Eighteen-year-old pop star Billie Eilish released her new single “Therefore I Am” on November 12th. The track debuted at No. 94 on the Billboard Hot 100 list, making this Eilish’s 20th Hot 100 track in her career.
On previous tracks such as “Bad Guy” or “You Should See Me in A Crown” Eilish shows that she’s not one to mess with. The tracks feature strong beats and lean heavily towards the dark alternative genre. Her sound is a lot edgier than the things you would hear on the radio in 2017 or 2018. She leaves no room for change on “Therefore I Am” and brings back the heavy sound and badass lyrics.
Eilish has always stood her ground, she makes sure that people know she’s independent and doesn’t take flak from anybody. This track is no exception to that, and she is definitely putting someone in their place. With lyrics like, “I’m not your friend / Or anything, damn / You think that you’re the man” and, “Get my pretty name out of your mouth,” Eilish for sure had someone or a situation in mind when putting this together.
After turning 18, Eilish opened up a bit more with her music. She has been making music that makes her younger fans feel empowered. These younger listeners need to know that they can be the bad guy. They don’t have to stand down and listen to other people. Being an up and coming artist at such a young age, she’s been given a platform to influence these younger audiences. Putting out this message of being independent, not really listening to what other people say, doing what you want and having fun is what they need to hear.
The music video for this track is unlike a lot of her other videos. It features her eating pretzels and running through an empty mall by herself. Many of her other music videos feature creepy graphics and chilling visuals but this time it is a lot tamer. It’s every teenager's dream to just run around in an empty mall singing and dancing. It’s the lighthearted video we needed from her in 2020.
Eilish not only has an amazing singing voice, but her normal talking voice is capturing as well. There’s a couple of spots on this song where Eilish is heard talking instead of singing the lyrics. This really gave some depth to the song and broke it up a bit more than her other tracks; it makes it feel more casual. One of the spoken lyrics being, “Stop, what the hell are you talking about?” which has blown up on TikTok. I had seen many people using that audio but never knew where it came from until I had listened to the track to review it.
Billie has made it clear that she’s not going anywhere anytime soon. This edgy and dark – but also surprisingly bright – path is the perfect one for her. Her sound and her image are fully coming together as she’s growing up and I can’t wait to see where this takes her.