Billie Eilish ‘when the party’s over’: Review

By Jasmine T- IG: @jasminetxo

When it comes to 16 year old singer/songwriter Billie Eilish, we are bound to be captivated. With her emotionally charged lyrics that can pull at your heart strings in an instant, her music holds the power to put your mind at ease with its soothing melodies, yet somehow remain so very painful.

Upon the release of her debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me, the sixteen year old artist has released a variety of music videos to accompany some of the incredible tracks. With an upcoming album expected to be released in early 2019, her most recent single, when the party’s over, has become a YouTube hit, quickly racking up over 10 million views within the first three days of it’s release. The soulful track presents the hurt of heartbreak, and the denial that so often comes along with the pain. ‘I could lie and say I like it like that’ is the catchy one liner that repeats over the course of the song, presenting the denial that haunts her over and over again, like a record on repeat.

To perfectly accompany the song, her new music video, which was released this Friday, presented a graphic representation of the hurt of toxicity. The ‘one-shot’ style video, opening on a glass filled with black liquid, presents an emotionally drained, blue-haired Eilish, looking into the glass blankly. Seemingly representing a toxic individual or relationship, she sits attempting to fight the temptation to drink from the glass, or rather, all of the hurt that will come with what the contents of the glass represents.

Drinking it slowly and then suddenly all at once, she quickly indulges in the liquid which only leaves her in a demonic-like state of suffering and misery. The black liquid begins to pour from her eyes to resemble tears, and then eventually from her mouth. Taking over the inside of her body, the painful consequences of what she

so recklessly consumed begins to reflect itself on her mental, physical and emotional state. Pleading ‘tore my shirt to stop you bleeding,’ she would give everything to keep the person in her life. But the true pain shows itself to lie in her weakness, and in her failure to remain free of the self destructive state in which she is forced to live.

Making slow, demonic-like movements, Eilish acts as a robotic figure, trapped within her own mind and fighting with her own temptation. Surrounded by a white, never ending looking room with a white floor and sitting on a white chair and table, everything which is around her represents freedom and a chance of escape. However, as the video comes to a dark ending, the liquid, which has now consumed the singer, begins to fill the room around her, acting as the barrier between her mind and escape into the outside world. Singing ‘let me let you go,’ she is completely aware of her lack of control, holding on ever so tightly to the person who she is so afraid to let go of.

Ending on an almost exact opposite shot to the opening, the final image of the three minute video presents the white table on the inside of the frame surrounded by the black liquid on the outside. This is almost a perfect reverse of the opening shot, where the black liquid in the glass sits on the inside of the frame, surrounded by white borders. This ending acts as a final, overwhelming representation of the extent to which the person Eilish sings about ends up completely consuming her world, turning it into the opposite of what it was prior to giving into the painfully irresistible temptation.

Intriguing from the beginning right to the very end, the mesmerising music video leaves the audience clinging on to every lyric and every action, waiting in anticipation to see what becomes of the young artist by the end. The subjectivity of the piece allows the conceptual beauty to truly be in the eye of the beholder, acting as a blank canvas for the viewer to paint with the brush of their own mind.