It’s no secret that Billie Eilish represents the growing phenomenon of a darker, more nuanced version of pop music. Everything she does is a deconstruction of the stereotype that still plagues this genre. She dresses in androgynous threads, croons about demons and hell, and lets spiders crawl out of her eyes. But, all the while she still creates listener-friendly anthems that would be just as at home in a nightclub as they would be in a dive bar.
This dynamic is what allows Billie Eilish to create the sort of music that is capable of doubling as a political anthem. In her latest single “All The Good Girls Go To Hell,” Eilish touches on the topic of climate change, something that is finally getting the sort of media coverage that Al Gore had hoped for about 20 years ago.
“My Lucifer is lonely…” she croons in her unique alto. The lyrics speak of an inevitable end, something sinister on the horizon. The video is just as eery. Eilish walks down a burning street, covered in heavy black oil, dragging a pair of wings that seem to dwarf her tiny frame. Eilish is often called the goth princess of pop, but she’s shown herself to be more than that. If anything, she is the Cassandra of her genre, a voice speaking through the radio waves, warning of us of things to come. Somehow her message does not bring down the listening experience at all but elevates it to something more. If Eilish is a harbinger of the future of pop music, we welcome her with open arms.
