Boombox Blitz: Billie Eilish haunts your dreams with ‘bury a friend’

Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.

Billie Eilish has unveiled her latest single, “bury a friend”, and this time around, the teenage mutant electro-pop star dives farther down the rabbit hole of her dark and twisted fantasy than ever before. Always one to get into character – see “bellyache” for reference – Eilish immerses herself into the role of inner demon, poking and prodding with dirty fingers until her host is driven to the brink madness.

Throughout the song, a cacophony of ominous screeches, sinister drills and nightmarish circus accordions infuse the track’s thumping beat, raising the hairs on the back of your neck and breathing life into Billie’s American horror story. Her vocals are layered and distorted, as if the voices inside her head are so loud, they pierce through her skull to join in on the fun. She incarnates the relentless disease of addiction; whose powerful grip ensnares her victim and controls their every move like a marionette. “Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me?” she asks when she sees her prey crawling back for more. Despite her malicious intentions, the user refuses to let go.

The video is equally as disturbing. Eilish appears with ink-black eyes, hiding under one place you should feel the safest: your own bed. She stumbles through a labyrinth of halls before being injected by an army of anonymous limbs with an unknown drug. She soon loses all control: her feet no longer touch the ground, and she is yanked and thrusted by faceless beings who want nothing less than to invade her entirety. How fast one’s world can spiral into oblivion and how even faster one can find themselves at the beginning of the same vicious cycle. The video’s director, Michael Chaves, effortlessly creates an insidious hellscape – a stark contrast from the fragility of previous single “when the party’s over,” where the camera fixates on the singer crying black tears.

Balancing a persona of anguish and malice seems to come naturally to her. Like a timid cat, she can be easily backed into a corner, but just as quickly go for blood with sharpened claws. This dichotomy is reflected best in her music, as she often shies away from the conventional trappings of typical pop fodder – lost love, burgeoning romance and sexual liberation – and chooses instead to bare the deepest, darkest workings of her conflicting psyche. Her complexities make her difficult to place into a single bin.

In “COPYCAT,” she wrathfully comes for a fake friend for stealing her image, while in “come out and play,” she earnestly coaxes a struggling companion to open up. Her duet with Khalid, “lovely,” spearheads the bottomless pits of depression, yet on “you should see me in a crown,” she unabashedly boasts her talent; storming the industry and tossing her competition aside without a second thought. Eilish exemplifies the adolescent struggle of not knowing how to feel at any given moment, and the more her mood shifts, the more material she has to work with – and the more her music benefits.

To call her rise to fame meteoric would be an overstatement, but it’s clear that listeners and critics are invested and hungry for more. Her debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, is due March 29, and based on her repertoire, their appetite is sure to be satiated. If the mystery beat during the final eight seconds of “bury a friend” is any indication of what’s to come, mine is sure to be as well.

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