to the head, musically speaking.

The acoustically driven i love you at least is a little better. Still, it is sub-par for a song. One cannot help but think that music in the past was a lot better than this. It’s really depressing to hear, but compared to Joy Division or another band, it is musically not as good. The climax is actually pretty good, strangely. Let’s hope that the next album after this is better, at least.

The final song on this album begins with some dark, wannabe soul vocals. goodbye is that, and by this point, goodbye must be said to the world of good music, courtesy of acts such as Billie Eilish. 2020 is here, and the music put through in the recording industry has now degraded so badly. Truly sad.

The verdict? Terrible, overrated rubbish. Save your ears and money, other acts such as Ed Sheeran are way better than this. Billie Eilish will not last at this rate, awful music is here.

3/10