Billie Eilish

[Lunkhead]

I don't get it. :/

[vowlvom]

I think you meant to post this in the "Currently Not Digging" forum.

I like Bad Guy. The rest of her stuff doesn't really do it for me but I love that she's a successful pop artist with her own sound.

[Lunkhead]

I only listened to that song and maybe one other, and I can't even remember what that other one was. Bad Guy just sounds like a Britney Spears song sung by a teen goth. It doesn't sound very original to me but obviously YMMV.

It seems like the pop music industry just needs to have some new teen pop star every couple years to keep teens identifying with pop music. Then they get discarded. (What happened to Lorde anyway?)

I get the romantic notion of some kids recording a breakout hit at home. But it doesn't sound like the music has any instruments and they must have only recorded vocals. Then it was professionally mixed and mastered from what I've heard.

[rone rivendale]

I think she's more Fiona Apple than Brittney.

[vowlvom]

I get the romantic notion of some kids recording a breakout hit at home. But it doesn't sound like the music has any instruments and they must have only recorded vocals. Then it was professionally mixed and mastered from what I've heard.

I don't really get what you're saying here. Drums and synthesisers are instruments, as far as I'm concerned? I'm sure it was professionally mastered, but I don't think think that takes anything at all away from the coolness of a young brother / sister team making it to the top of the charts.

[Lunkhead]

I just meant, live instruments that would have to be recorded with mics, as opposed to virtual instruments that live purely within the computer. Like, part of what you get from a recording studio is, good sounding spaces to record in, good recording equipment, people with expertise in recording sounds. It used to be that 100% of the components of pop music were things that benefited from that. So, in that time, the idea of someone making a good/professional sounding recording at home in their bedroom was impressive. But as the percentage of components of pop music that benefit from a recording studio approaches (or has reached) 0%, to me anyway it's less impressive to make professional sounding music in one's bedroom, especially when the music is actually professionally mixed and mastered later by other people outside the bedroom. I'm just thinking it as a technical achievement, which seems to be part of the mystique of the whole thing. But maybe I'm misinterpreting that.

Mostly I'm just being a cranky old man shouting at a cloud, though, I recognize that.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

The whole bedroom produced thing is slightly misleading, I think, but still interesting. I'm definitely a fan of Billie having watched a ton of interviews over the past 8 months to a year. I like how she interacts with her fans, how she handles the media etc., I'm not that big of a fan of her music, but I'm not her demographic anyway. But her videos, her ideas for songs and the non music artistic side are all pretty cool.

[jb]

So Lunkhead, you mean you don't get the Best Engineered Album award?

The Grammys are about commercial success, and the Billie Eilish album is an unqualified success. From the "Producer of the Year" award if her brother produced the highest-selling debut album of the decade (male, female, or group), I think that's something people want to emulate and is the basis of the award.

The engineering award I can see quibbling with. The mixing and mastering is polarizing. To me, some moments have an odd saturation. But that "Bad Guy" single has an intimacy and a fascinatingly warm, dry production to it that I think is really different than most of what we hear in pop music today.

From a commercial standpoint, you don't get credit for having one foot (recording live instruments), so the kids are gonna stream what makes them feel good in the ears. But from a shouting at clouds standpoint, sure, you can say "that guy doesn't know shit about recording" and he'll agree with you while you wash his diamond-encrusted electric scooter.

I don't have a great sense of how much he did vs how much was sent out for work later by pros. Iron and Wine and Bon Iver are the two other "bedroom" types I can really remember, and they did much the same thing. And I think one of my favorite engineered albums, In The Aeroplane etc etc, kind of sounds like crap from a technical standpoint but it's so full of life I'd give it alllllll the awards.

[thirdcatmusic]

I like her and her brother, it's a cool story. I even kinda like her music. I remember when I first heard her ("bury a friend") and it immediately jumped out at me compared to all of the other top hit stuff (I do a thing where I periodically listen to the most played songs on Spotify out of curiosity about the super popular tracks). I wouldn't say I'm a Billie Eilish fan and I'm pumping her album, it's not quite my thing on that level, but I think it's pretty cool anyway.

[jb]

This is them going through every step of recording Bad Guy. It's pretty illuminating, and I find it endearing. She reminds me a little bit of my sister. A less bonkers version of my sister. SOME OF YOU KNOW WHAT I"M SAYIN'

[ujnhunter]

I just realized last night... that I've been thinking that Billie Eilish was Deuce Bigalow's Daughter this whole time for some reason... which is one of the many reasons that I've never even had the slightest interest in anything that's been done by her... but like I said... last night... I just realized that was someone else! Elle King is the real culprit and I've been sadly wrongly accusing Billie Eilish of this dishonor the whole time. I am sorry. Forgive me. I only realized when I saw an interview with Finneas on the Dave Pesando (who I don't really care for at all... so I don't know why I watched it...) show when he said his father was a carpenter. What? Deuce Bigalow is a carpenter? No... wait... your father isn't Deuce Bigalow? Shit... anyhow after last night's revelation, I've since listened to Ocean Eyes... which is a decent, if somewhat unremarkable, pop song. Good voice... so I've now got nothing against her knowing full well that her father is no longer Deuce Bigalow.