What is a "Billie Eilish" and why does it have a career?

She's 18. She recorded her album as a teenager and sold a lot of copies and set Grammy records. I don't have an incredibly strong opinion about her. I think she's talented. I do have a strong opinion about adults who are ruthlessly vicious about her. She's a child. When did we become as socially debased as the people of Westeros?

The OP is at least 75 years old.

And is worse than Hitler, because there are already threads about Billie Eilish.

Learn to search before you make a thread grandma.

Dear cunt R2, I hope you see this before you are blocked - go fuck yourself with a white-hot poker, you vapid, taste-free, millennial trash.

Your thread has died, because you are just pathetic op / R3

She looks like she stinks.

She's already on her downward spiral, OP, she peaked with her debut album. That's the problem with overpraising an artist's first album, especially if they are a young artist, it sets them up for peaking. She's been releasing a string of singles lately that all sound the same and are not getting the radio play that her album songs got. The bond song was supposed to revive interest in her, but after the movie got shelved for forever that was a bust.

She peaked with 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' and as a result the downward spiral has begun. She isn't a very diverse artist, she kind of just has one sound (whispery/asmr singing over a trap beat or a piano with backing vocals done by her brother). The creepy shit she did for her album was interesting but she seems to have abandoned it and is now just... boring. Her downward slope has begun.

ASMR , OP.

I don’t get her look. I am not understanding the trend to look as awful as possible. That’s as effortful as just going ahead and taking a shower.

R8 I grew up in the '80s and honestly, her styling is as bad but not any worse than a hell of a lot of '80s musicians. Intentionally awful fashion had to come back at some point.

Let's not let our experience of having lived through such an aesthetically dreadful era bias us. This shit has happened before.

The GenZ version of Lorde

At least Eilish isn't seen as a sex symbol. These guys were the epitome of male virility to girls like my sister in the '80s. No stone throwing in this glass house.

r9 that was actually a great look. I think that outfit was one of Keith Haring's designs.

I've listened to her sing and she sounds like a croaking frog. Really. I was shocked that she has become famous. And the green color in her hair looks like someone threw up on her head. Very unappealing.

Yikes!

Spitting Image did a hilarious parody of her.

She has a "grandma" body, which is odd for someone so young.

She's clearly not going for "appealing," R13. She's going for woke teen-girl Marilyn Manson, and so far it has done quite well for her.

Billie's interestingness comes from her fashion politics, not from her as a person or her music. She is a famous female artist who absolutely refuses to sexualize herself in any way. She wears baggy, formless clothing, that's basically covers everything but her neck. She is pretty much the first female celebrity we've had since the 70's who does not use sex appeal to advance her career. That's what makes her interesting.

I also like her music. It's catchy and a little morose and teen-mopey. I really don't get why she's raked over the coals about her voice. She's a pop star like Britney Spears, like Rihanna. They can't sing. She's a better singer than they are. Lana Del Rey is not a great singer. She's heavily dependent on production. She also does a lot of hushed whispery stuff and is pretty widely celebrated for it. She's almost twice Billie's age and her career is full of mopey, depressive, demon-courting lyrics. I think R18 is right: the difference is that Lana is a living sex doll who does sensual, smutty music and Billie is a horror blob who does similar music without the sex. Which is probably a good thing since all the music we know from her was written by a teen girl. Had she presented herself as a whore, then the scandal would be that she's too young to be sexualized. There's no winning.

Hell, I thought it was Russell Crowe.

She has the most beautiful face. That creamy skin!!

Billie is only interesting because she is the first female singer whose image is not meant to appeal to the male gaze, which is why she's always swaddled up in baggy hoodies and sweatpants. She makes a statement with her clothing and it's interesting because it's something we've genuinely never seen before. Compare her to other singers today like Ariana Grande, whose images are basically just as living sex dolls. Having a female celebrity who isn't a sex object is interesting and refreshing. Now if only she could figure out how to make good music and not be a total snoozefest both as a musician and as a person she'd basically be set for life career wise.

Isn't she a lezzie?

She and her brother are very close. He's her producer and he seems to be leeching off of her every achievement and success. He even gave speeches for her grammy wins, they went onstage together for every award her album won. They both grew up homeschooled christian jesus freaks, so maybe the Flowers In The Attic vibes I'm getting are just a coincidence, but something tells me there's a little incest going on behind the scenes. The fact that Finneas is a dating a girl who looks exactly like Billie doesn't help their case.

[quote]She is pretty much the first female celebrity we've had since the 70's who does not use sex appeal to advance her career.

You've got to be kidding.

Yeah, bitch, fame and record sales do NOT last. Reality bites.

Her brother looks like he drives a van full of candy around playgrounds, if you know what I'm saying.

"Hey little girl, do you want some candy?"

R25 Are you serious or just like making hyperbolic statements?

In the '90s-'00s there were female singer-songwriters not known for being male gaze focused. Yes, as the '00s dragged on, it became mostly sex an image driven until now where we have shit songs about wet pussies and Lizzo shaking her bare ass in thongs somehow equated with being powerful/ feminist. In the '90s-'00s there were: Sara Bareilles, Michelle Branch, Norah Jones, Bjork, PJ Harvey, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Alannis Morissette, Sarah McLachlin, Vanessa Carlton, to name some that had mainstream success while not marketing themselves as image first/ music second. In the '80s there was more image involved, sexual or otherwise, but not all of them took the route that Madonna did. Women like Chrissie Hynde and Kate Bush come to mind.

R29 Out of your list, the only singers who weren't sexualized were Alanis and Bjork. Every other one of those singers still based their image around the male gaze, even if it was in a very 90's way. You can not have watched Fiona Apple's video for 'Criminal' and say that she was never sexualized.

That ASMR shit doesn't work for me. I just don't get it. What is it supposed to do? Maybe I played too much Nintendo and PlayStation had my neurons fried because I don't feel a thing.

What is it with that Mukbang thing? I watched it for 15 seconds and got grossed out.

I would rather have Oprah, Roseanne, and Chrissy Metz fart in my face and take a big whiff before I watched another of those Mukbang videos.

None of r29's artists were sold on sex appeal i.e. whacking material for straight dudes. I was in college back then and believe me, none of them wanted to fuck Alanis or Tori. They didn't know who PJ or Bjork were because they were invisible to straight men.

R30 Fiona Apple was not marketed on sex/ sex appeal, Her video for Criminal at that time was more known for being weird as opposed to look at me am I too sexy for you. Then straight guys, mainly indie/ alternative ones, wanted to fuck Fiona because of the thinking that messed up chick= hot fuck. It wasn't because Fiona marketed herself as sexy or for the male gaze. As for the other singers I'd mentioned, since when did wearing makeup or fitted clothes (as opposed to baggy sweats) equate with being for male gaze? They didn't market themselves that way they were just attractive in ways that society deem as attractive. But that's a far way off from marketing themselves as sex objects.

I honestly don't give a shit about her looks. I am 53 and struggle to understand the popularity of her contemporaries. BUT, her voice, style and sound is definitely unique. I am not hating at all. In fact I quite enjoy it. She has it. No doubt about it!

R33, Fiona was dressed in underwear and shook her bony little ass in the Criminal video. Not sexualized? GFY!

R35 Fiona looked like a fucked up junkie in that video. Half naked yes, but still looked like a fucked up junkie e.g. indie troubled girl who's uninhibited in everything. But that's one video, she didn't market herself with overt sexuality in other videos or other aspects to her career. She gave off more of the indie/ weird girl vibe than anything else.

The indie/weird girl thing she was doing as well as the naked junkie thing IS catering to the male gaze. Not all male gazes center on barbies.

You're a dumb cunt r37. Straight guys hate the indie/weird girl shit.

R37 Not all straight male dudes gaze on barbies, a few are into weird indie girls, that’s true. But majority of guys into sexualized female stars aren’t into weird girls unless they’re super beautiful/ hot and tame down weird girl shit and present as conventionally sexy when they’re singing or acting. Case in point Angelina Jolie

[Quote] Compare her to other singers today like Ariana Grande, whose images are basically just as living sex dolls.

Well that was expected considering the creep she was working with on Victorious.

Billie Eilish is today's answer to Avril Lavigne and P!nk. The "anti-pop" pop girl manufactured by corporations. I'm a millennial so I am a bit flabbergasted why younger people are so fascinated by Billie's look. However her sound (more accurately - her brother's sound) is distinctive and she can actually sing. So if she plays her cards right she could have longevity. But it's better if she would be herself. She's not as confident as Madonna was to copy everyone's stye and get away with it.

Look at the backlash Gaga got for not really being a high art "weirdo" like her early image and Katy for starting out as a Christian pop singer and later indie folk-pop type artist and ditching it all to be a perky sex doll pop star.

Funny thing about Alanis Morrisette is that she started out making Janet/Paula type of freestyle dance-pop music when she was a kid but it's clear it wasn't really her. Once she became an adult she started making mature alternative music that was introspective and she didn't sell sex either. Also came Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Lauryn Hill, Meredith Baxter, Erykah Badu and Paula Cole. Janet and Madonna hopped on that train too with The Velvet Rope and Ray of Light which most agree are their best albums.

^ I meant Meredith Brooks

I have to agree with the person who says Fiona et al. were mostly sexualized in their presentation/marketing. I hate to say that about my favorite, Tori Amos, because I discovered her music with Boys for Pele, and while she addresses sex and sexuality, I heard her music as sort of Baroque Sylvia Plath. Nevertheless, guys around me including my lecherous old boss liked her because they thought she was sexy and humped her piano stool.

Bjork was always an oddball but my brother-in-law introduced me to her music in the 90s and I found her very interesting. Years later, I assumed he listened to her and he said he really only liked the Sugarcubes but he did buy her first album because "she was cute." So basically, his interest was limited to her appearance.

Alanis wasn't sold as a sex object but she was sexual (which is normal)--her first big mainstream song involved lines like "will she go down on you in a theatre?" and "are you thinking of me when you fuck her" and "every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back, I hope you feel it."

The sexualizing of Fiona in her early videos was seen as creepy by most but that turned on horny guys; Criminal always looked to me as if it was modeled on the controversial Calvin Klein ads that were likened to underground kiddie porn. Yet the emphasis was close-ups of Fiona's voluptuous face, her stripping and her cavorting with naked male torsos. You can't convincingly argue that she was not sexualized.

Fiona's debut is a good comparison to Billie's since they are both teen musicians who did well and whose music wasn't Christina or Britney or Ariana, not just mindless Max Martin-produced pop, like them or not. And Billie certainly is desexed in her presentation. Even going back to Annette Funicello in a bikini, that's extremely unusual for a young woman (or young man, really) musician. Sex sells. Billie has sold through a sort of freaky goth horror muppet-in-a-trash-bag vibe instead. I do find it interesting and unusual.

Lorde was a teen prodigy for writing and singing her own music at such a young age. She was never sexualized and she isn't conventionally beautiful either. She is an average-looking girl with big curly hair and a simple style. She was 16 when her first album came out. She is fine though because she has a large fanbase and can survive off her niche just like Sufjan, fka twigs and Blood Orange.

Avril Lavigne originally was a kid Christian/country singer from Canada but when signed her label noticed she was attractive but there were already so many Britney clones at that point they had to do something different with her. So they noticed the pop punk popularity with Sum 41, Blink-182, Green Day and My Chemical Romance and thought let's make a teen pop star with that look and sound. And voila!

I know so many straight dudes who admitted to having crushes on Avril and wanting to bone her. Many are pissed she changed her look and sound too. Her male fanbase is big. She was definitely marketed on her looks and she wasn't freaky looking like Billie (though Billie is quite pretty too) or off-putting like a real life punk/goth/emo would look like.

[Quote] Many are pissed she changed her look and sound too.

I don't know why i was so shocked when she didn't turn out to be an actual skater girl. But i think she should have stopped after her third album.

Alanis is lucky the internet wasn't around back then. I think her music career was only in Canada too. So when she released Jagged Little Pill to a more global market, Americans and people around the world didn't know about this. It's not bad and she has a great voice similar to Taylor Dayne but her later stuff is much better and aged better

When will the day-glo hair and black attire look end? How many decades do we have to endure this cheap, stock-standard look donned by every nerdy girl that loves The Nightmare Before Christmas?

Alanis's new album has a song that starts off like the pop-rock genre that served her well and then morphs unexpectedly into dance music. I actually like it a lot. Lyrically, it kicks off with a drug trip that leads to introspective illumination and I think the musical transition serves that idea well.

The public has an annoying tendency of seeking out and destroying musicians for perceived inauthenticity and selling out, and I find it so fucking annoying because so many of us know how the music industry operates. The record labels work like organized crime, and they create blockades to any kind of opportunity that is not engineered and sanctioned by them. They dictate a musician's musicial and visual style, created as a brand that is marketed as a brand and usually at some point blacklisted as a brand when that artist gets big enough to create their own image and communicate as they want. Taylor Swift is admired by the public and by many musicians for having wrested control of her career from puppetmasters.

Tori Amos has talked about this her whole career, how she is at once humiliated by the failure of her first album and grateful for it, because she was forced into this bizarre "pirate wench" persona by a record label and then declared a failure and abandoned--but she was such a talent that Atlantic Records had committed to a six-album deal and after her spectacular failure because of the label's design, she had an ironic leverage to fulfill her contract by her own design, even if she had to fight not to replace her piano with electric guitars. Atlantic thought her music as she wanted to make it was too weird for US audience and she was sent to England, presumably because they had enbraced their own Kate, and she was styled like Kate, and then dismissed as a Kate copycat.

Kate Bush, to whom she's still often unfavorably compared, was the beneficiary of a totally different and archaic model of a record label snatching up a young talent and underwriting her free artistic development for years before her first album, which was by and large her own vision, was released. The label paid for her to study dance, movement (mimes!) and to gestate creative ideas and innovative instrumentation. That doesn't seem to happen much anymore. Labels want to exploit young talent and then drop them before they take control for themselves, so putting the money into yourhful sex appeal is a useful way of determining where that line will be: once she's not a sexy nubile young thing, her time is meant to be done. Motherhood often draws the line and is a prime time for women to be brushed aside. I think this is why women like Katharine Hepburn always said women can't have children and a career--in part because the entertainment industry suits wait for a woman to have a kid and take a little time away to cut her off and replace her.

Anyway, Billie is interesting in that her package is not sex-based. She has the darkness of Lana Del Ray, who is so popular with so many, and so she occupies that space but since Lana's whole appeal is dangerous sexuality, Billie can move into that dark territory without being compared to a woman who has dominated it with sex appeal. She's not threatening.

R48 Drama kids and goths will always have a place in high school. Adolescents factionalize as the horny alpha-creatures (jocks and cheerleaders), the intellectual nerds, and the freaks and weirdos (wiccans, drama students, goths). These are pretty longstanding teen identities and they'll remain that way. We Gen Xers had our pouting, anti-sexual Jeanine Garofalos, Baby Boomers had the Grateful Dead, Sylvia Plath had a morose and depressive following, Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes had theirs, and on and on.

Lana Del Rey's image is old Hollywood glamour, Americana and the dangerous cult of femininity. Her look is reminiscent of Priscilla Presley and Nancy Sinatra. Her music references Norman Rockwell, Sylvia Plath, James Dean, automobiles, etc. I think most of her fans are women and gay guys because of that. She doesn't seem sexy enough for a male audience to me though I'm sure they appreciate her musicianship.

R51 Are you kidding? I think her music is too lush and too anchored in a woman's aesthetic to be cool to many men, but the woman has styled herself as a living sex doll. The puffy lips, the flowing hair, the boobs and hips, the whispered coos, the orgasmic sweeping high notes, the low raspy singing voice, the singsong melodic valley girl speaking voice. "Daddy" in every other lyrical line.

Musically, she's indulgently Plath-y, but aesthetically she is a singing porn star in the 2010s mold of "choke me, Daddy!" Internet porn. That's her whole schtick and she wears it proudly and defiantly. Let's not pretend she's not designed for guys to whack off to.

Tori's 2002 album "Scarlet's Walk" starts off in L.A., and it pretty well describes the process of a young musician being engineered into a starlet designed to be stared at while lonely young guys jerk off. It feels very Lana, very every attention-starved starlet who becomes a porn star. I do think it applies to gay guys and now to narcissistic young men, too. One thing I learned from a therapist about narcissists is that while everyone craves and needs attention for emotional fulfillment, narcissists have a bottomless attention pit, and while normal people need to take in and digest attention to feel self-worth, no amount of attention and appreciation ever makes a narcissist feel emotionally full.

"Well he lit you up like Amber Waves in his movie show. He fixed you up real good 'til I don't know you anymore. From ballet class to a lap dance, straight to video, and the pool side news was hat he would be launching you into every young man's bedroom. (You gave it up.) On DVD and magazine (You gave it up.) A private right of passage (You gave it up.) to every boy's sweet dream with their paper cuts."

So yeah, the aesthetic whomever cookied up for Billie Eilish is pretty interesting in that it challenges people to like her music in spite of her being styled to be sexually off putting. Very few boys are going to be getting paper cuts from jerking off while holding onto a magazine with pictures of her looking radioactive while slouched over in a potato sack.

R49 Wasn't Lorde financially supported to grow before hitting it big? She was an investment that paid off.

R50 But that 'nerdy' type seem to have stuck with that same tired look for the past 30 years. It's a really manufactured, straight of the shelf look with no sense of individuality at all. For a group that likes to think of themselves as the 'outsiders' its rather plastic looking.

In real life, most nerds are just unkempt. Long hair, dirty, facial hair and not physically fit. There isn't a set "nerd" look. What you see in movies (skinny, glasses, button up shirts tucked into pleated pants) is a Hollywood stereotype that hipsters latched onto in the late 2000s. Overachieving academic types tend to overdress in order to maximize their success and taken seriously in the academic and professional world and they usually aren't bullied or mocked either because they would still look more attractive than the nerds who play Dungeons and Dragons or something.

Like her or not, Gaga's history in the business proves her talent, her cunning and her resilience.

She got into Tisch, which takes talent. She sold her songs to major musicians and then she got a major deal with a major label. After working with her, they told her she wasn't hot enough to market as a pop star and they dumped her.

What did she do? She covered her face with big glasses and distracting stars and lightning bolts. She took off her pants to show body parts that would turn guys on. She acted like a lunatic. She engineered pop music that was all based on hooks. So she nailed reliable ingredients to getting attention and covered up her face, which had been a kiss of death.

Then she proved with more good music, with a surprisingly dynamic and technically strong voice that was never heard in her pop music, and then with decent to very good acting that after capturing attention, she deserved to keep it with talent. She fixed her face up a bit but people actually became accustomed to her face, too. And it had been her handicap. I admire her for that because in this culture a girl who isn't pretty often has no chance, no matter her talents or her mind.

Still, to do it, she did have to objectify her body. Eilish has not done that at all--which, again, is good considering that she was 15-17 when her music came out. It will be interesting to see as the novelty wears off and she grows into adulthood whether she will resort to conventional sex appeal to stay afloat in the industry. She does have a pretty face and certainly could have a trainer get her into shape to sell herself as a sexpot if she wanted to "sell out." Her styling really has done every possible thing to make her look unappealing but aside from a prominent chin/jaw, she's conventionally beautiful.

Lady Gaga's best music was when she was Eurodance and had that weird artsy appearance. She returned to that in Chromatica. Gaga is definitely a talent, actually went to art school and a trained singer and pianist.

[quote] And the green color in her hair looks like someone threw up on her head. Very unappealing.

Bitch stole my look.

I don't like Bile elish's boring music

R60 I agree. I listened to her whole album and was bored out of my mind. She can actually sing though and I feel she is wasting her talent on these gimmicks.

I can't understand why everyone says she can't sing. I think her voice has a beautiful tone and her head voice is gorgeous. Is it just because she doesn't belt like Ariana and Xtina and Beyoncé? Or what am I missing? Is her pitch off?

Apparently you have to have a loud, powerhouse voice like Mariah and Whitney to be considered a real singer. That's how we ended up with Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson's yelling being passed off as "singing". Beyonce yodeling was irritating at times in Destiny's Child though she proved a capable vocalist on songs like Irreplaceable, Listen and Halo.

I like the light soft voices of Sade, Vanessa Williams, Aaliyah, Ashanti, Ciara, Janet, Amel Larrieux and Tinashe. They have good harmonies and go with the laidback music they make.

R63 I LOVE Vanessa Williams's voice, too. It is so warm and comforting. It's too bad she never made very interesting music, but I just think her voice is like warm, velvety molten chocolate.

OP, I don’t think we’ll be talking about her in 5 years. Though I thought the same of Taylor Swift in 2012 and she’s still around...

R43 have you ever listened closely to Ellish lyrics?! If the argument is over sex selling and lyrics are going to be considered "sex sells" (with the ex of alanis morsette lyrics), then Billie is NOT excluded from using sex to sell music.

Seriously, listen to the lyrics 🤣

She’s nothing like Kate Bush. Bush writes her own music. She also produces her records. Each album is completely different. It’s ridiculous that anytime a “Quirky” female singer comes along she’s compared to Kate Bush.

I learned a long time ago that no one can predict whether someone will catch on or for how long, and it's hard to render a verdict on whether a career has been a success or not.

Looking back at my favorite music era, the mid-late 90s, people who were critical and commercial successes are all over the map:

Mariah became 'a legend' in great part because of her voice and her persona. But her music took a long downward slope over the coming decades.

Janet Jackson fizzled out pretty quickly.

Sarah McLachlan had a spectacular sudden meteoric rise with Surfacing, and then she fell. Plonk. Not even a spectacular fall.

Fiona Apple was hailed as a bright new melancholic talent, and sort of a novelty act. I remember when Tidal came out, so many celebrities celebrated the voice of a soulful black woman coming out of this little white girl. Probably not a lot thought she'd become continually stranger and steadily more and more appreciated by critics until she scored a perfect 100 with a bizarre homemade album consisting of strange vocals and almost all percussion with little piano.

Tori Amos was appreciated for her musicianship but regarded as too strange for mainstream appeal, and she agreed with critics and did her own thing, covering genres from pop rock to baroque southern gothic alt-rock to electric rock and electronica to adult contemporary, classical and then an amalgamation of all those. She remains a force among those who embraced her and to all others she doesn't exist.

Jewel's debut album was hailed as that of a bright young talent with a big future in need of better production, and it was really overproduction that did her music in. But like Tori Amos, she seemed very creative, doing pop, spiritual, dance pop, children's and other genres of music along the way to an ever-shrinking niche audience that respects her.

Joan Osbourne's Relish is an extraordinary album and her voice was insanely good. And then we really never heard from her again, despite consistently releasing new music. It just never had the same soul.

Paula Cole was everywhere for a year or so and then she seems to have vaporized.

And Alanis--the biggest artist of her era, BOOM, an atomic bomb of catchy talent, and then gone in a flash.

Because of her voice, I think maybe people got it right with Mariah way back when: she'd be a 'legend' and a 'diva.' Because of her eccentricity and undeniable musical prowess, critics probably got Tori right too: a certain future in music, but not with a mainstream appeal. Most of the rest of them? No, most people couldn't have guessed their trajectories. And who among them is 'successful' and who isn't?

Funnily enough, "villi" is Latin for "eyelash." Do we think "Billie Eilish" is just a stage name to disguise the redundant "Villi Eyelash"?

[quote] She's not as confident as Madonna was to copy everyone's stye and get away with it.

Madonna was influenced by others (who isn't?) but she was uniquely her own creation.

R71 Madge owned it. She copied but she was a boss about it and was creative with her influences.

R70 She had other options. She could have been "Eyelash Pirate" or "Bairded Pirate."

Her real name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell.

I never viewed Madonna as a legitimate artist in her heyday but I do in retrospect. Nearly all artists are trained in and experiment and adapt what others did before them. No one is without influences. Madonna in sum is definitely greater than the parts. Her lyrics are rarely insightful and instead are serviceable. Her voice is limited although I enjoy her low register a lot. She isn't a musician. But she chooses collaborators brilliantly, she has made some really stunning music videos and her vision has got to have a lot to do with them because with different directors she has pulled off a variety of great videos and styles. I have always found her dancing to be kind of goofy a lot of the time but it's unique to her and she executes it impressively. As a musician alone, she's on the better end of the pop scale, but altogether she is a pretty great multimedia performance artist.

Not sure why everyone has to be compared to her, though.

For now, Billie is a very young pop star. Time will tell her future. She could pull a Gaga and stun people with powerhouse vocals in a future effort, or she might be limited. Nobody knows yet, and I'm not sure why people care *so much* about this teen girl.

I like Billie and have listened to her album many times. I am in my late 50s. Every 5 years or so I make it a point to catch up on what the "kids" are doing so it was last year and I got Billie. Really what's not to like? I love it when really young people have a smashing success at something. She's hardly cookie cutter in most categories but a little bit in trap. I also like her anti-fashion and she is no man's pop tart.

Lauryn Hill, Macy Gray, Imani Coppola, Kelis and Erykah Badu also were part of the late 90s female singer-songwriter trend.

Lauryn was very beautiful but never sold her sexuality. She is like Fiona Apple, a sensitive soul who had a nervous breakdown from the massive fame. Lauryn never recovered and clearly mentally ill. Her many children (she had a lot of baby daddies) said she was a temperamental parent.

Even though I appreciate the talent of Beyonce. She is like Madonna and really not an artist of her own. A great businesswoman and in charge of a good branding who works with great designers, visual artists and songwriters and producers. She has bonus points for being able to sing beautifully. I give Madonna an edge for having music that can actually make me feel like "Like A Prayer" and "Live To Tell".

No Beyonce album has ever evoked any type of emotion from me like Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott or India. Arie. Even more pop artists like Toni Braxton, Aaliyah, Janet and Solange have stirred more of an emotional response from me. I'm not even that old I just really appreciate 90s music.

Beyonce's ballad while beautiful as very flat and mechanical, technically perfect but not soulful or emotional. Kind of like Mariah's ballads.

I loved Imani Coppola. Never understood why she wasn’t bigger. Talented, beautiful, unique.

A lot of late 90s and 2000s music sounds more dated than the music from the core 90s. That's what happens when all the media companies get bought up by major corporations who force feed artists with the same 4 producers done your throats.

Like stuff like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, etc don't sound as antiquated as Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, My Chemical Romance and The Killers.

Billie is probably already rich for life. And she didn't need to be some social media filthy vulgar whore to do so.

Much like Swifty's, Billie's career was bought by her music business-connected parents.

She needs to change up her singing style if she wants longevity. The bored whisper will get old fast.

I'd let her sit on my face.

R64 i wish Tinashe had a better career. And i'd also add Jhene to your list.

Tinashe is the full package. Can sing, dance and writes her own stuff. She is in many ways an heir to Aaliyah, Ciara and Janet. I'm so sick and tired of the hype around Normani when we have Tinashe who is the perfect pop star.

Unlike Lorde she can harmonize melodies. It's funny how some (I assume fem) gays have this thing for women who scream. Harmonizing is a much harder skill to master than shouting like a crazy lunatic (see Beyonce and of course Lorde).

She's got all the personality of a bathroom rug, and looks like a bathroom rug with a big bleach stain.

r88 her singing isn't all that.

If you study music composition, you'll understand why critics praise this girl. She has a very rare talent for harmonizing, which is the core of music writing, this is a very rare skill to get and she does this on the fly, improvising in front of people. That's something famous jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald were known for, its sad that people think shouting is some demonstration of musical prowess, it isn't, it may be impressive but counts little for music writing which is also impressive for her. She was writing full songs at age 12 by herself. She's hardly a fabrication of the music industry, she has real talent.

[quote] Much like Swifty's, Billie's career was bought by her music business-connected parents.

It wasn't.

[quote] The indie/weird girl thing she was doing as well as the naked junkie thing IS catering to the male gaze. Not all male gazes center on barbies.

Do you even know any teens? Billie Eilish is mocked by teenage boys as depressed girl's music. She's hated by teenage boys as much as Justin Bieber was back in the day. She does have a good following among hip hop and black teenage boys though.

R81, that's because the early to mid 90s were the last time actual artists became globally huge (on average). Look at the huge pop stars (there's no more rock stars, sadly) since Britney: Beyonce, Gaga, Katy, Taylor, Pink, Rihanna, Ariana, and now Billie.

Really, only Billie and Gaga are interesting musically. And only Rihanna is interesting in terms of personality.

The early/mid 90s were the last time we had interesting pop/rock stars who were organically discovered (again, on average. Every era has a Debbie Gibson).

Gaga has the benefits of an actual musical education background and her early music has aged really well like Bad Romance, Paparazzi and Poker Face.

Ariana has absolutely no identity of her own and her music is too derivative.

Britney needs producers like Max Martin, Neptunes, Danja, Bloodshy & Avant etc.

Katy's music is childish and sounds the most unabashedly manufactured of her peers.

Taylor markets herself as a singer-songwriter and is adequate enough to know what will sell.

Rihanna is like Britney.

Pink's music is too distinctive and sounds too similar to each other. She tries to be rock but ends up pop every time.

Beyonce is probably the most vocally talented besides Gaga and Ariana but she puts her visuals and brand over her vocals and musical quality.

Billie has potential

[quote]If you study music composition, you'll understand why critics praise this girl. She has a very rare talent for harmonizing, which is the core of music writing, this is a very rare skill to get and she does this on the fly, improvising in front of people. That's something famous jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald were known for,

Ella? Really? You're comparing Billie Eilish to Ella Fucking Fitzgerald?

She mumbles. She always sounds bored. She is not terribly great at harmonizing. Karen Carpenter and David Crosby were great harmonizers.

Go to 12:00 to see Spitting Image take on Billie Eilish....

I think she's interesting for a musical an who is marketed by a huge label, but that's about it. Her image is cool and I applaud her for not being so sex focused, but her music didn't warrant all those Grammy wins. The whisper singing thing was already done (better) in the 90s by Portishead.

I prefer Billie Myers. Remember her? Her big hit was Kiss the Rain (1997). Google it now!

I agree with everything you said R94.

The reason Gaga's songs still resonate must be because she understand musicality at a way most don't. Except the awful Born This Way, all of her early big hits still feel fresh. Applause came on while I was picking up takeout. I'd forgotten all about the song, but damn it held up well!

[quote] Ella? Really? You're comparing Billie Eilish to Ella Fucking Fitzgerald?

No, illiterate fool, I'm comparing a specific skill in music composition and improvisation that they share, not their voice, style or anything like that. There are even rock stars that share this as well, like Freddie Mercury.

Like I said, if you knew anything about music theory you wouldn't make this stupid comment.

Its a very specific skill most singers don't have and the main reason shouter Beyoncé needs 70 people to write her silly songs while Freddie Mercury wrote Bohemian Rhapsody by himself, a song that relies precisely on this ability.

[quote]No, illiterate fool, I'm comparing a specific skill in music composition and improvisation that they share, not their voice, style or anything like that. There are even rock stars that share this as well, like Freddie Mercury.

[quote]Like I said, if you knew anything about music theory you wouldn't make this stupid comment.

Well smell you! Billie Eilish mumbles and has a flat monotone, she does not really harmonize like Ella did. Billie Eilish is a fad singer, not a legacy singer and her brother's beats make up for a lot of her shortcomings as a singer.

[quote] Billie Eilish is a fad singer, not a legacy singer

You still don't get, do you? Why waste my time explaining? Even if that is true, it has nothing to do with the skilled discussed.

Oh I'm sooo sorry r103 you ARE the expert after all LOL! Go back to your music theory class and extol the virtues of Billie Eilish and her AMAZING talent.

Again, she's a quirky fad singer and more hype than talent. "Harmonizing." Really. Go listen to Crosby Stills and Nash if you want to hear what that word really means.