11/19: Billie Eilish—"Therefore I Am"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the one and only Billie Eilish.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the one and only Billie Eilish.
Billie Eilish—"Therefore I Am"
Eric Bennett:
Well well well, if it isn’t Billie Eilish back once again with a dark, slinky pop song. There’s not a lot differentiating “Therefore I Am” from her prior work, but the few things that do set it apart I find amusing. For one, she actually sounds like she’s having fun making music here. Typically, when her emotions show through, it’s to veer more towards sadness. Here she’s laughing, bemused even. I react with a similar laugh when I think about a young pop phenom incorporating Descartes into her lyrics. It’s a good pop song, but it makes sense to me as a one-off single. This isn’t the caliber of material you use to launch your follow up, particularly when you’re following up work that swept the Grammys
Eli Enis:
Following her puddly July ballad “my future”, Eilish is back to business as usual with “Therefore I Am”. The track has a puppeteer’s menace to it as Eilish alternates between devious whispers and smooth half-raps over a lunging bassline and sporadic synth strokes. She’s clearly singing about another celebrity who’s getting time in the spotlight—but Eilish knows something that others don’t, and she wants no part of their rise. Like Eric mentioned, there’s some actual laughter and other shadowy humor in here that’s classic Eilish to a T, which is nice to hear her return to. Definitely not album #2 material but it sounds like she’s gearing up for it.