“When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go” is her debut album, the album cover she decided on was unique and raised questions by a lot of people.
It displays Billie Eilish wearing an all-white outfit, sitting on a messy bed on white sheets and a single spotlight illuminating the scene Billie Eilish’s in complete darkness. What’s particularly eerie is Eilish is pupil-less, her eyes completely white, making her look creepy and eerie. Overall, the eerie atmosphere the album cover paints reflects everything she wanted for the cover to reflect the album’s themes of sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming and night terrors.
The use of everything displayed in the picture being white other than the background gives a liminal space aspect to the cover, like it was photographed in a place beyond the ordinary. Giving the album a feeling of escapism and taking you somewhere beyond reach.
Eilish herself in the cover has a gesture of something ready to attack, at the edge of the bed staring directly into the camera. Creating a very direct and nightmarish atmosphere. Her facial expression is also a broad smile, giving mixed messages to the scary scene she has painted.
The use of the spotlight only spotlighting the bed in this liminal space, can give us a feeling that we don’t know what else is beyond the space.
Male Fantasy is the last track on Billies second album “Happier Than Ever” where she shares some vulnerable lyrics. The most vulnerable being “I worry this is how I’m always going to feel” which links to her previous press she has done where she has been very open and openly talked about her clinical depression and how it has come in waves her whole life. As fans can be invasive and Para social rumoring about her mental health and when it’s getting bad again, this lyric took courage for her to include because people will give the opportunity to create more fabrications.
Also, the lyric “I got a call from a girl I used to know, we were inseparable years ago, thought we would get along, but it wasn’t so” took a risk to add, as the internet ridiculed her on who the lyric was about. As she already had previous media with a girl, she talked about a lot in interviews named “Drew” and posted with on Instagram and was in a lyric of one of her old songs. After they seemed to stop appearing in the media together fans gossiped and rumored. She now admitted she has a toxic relationship with social media because of the toxicity of rum ours and negativity.
The visuals in this music video all being self-directed by her, share a lot about the way she lives, and her life can be although she has multiple Grammys and is famous. The video displays her home alone moving from various places around the house, lying in bed, binge – eating, sitting on floors, watching tv, constantly checking the fridge and watching TV. Although these are all quite normal activities, they are illustrated in a much gloomier manner though Eilish’s intentional details. Firstly, the lighting being low the whole video, with blinds being closed and no lights on creating a sad atmosphere with mostly blue undertones. Secondly being the facial expression, she holds throughout the whole video showing no emotion other than blank and dissociative.
As she has always been open about her mental health, Eilish is representing herself possibly how she is in depressive episodes, as a lot of the media that is seen of her by a wide – spread audience would be her cheery and receiving awards, but that lives aside her mental health struggles. By her purposely creating this music video which is probably the gloomiest and most personal one she has ever created she is trying to tell us she is just a human too.
There is also a lot of media coverage in Billie Eilish’s stance on politics. She’s not afraid to share her opinions and use her platform and fame to assist people in the right direction and she has a wide audience that goes from kids to elders. This is her displaying herself as someone who’s going to use their voice and platform to make a difference and not sit back and be afraid to get caught up in controversy. As she has been slamming and openly sharing her opinions on Donald Trump since being 16 and first being discovered in the media, to now being 22. Recently seen on her current world tour, very angry and upset doing a show the night after the recent election. And switched a song on her setlist to a song that explores more political subject matters and got her crowd to scream the lyric about abortion, which was very impactful in the media and got a lot of talk.
As she is so open about her viewpoint of politics, it was the consequences that follow up with it. She has had Donald Trump publicly slam her back and he accused her of “destroying her country” bringing her name into politics. Attacking her back for her remark she said about him where she told young voters he is destroying our country. This took courage as she is already involved in so much internet toxicity , her public slamming of Donald Trump attached a whole new group of people (Donald Trump Supporters) to send masses of internet hate across all platforms.
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