​​【1】NME--100

标题：

Billie Eilish - “比以往任何时候都更快乐”评论：一位艺术家确保了她作为她这一代代表歌手的地位

这位明星以老式的好莱坞魅力解决了名气和厌女症，重复了她出色的处子秀的成功——没有重复任何技巧

“有时人们抄袭你很受宠若惊，但有时它会达到临界点”，2017 年，15 岁的 Billie Eilish 告诉 NME，大约一年后，她的第一首单曲《Ocean Eyes》为随之而来的改变生活的、地震般的成功水平。

虽然她还没有发行她的处女作“当我们都睡着了，我们去哪里？”——一团阴森恐怖的低语和可怕的摇摇欲坠的旋律，后来重新定义了当代流行音乐——这些早期的评论对一些人来说是预言性的事后诸葛亮。到 Eilish 横扫 2020 年格莱美奖时，她已经是家喻户晓的名字，声音和艺术形象都变得扁平化成卡通形象：花哨的绿色根源、科幻阳光和大而宽松的两件式服装。一些人以一种令人不安的兴趣辩论和剖析她的动机，要么骂她藏身，要么称赞她不炫耀。令人难以置信的是，狗仔队甚至开始躲在灌木丛中，在她家乡洛杉矶的家外偷偷拍下“真正的”Eilish 的照片。

如此严重的厌恶女性审查最终导致 Eilish 在去年春天在迈阿密举行的一场演出中发表了强有力的独白；她说出了对女性的不可接受的期望，并谈到了不断被监视的重量。 “没有什么我 做的事情是看不见的，”她一边洗着由她的兄弟和主要合作者 FINNEAS 制作的 Lynchian 合成器，一边说，后者制作了她的首张专辑和这部后续作品。 “所以，当我感受到你的凝视、你的反对或你的叹息时，如果我靠它们生活，我将永远无法移动。”

这段名为“Not My Responsibility”的独白也应该成为 Billie Eilish 第二张专辑的核心，这似乎很合适，这张专辑打破了流行童话的想法，并揭穿了它永远幸福的想法。相反，在摆脱了她独特的首张形象和情感包袱后，Eilish 满足于“比以往任何时候都更快乐”——在封面上，她若有所思地凝视着远方，抓着昂贵的白色羊绒，像一位老牌好莱坞明星一样轻轻地哭泣.刻意地，她似乎在扮演一个迷人而未知的演员的角色，在音乐上，“比以往任何时候都快乐”有针对性地借鉴了古老的经典声音，以探索成名、男性凝视和被不完整的公众困扰的陷阱图像被投射到世界各地。

“Billie Bossa Nova”是一款带有叮当声的桑巴节拍的缓慢燃烧器，听起来像是双峰咖啡馆扬声器播放出来的那种令人毛骨悚然的轻松听感。 “有些信息不适合分享/在酒店登记入住时使用不同的名字，”她唱道她成名后的新日常，“一旦开始就很难停止”。在咆哮的“保密协议”中，Eilish 唱到了必须发布连接后保密协议的荒谬之处。

就在感觉你已经获得了“比以往任何时候都更快乐”的衡量标准时，它会躲在其他地方——空灵的“金翼”以一段神圣的赞美诗开场，而“男性幻想”则巧妙地将某种色情内容的生硬对话和近乎即时的高潮。一首脉动的民谣，“我的未来”是一首为 Eilish 自己确定的未来写的动人的情歌，而“每个人都死了”在空间飞扬的流行音乐中变得存在。随着声音越来越大，Eilish 的声音变成了愤怒的噼啪声：“我们互相说谎。”

最强大的是曲线球的主打曲。在强大而富有表现力的歌声的推动下，无疑是经过多年的巡演磨练出来的，“比以往任何时候都更快乐”向任何让 Eilish 成为低语者的人竖起无形的中指，这可能是她录制的最好的声乐表演。 “当我离开你时，我比以往任何时候都更快乐，”她像一个失恋的歌手一样低吟，手里拿着一个银色猫王麦克风，由稀疏的吉他作后盾——然后，大约一半的时候，她戴着天鹅绒手套的手曲柄失真。 “他妈的让我一个人呆着”，当泥泞的、跳跃式的吉他独奏在她周围撞击时，她咆哮道。她声音中的痛苦是显而易见的。

虽然有一些清晰的线索与她处女作的未来派声音有关——最明显的是“催产素”的角质激素激增，“我没有改变我的号码”和“因此我是”的不稳定的恐惧咕噜咕噜的合成器——“Happier Than Ever”发现 Eilish 和 FINNEAS 在很大程度上借鉴了复古声音，然后在这个独特的新时代破坏了它们。 《当我们都睡着了，我们去哪里？》的主要吸引力之一是它奇怪、笨拙的制作，它的继任者更加柔和，更加低调。相反，它通过歪曲熟悉的事物来挖掘出类似的不安感。

尽管无论如何她在他们队伍中的地位不太可能受到质疑，“比以往任何时候都更快乐”完全确立了比莉·艾利什作为她这一代最重要的流行艺术家之一的地位——而且更好的是，这样做没有重复首演中的一个技巧颠覆了她的生活。

原文：

Billie Eilish – ‘Happier Than Ever’ review: an artist secures her status as a generational great

Tackling fame and misogyny with old-timey Hollywood glamour, the star has repeated the success of her stellar debut – without repeating any of its tricks

“Sometimes it’s flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point,” a 15-year-old Billie Eilish told NME back in 2017, roughly a year after her first single ‘Ocean Eyes’ laid down the foundations for the life-altering, seismic levels of success that would follow.

Though she hadn’t yet released her debut ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ – a menacing tangle of eerie whispers and monstrously lurching melodies that would later redefine the sound of contemporary pop – those early comments feel prophetic with some hindsight. By the time Eilish swept the 2020 Grammys, she was a household name, and both sound and artistic persona became flattened down into a cartoonish image: garish green roots, sci-fi sunnies and big, baggy two-piece outfits. Some debated and dissected her motives with an unsettling interest, either scolding her for hiding her body or praising her for not flaunting it. Quite incredibly, paparazzi even began hiding out in bushes to sneak photographs of the ‘real’ Eilish outside her own home in her native Los Angeles.

Such immense levels of misogynistic scrutiny eventually led Eilish to deliver a powerful monologue at a show in Miami last spring; she called out the unacceptable expectations placed on women, and spoke about the weight of being watched constantly. “Nothing I do goes unseen,” she said over washes of Lynchian synthesizer crafted by her brother and key collaborator FINNEAS, who produced her debut and this follow-up. “So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sigh of relief, if I lived by them, I’d never be able to move.”

It seems fitting that this monologue – titled ‘Not My Responsibility’ – should also act as the centrepiece to Billie Eilish’s second album, a record that pulls apart and debunks the idea of a pop fairytale and its happily-ever-after. Instead, having shed her distinctive debut image and its emotional baggage, Eilish is content with being ‘Happier Than Ever’ – on the cover, she gazes wistfully into the distance, clutching at expensive white cashmere and gently weeping like a old-timey Hollywood star. Deliberately, she seems to be playing the part of a glamorous and unknowable actor, and musically, ‘Happier Than Ever’ pointedly draws on older classic sounds in order to explore the trappings of fame, the male gaze, and being haunted by your incomplete public image being projected around the world.

A slinking slow-burner with a clinking samba beat, ‘Billie Bossa Nova’ sounds like the sort of eerie easy-listening that might play out of a cafe speaker on Twin Peaks. “Some information’s not for sharing / Use different names at hotel check-ins,” she sings of her new, post-fame routine, “it’s hard to stop it once it starts”. On the yowling ‘NDA’, Eilish sings about the absurdity of having to issue post-hook-up non-disclosure agreements.

And just when it feels like you’ve got ‘Happier Than Ever’’s measure, it ducks off somewhere else – the ethereal ‘Goldwing’ opens with a segment of the sacred Hymn to Vena, while ‘Male Fantasy’ wittily picks apart the stilted dialogue and near-instant orgasms of a certain type of pornography. A pulsing ballad, ‘My Future’ is a slinking love song written to Eilish’s own assured future, while ‘Everybody Dies’ gets existential atop spacey, soaring pop. As it amps up, Eilish’s voice breaks into an angered crack: “We tell each other lies.”

Strongest of all is the curveball-lobbing title-track. Fuelled by a powerful, expressive vocal, no doubt honed by years of touring, ‘Happier Than Ever’ throws an invisible middle finger in the direction of anybody who had Eilish down as a whisperer, and is possibly her finest vocal performance laid to record. “When I’m away from you, I’m happier than ever,” she croons like a love-lorn lounge singer clutching a silver Elvis mic, backed by sparse guitar – then, roughly half way through, her velvet-gloved hand cranks up the distortion. “Just fucking leave me alone” she yowls as swampy, fret-leaping guitar solos crash around her; the pain in her voice is palpable.

Though there are a few clear threads linking to the futuristic sound of her debut – most evident in the horny hormone-rush of ‘Oxytocin’, the wonky funk of ‘I Didn’t Change My Number’ and ‘Therefore I Am’’s gurgling synths – ‘Happier Than Ever’ finds Eilish and FINNEAS largely drawing on vintage sounds before disrupting them for this distinct new era. While one of ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’s main draws was its strange, unwieldy production, its successor is softer, and far more low-key. Instead, it unearths a similar sense of unease by skewing the familiar.

Though it’s unlikely that her place among their ranks was ever in doubt anyway, ‘Happier Than Ever’ fully establishes Billie Eilish as one of her generation’s most significant pop artists – and, better still, does so without repeating a single trick from the debut that turned her life upside down.

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【2】Evening standard--100

机翻：

Billie Eilish - 比以往任何时候都更快乐评论：一个独特而令人惊叹的明星

这个早熟的热门制造机Eilish 听起来仍然不像其他人

当全世界都在关注布兰妮斯皮尔斯的最新斗争，和她一样的 Z 世代们生活的是否更好？和布兰妮一样，比莉·艾利什 (Billie Eilish) 在 13 岁时以一首优美的歌曲《海洋之眼》(Ocean Eyes) 走红后，在 14 岁时就已成为明星，并在 14 岁时签署了唱片合约。与布兰妮不同，她看起来不像是一个为了成功而培养出来的娱乐圈孩子（尽管她的父母是洛杉矶的演员）而且显然不在乎你是否喜欢她，故意用恐怖的图像和听起来奇怪的歌曲疏远随机的观察者。

事实证明，几乎没有人被她疏远。她的首张专辑在美国获得四次白金，在这里获得双白金，她将于 2022 年夏天在 O2 Arena 演出五晚。

我想要的一切是 2019 年专辑间单曲的名字，当时梦想的现实听起来并不好——在视频中，她和她的制作人兄弟 Finneas O'Connell 故意开车下海——而且可以肯定现在并没有。她在封面上哭了，以防新专辑名称的讽刺还不是很明显。在其中的 16 首歌曲中，她详细介绍了一些相关的问题：她在几首歌曲中抨击令人失望的男人，讨厌因穿或不穿而受到批评 Overheated 和口语“不是我的责任”，并发现她没有不再与男性幻想的老朋友有任何共同之处。

但在其他方面，她的存在现在听起来令人难以承受和忍受。在保密协议上，她抱怨“我几乎不能出去”，并且不得不在他出去的路上签个保密协议。关于变老和毁灭性的悲伤-你的力量，她似乎指的是她过去的虐待关系。她幻想着消失在夏威夷岛上。

至少在音乐上，虽然她和 Finneas 赢得了大奖。但她听起来仍然不像其他人，即使是在比莉·博萨诺瓦(Billie Bossa Nova) 或主打歌的爵士原声灵魂上向后伸手时——那种极度沮丧的歌声总是让人目瞪口呆。制作充满了好奇。软键盘听起来像是在《Everybody Dies》的另一个房间里演奏。一条沙哑的、断断续续的合成器线路的出现为 I didn't Change My Number 的后半部分增添了张力。

她听起来仍然不像一个有光泽的竞技丛林的填充物，这是她吸引力的重要组成部分。她的做事方式非常不同，这也意味着一种新的生存方式。

原文：

Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever review: a unique and transfixing star

Precocious hitmaker Eilish still doesn’t sound like anyone else

While the world follows the latest struggles of Britney Spears, is life any better for her Generation Z equivalent? Like Britney, Billie Eilish hit vast stardom absurdly young, signing her record deal at 14 after a beautiful song she wrote aged 13, Ocean Eyes, went viral. Unlike Britney, she didn’t seem like a showbiz kid groomed for success (although her parents are LA actors) and apparently couldn’t care less whether you liked her or not, deliberately alienating casual observers with horror imagery and songs that sounded strange and bleak.

Turns out barely anyone was alienated. Her debut album went four-times platinum in the US, double-platinum here, and she’ll play five nights at the O2 Arena in summer 2022.

Everything I Wanted was the title of a between-albums single in 2019. The reality of the dream didn’t sound great then – in the video she and her producer brother Finneas O’Connell deliberately drive a car into the sea – and it sure doesn’t now. She’s crying on the cover, in case the irony of the new album title wasn’t already obvious. Across the 16 songs within, she details some problems that are relatable: she jabs at disappointing men on several songs, hates being criticised for what she wears or doesn’t wear on Overheated and the spoken word Not My Responsibility, and finds that she no longer has anything in common with an old friend on Male Fantasy.

But in other ways, her existence now sounds unbearable. On NDA, she complains “I can barely go outside” and has to make a casual fling sign a non-disclosure agreement on his way out. On Getting Older and the devastatingly sad Your Power, she seems to be referring to an abusive relationship in her past. She fantasises about disappearing on a Hawaiian island.

Musically at least, she and Finneas are winning big. She still sounds like no one else, even when reaching backwards on Billie Bossa Nova or the jazzy acoustic soul of the title track – that profoundly despondent singing voice always transfixing. The production is full of curious touches. The soft keyboards sound like they’re playing in another room on Everybody Dies. A scratchy, stuttering synth line arrives to add tension to the back half of I Didn’t Change My Number.

She still doesn’t sound anything like a glossy arena filler, which is a huge part of her appeal. She’s doing things very differently, which hopefully means a new way to survive too.

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【3】gigwise--100

机翻：

安静的自信，残酷的诚实和强大的性。

社交媒体上的人们真的很喜欢说已经发生了“文化重置”，好吧，如果你往墙上扔一大堆果冻，最终会有东西粘住。

在她的第二张全长唱片《Happier Than Ever》中，Billie Eilish（与她的制作人/兄弟 FINNEAS 一起）发起了一个新方向，

这将不可避免地波及我们的新文化——是的，甚至可能重置它。在 56 分钟时，我们收到的新全长单曲——“我的未来”、“失去的原因”、“你的力量”、“保密协议”和“因此我是”——无法指望哪里比以往更快乐真的去向。总的来说，Happier Than Ever 将我们如此熟悉的事物转化为整体。除了可以独立存在的歌曲之外，这些单曲还呈现出安静的自信、残酷的诚实和强大的性。

开场白“Getting Older”展现了比莉深思熟虑的最佳状态，但开场有点失误：专辑中出众的“我没有改变我的号码”开场时狗的咆哮立即将铁路切换到比以往更快乐的地方真的是：一幅由不同的——通常是凌乱的——部分组成的年轻女性的细致画作。

Billie 的英国版《Vogue》“打破互联网”拍摄，展示了她一系列令人惊叹的、复古风格的内衣造型，更多地表明了音乐上的发展方向，超出了我们的想象。当我们都睡着了我们要去哪里？比莉口齿伶俐，极具颠覆性，在这里她体现了纯粹的力量，生命中最有力的主题成为比莉抒情的焦点：性、死亡、悲伤、自我赋权。

在'Billie Bossa Nova'和'Oxytocin'中，她明确表达了自己的愿望：“今晚你的样子有点……让我想……和你一起拍一部我们不得不隐藏的电影”她唱到前者; “因为如果她看到我们，我喜欢做上帝不赞成的事情”对后者。当然，其中一些是为了引诱小报八卦而制作的令人兴奋的马戏，但也有一种非常强烈的感觉，即比莉也在展示从青少年成长为年轻成年人的新肌肉。

她的信心像水一样在整张唱片中蔓延：在单曲“Lost Cause”中，她嘲笑她曾经渴望的失败者，而在“Not My Responsibility”中，她处于最重要的状态，发表了一段关于人们评判的她的，令人起鸡皮疙瘩的独白“我与生俱来的身体”。当主打歌出现时，听到表面意思上的声明实际上并不是指被新情人拥抱，而是恰恰相反：“当我离开你时，我“比以往任何时候都更快乐”她唱道。而这一切都无法触及 Happier Than Ever 音乐和制作的非凡之处！感谢上帝，Billie 决定与她的兄弟 FINNEAS 一起担任联合编剧和制片人：这些兄弟姐妹之间的共生再次创造了魔力。

在波萨诺瓦、摇滚、耳语声学、灵魂乐和不断创新的电子音乐中，这对搭档成功地将一个又一个流派，呈现为他们自己的流派，使解释影响看起来就像从音乐史的草地上摘花并将它们安排在一个花束里。

随着制作怪癖、歌曲中间的转变和抒情的丰富，比以往任何时候都更快乐，感觉远远少于其近一个小时的运行时间，呈现出一座需要一次又一次探索的宫殿。重新审视，发现包含脆弱和真正心碎的壁龛，冷笑嘲笑的肖像，大胆颠覆生产的走廊以及流行文化的整体氛围-它显然已经很好地真正重置。

原文：

Album Review: Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

Quiet confidence, brutal honesty and powerful sexuality.

People on social media really really like to say that there’s been a 'cultural reset'. Well, if you throw a hell of a lot of jelly at the wall, eventually something’s going to stick. On her second full-length record Happier Than Ever, Billie Eilish (alongside her producer/brother FINNEAS) has instigated a new direction that will inevitably ripple throughout our culture—and yeah, maybe even reset it.

At 56 minutes long, the singles we received for this new full-length —‘my future’, ‘Lost Cause’, ‘Your Power’, ‘NDA’ and ‘Therefore I Am’—could not hope to indicate where Happier Than Ever was really going. As a whole, Happier Than Ever transforms what we’re so familiar with into something whole. Alongside songs that could have also stood alone, these singles take on a totality of quiet confidence, brutal honesty and powerful sexuality.

Opener ‘Getting Older’ shows Billie at her thoughtful best, giving somewhat of a false start: the growls of a dog at the open of album standout ‘I Didn’t Change My Number’ immediately carry out a railroad switch towards what Happier Than Ever really is: a nuanced painting of a young woman made up of disparate—and often messy—parts.

Billie’s ‘internet-breaking’ British Vogue shoot, which showed her in a series of stunning, vintage-inspired lingerie looks, was more of an indication of where things were going musically than we could have ever imagined. Where on When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? Billie was sharp tongued and subversive, here she is sheer power embodied, the most potent of life subjects become the focus of Billie’s lyric-writing: sex, death, sadness, self-empowerment.

On ‘Billie Bossa Nova’ and ‘Oxytocin’ she is explicit in her desires: “there’s something ’bout the way you look tonight…Makes me wanna…make a movie with you that we’d have to hide” she sings on the former; “‘Cause I like to do things God doesn’t approve of if She saw us” on the latter. Of course, some of this is titillating horseplay made to bait tabloid gossip, but there is also a very strong sense that Billie is also flexing new muscles that come with growing from a teenager into a young adult.

Her confidence spreads like ink in water across the entire record: on single ‘Lost Cause’, she derides a loser she once craved and on ‘Not My Responsibility’, she is at her most essential, delivering a goosebump-inducing monologue about people judging her for “the body I was born with”. By the time the title track comes around, it’s less of a surprise to hear that the titular statement does not in fact refer to being in the embrace of a new lover, but quite the opposite: “When I’m away from you, I’m happier than ever” she sings.

And none of that is to even touch the extraordinariness of the music and production on Happier Than Ever! thank God Billie decided to stick with her brother FINNEAS as co-writer and producer: the symbiosis between these siblings creates magic once more. Across bossa nova, stadium rock, whispering acoustics, soul, and ever-inventive electronics, the pair manage to present genre after genre as their own, making interpreting influence look as easy as plucking flowers from the meadow of musical history and arranging them in a bouquet.

With production quirks, mid-song about-turns and lyrical flourishes aplenty, Happier Than Ever feels far less than its near hour-long runtime, presenting a palace to explore again and again. Revisit to find alcoves containing vulnerability and genuine heartbreak, portraits of sneering derision, corridors of bold production subversion and an overall air of pop culture having been well and truly reset.

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【4】DIY--100

机翻

标题：不仅是将一个标志性声音推进到新领域的胜利，而且是关于如何自信地而优雅地拥有自己的现实的一课。

想象自己是 Billie Eilish 几乎是难以置信的。继 2019 年创纪录的首张专辑《当我们都睡着了，我们去哪儿？》广受赞誉之后，这张专辑不仅在商业上取得了巨大的成功，而且其艺术性也为她赢得了全面的奖项认可，使其作者成为第二位在格莱美奖历史上赢得所有四个主要通类大奖的歌手-Eilish事实上已成为了公共财产。 Instagram 有史以来最受欢迎的 20 个帖子中有七个是她的；将她的头发染成金色的简单行为真的就打破了互联网。

但对于所有的崇拜，也有一个反面，当她试图在公众成长的雷区中导航时，19 岁的她的选择日益扩大。这种情况让许多在她面前的年轻明星走上了黑暗和困难的道路，但不知何故，比利似乎正在巧妙地应对这一问题。正是这种拒绝迎合或被名声更阴险的一面打败的态度“比以往任何时候都更让人感到快乐”。在整个记录中，她不仅始终领先于巨魔一步，而且在任何时候都能出色地控制局面，对自己的生活进行令人沮丧的贬低和厚颜无耻的一瞥，这让你一直在猜测。

以前两首单曲《NDA》和《Therefore I Am》中的杀手一二为例，这两首单曲在这里无缝衔接。前一组则是关于Billie内心世界的小道消息（“有一个漂亮的男孩过来，但他不能留下来/在离开的路上，让他签署了保密协议”），而后者——这张唱片中更为招摇的音符之一——则对一位王位的冒充者毫不留情（“我不想让媒体把你的名字放在我的名字旁边/我们在不同的线路上……”）。在艾利斯的第二部作品中，这两个词经常出现在两个抒情的方面：一个是对她的性的庆祝拥抱，另一个是拒绝让消极力量支配她的生活。

开场白“Getting Older”代表她创作了一张开场白，《变老》为这张专辑做了铺垫，这张专辑从不回避这位歌手日益独特的处境。除了矛盾修饰法之外，它是唯一能巧妙地击败任何东西的人，它会立即把你带回到Billie and Finneas的音速世界，主题是在积极选择欢乐之前，它并不是所有：“至少我比以往任何时候都快乐，这是我的努力/让自己团结在一起并优先考虑我的快乐。“然后是‘我没有改变我的号码’，一种‘坏家伙’（也许你应该在我变得太卑鄙之前离开？）的精神继承者，它用一种诱人而有力的声调来代替沉默的威胁。

事实上，总的来说，“比以往任何时候都更快乐”是一个比它的前身更温暖、更有触觉的记录。她处女作的美学沉浸在令人毛骨悚然的氛围中，而比莉的第二部则更加柔和——无论是音乐上还是视觉上。

单曲“我的未来”是天赐之物，令人心潮澎湃的华丽钢琴曲，要求则是在昏暗的爵士酒吧中演奏，而“哈雷彗星”则以与拉娜·德雷 (Lana Del Rey) 的“最伟大”(The Greatest) 相同的飞扬感响起如此成功。与此同时，《Billie Bossa Nova》中熟悉的拉丁节拍使得其歌词中炙热的内容更加火爆。

专辑的两个亮点采用截然不同的包装。 “催产素”颤抖的节拍和迷失方向的人声是世界上其他任何人现在都无法想出的那种奇怪而刺耳的曲目：这种组合在技术上令人不快，但不知何故-这种组合融合成了一种砰砰声，绝对会在现场舞台上拉开帷幕。与此同时，专辑中点“Not My Responsibility”是对 Eilish 每天面对的审视的口述反思——一种赤裸裸、朴实无华的演讲，迫使听众直视它的眼睛。

“比以往任何时候都更快乐”不仅是将一个标志性声音推向新领域的胜利，而且是关于如何自信而优雅地拥有现实的一课。 Billie Eilish已经巩固了自己作为一代人中只有一次的年轻天才的地位——事实证明，看着她的成长同样是一段激动人心的旅程。

原文：

Not just a triumph in progressing a signature sound into new territories, but a lesson in how to own your reality with confidence and class.

LABEL: POLYDOR

RELEASED: 30TH JULY 2021

REVIEWER: LISA WRIGHT

RATING: 5 STARS

It’s almost incomprehensible to imagine being Billie Eilish. Following the universal acclaim of record-breaking 2019 debut ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ - an album not only meteorically commercially successful, but whose artistry earned her awards across the board, making its author only the second person in history to win all four main categories at the GRAMMYs - Eilish has become de facto public property. Seven of Instagram’s Top 20 most-liked posts of all time are hers; the simple act of dying her hair blonde literally broke the internet.

But for all the adoration, there’s been a flipside, the judgemental microscope put upon the 19-year-old’s choices expanding by the day as she attempts to navigate the minefield of growing up in public. It’s a situation that’s sent many young stars before her down dark and troubled paths, but somehow Billie seems to be coping with it masterfully. And it’s this refusal to pander or be beaten by the more insidious sides of fame that is ‘Happier Than Ever’’s defiant takeaway. Across the record, not only is she persistently one step ahead of the trolls, she’s also brilliantly in control at all times, offering up withering put-downs and cheeky glimpses into her life that dangle the carrot but always keep you guessing.

Take the killer one-two of previous singles ‘NDA’ and ‘Therefore I Am’, which segue seamlessly into each other here. The former pulses along, drip-feeding tidbits about Billie’s inner world (“Had a pretty boy over but he couldn’t stay / On his way out, made him sign an NDA”), while the latter - one of the record’s more swaggering bangers - is utterly cutthroat towards a pretender to her throne (“I don’t want press to put your name next to mine / We’re on different lines…”). They mark two frequent lyrical avenues in Eilish’s second: a celebratory embrace of her sexuality and a refusal to let her life be dictated by negative forces weighing in on her.

Opener ‘Getting Older’ sets out her stead for an album that never shies away from addressing the singer’s increasingly singular situation. The only people who could make a subtly whomping beat anything aside from an oxymoron, it immediately transports you back into Billie and Finneas’ sonic world, thematically noting that it’s not all roses before actively choosing joy: “I’m happier than ever, at least, that’s my endeavor / To keep myself together and prioritise my pleasure.” Then there’s ‘I Didn’t Change My Number’, the spiritual successor to ‘Bad Guy’ (“Maybe you should leave before I get too mean?”), that instead swaps hushed menace for a vocal tone that’s seductive and powerful.

Indeed, as a whole ‘Happier Than Ever’ is a far warmer, more tactile record than its predecessor. Where the aesthetics of her debut were steeped in the macabre, Billie’s second is softer - musically and visually. Single ‘my future’ is a heavenly thing, a heart-swellingly gorgeous piano offering that begs to be played in a low-lit jazz bar, while ‘Halley’s Comet’ rings with the same soaring sensibilities that made Lana Del Rey’s ‘The Greatest’ such a success. The familiar, Latin beat on ‘Billie Bossa Nova’, meanwhile, makes the hot-under-the-collar content of its lyrics even steamier.

Two of the album’s highlights come in starkly different packages. ‘Oxytocin’’s juddering beats and disorientating vocals are the kind of strange, prickly track that no-one else in the world could come up with right now: a combination that’s technically jarring, but that somehow coalesces into a banger that will absolutely kick off on the live stage. Album midpoint ‘Not My Responsibility’, meanwhile, is a spoken word rumination on the scrutiny Eilish faces daily - a stark, unadorned speech that forces the listener to look it in the eye.

‘Happier Than Ever’, then, is not just a triumph in progressing a signature sound into new territories, but a lesson in how to own your reality with confidence and class. Billie Eilish had already cemented herself as a once-in-a-generation young talent - turns out watching her grow is just as thrilling a journey.​​​​​​​