After her debut album "When we all fall asleep", which was characterized by the experiences of her teenage years, Billy Eilish presents her new album "Happier than ever", an album that draws on her experiences as a now successful musician. Although she is no longer haunted by teenage problems, she now has to deal with her popularity. As a "new star", she obviously has to deal with all kinds of comments about herself, her looks, her body, her private life, etc. In the song "Not my responsibility", she deals with these external opinions about her body and her clothes and at the same time emancipates herself from them.
A breathy and sparsely instrumental indictment of the superficiality and appropriation of our world and one of the topics that has always moved me in relation to artists. Do artists have to shine through their work or do they also have to be perfect in all other areas of life? Perfect bodies, perfect knowledge in all subject areas so that they can make slick PR statements on talk shows and perfect taste (which, as we all know, is not debatable). What we should expect from artists is primarily their work. The artist (in all of us) is allowed to live out the wild and inexplicable that is missing in our normal lives.
The video appeared on YouTube before the album was released and has been viewed over 30 million times. Let's hope that the message got through.
As always, you can find out a lot more about one of the most important musicians of our time. In the magnificent documentary "The World's A Little Blurry" on Apple TV+, you can get really close. Filming is said to have started when Billie was 15 years old. You can watch her and her brother making music and learn about an unhappy love affair with a rapper, etc... Letting the public get so close is always a double-edged sword, but if someone doesn't like something or has different ideas, then it's not Billie Eilish's responsibility.