Thursday 8/6: Billie Eilish—"my future"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the omnipresent pop star 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 omnipresent pop star Billie Eilish.
Billie Eilish—“my future”
Eric Bennett:
Since her meteoric rise last year, Billie Eilish has been compared to Fiona Apple. While both had breakout debuts at a young age while making music with more maturity than is usually expected of a teenager, I’ve never really given too much credence to the comparison. With Eilish’s newest single “my future,” I’m beginning to see the parallels. “my future” is a reposed, creeping ballad. Her whispery vocals float around like smoke. It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever done, and damn if it doesn't make me think of the album tracks at the foundation of Apple’s Tidal. This is only bolstered by the drums that drop in the last third of the track. Percussion has always been Apple’s specialty, and it is just as much an asset for Eilish.
Eli Enis:
Once on an episode of the NYT Popcast, Jon Caramonica compared Billie Eilish’s singing to the legendary Big Band star Tony Bennett. The comparison seemed ludicrous at first, Eilish being the poster child for Zoomer anhedonia and Bennett being a relic of post-war American glory—not to mention Eilish’s muted pop being, on the surface, the antithesis of Bennett’s go-get-em show tunery. But after revisiting a song like “xanny” and imagining it without the purring bass, it made total sense to me. Never mind the whispered presentation and de jour production, Eilish is a classicist at her core and “my future” is the best showcase of her as a vocalist. She’s toying with Aaliyah-esque R&B harmonies on here and flexing her range as a vocalist: no effects, no bass wobbles, and no rawr-tier spookiness. Speaking as someone whose favorite Billie Eilish song is probably “you should see me in a crown”—the one with the dubstep wobbles that could almost be moshed to—“my future” has sold me on her as a singer, not an aesthetic pop star.